How to Embrace Quality into your Company Culture – responsibility | lean | inventory
How to Embrace Quality into your Company Culture
“It takes less time to do a thing right “than to explain why you did it wrong.”
Longfellow is saying that quality is your responsibility. Quality is everyone’s responsibility. This Lean principal is called quality at the source, which means that each individual is responsible for the quality of their own work. If you do it right, you don’t need anyone to inspect your work because you are your own inspector. You don’t allow a defect to pass from your work center to someone else.
In a production factory, for example, if something is wrong with any part of the process, the entire line is shut down until the problem is resolved. In a distributions center, orders are correct before going out to the customer. In a purchasing department, buyers ensure each contract is correct, before sending it to the supplier.
This has a significant impact on inventory. The factory strives for zero reworks, zero scrapped inventory, and zero product failures. The distribution center wants zero customer returns due to shipping errors. The purchasing department works to have the correct deliveries from suppliers every time.
Quality at the source is much more than a practice, it must become part of the company’s Lean culture. It becomes the way business is done here. “quality is not an act, it is a habit.” Developing habits, changing corporate cultures aren’t quick and easy to do. Embracing quality at the source takes time. And once that culture is established, it is a competitive advantage in business.
Expert Lean companies like Toyota have carried this concept one step further by helping key suppliers develop this habit. When both partners embrace quality at the source, it supports a true, just-in-time delivery system in which material does not arrive at a Toyota factory until it is needed.
Suppliers are not delayed by inline inspections or by having to perform a final inspection before shipping to the factory. Toyota is assured that everything is within specification limits, so no inspection is required when the material arrives. Materials go directly from the receiving dock to the factory machines with no delay. The receiving department wants zero inventory.
Is quality ingrained into your company’s culture? You may take a look at your production floor.