Building Block #9

You need to be ready to trade off other values in favour of Quality

There’s an anecdotal ‘constraint model’ in the world of Engineering: Quality – Price – Timing: pick any two. By staying focused on ‘errors are unacceptable’ (or at least have a rate of errors we can live with) we may have to give up some complex processes and find simpler ones that still get the job done but keep quality where we want it. Measuring stable processes, for example, can be a time-waster that we can trade off in favour of getting it out our door more quickly or delivering the service more efficiently. Measuring processes that are responsible for customer satisfaction or reaching strategic goals must be at the top of our lists.

Goldratt’s work in the field of Theory of Constraints is much more comprehensive, but well worth exploring to get the full picture of how constraints can inhibit success on the road to a Quality Culture.

Management will have to decide how to allocate resources, like they have to with their Occupational Health and Safety programs. Do you have a ‘safety minute’ from time to time? Have a ‘quality moment’! Trading off resources is not always easy, but…

To find out if your ISO life can be simpler…

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This links to ISO 9001:2015 clause 9.1.3: “The organization shall analyse and evaluate appropriate data and information arising from monitoring and measurement.” and 4.4.1 a) and b): processes and their interactions. What processes really support what is important to our customers? Our customers determine what ‘quality’ is.