John is surprised and replies, “What are you talking about, Steve? We haven’t had to put product on hold for seals in months. I told the team that they better be careful when adjusting the sealer during the change-overs after the last issue.”
Steve isn’t patient with John, “Well, where have you been? Everything you made last night is on hold. First shift found it when they did their quality check this morning.”
John replies, “Just when I thought I could get some work done” and wonders what went wrong this time…..
I am very pleased to be guest blogging at Gemba Tales, Lean Stories, Lessons and Reflections this morning. The Gemba Tales blog is Mark Hamel’s blog. Mark is a Lean Implementation Consultant and the author of the Shingo Award winning Kaizen Field Book. I’ll be blogging on Leadership again on Thursday. Please go to Gemba Tales to read today’s post.
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You can read more about DMAIC’s at So What is a DMAIC Anyway? and What is a DMAIC, Part 2.
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Very true as always Chris!
I am always struck by how your articles can apply equally to the factory floor and ‘real’ life. Herein lies my inner QA person. No matter what methodology you use or objective you have, reaffirming the process frequently can help avoid high threat errors.
It is always helpful to analyze the failure point (what didn’t happen or what happened that should not have) and then confirm the correct procedure or outcome as this corrects the mind set.
By doing that we get out of the “don’t kick the ball through the window” issue, when we need actually need to “kick the ball between the goal posts”. The emphasis becomes the end we do want, not what we want to avoid.
Laine D
http://www.ThoughtsFromABroad.net
Hi Chris,
Another convincible benefit in gaining top management attentions is its data driven decision making, tollgate review and it can be considered as full scale change management program.
I find your story telling method of blogging has influence me to read the entire post- Keep the creativity flowing…:-)