Quality Beliefs Determine Improvement Behavior
Over the last few months, I have been helping an international holding company assess the operations of their portfolio of companies. They want to know things like, “How Lean are the operations at each company?” “How far along is each company in its Six Sigma improvement journey?” And, “What are the common opportunties and strengths we can build upon?” I’ve visited company sites, reviewed operation activities, collected data, and interviewed executives and staff. I have found that, in many ways, the foundation for excellence in operations can be boiled down to a single, simple question: “How do you define quality?”
I don’t mean, “Philosophically, what is your idea of quality?” Rather, I mean, “What is the definition you use in your work to gauge where a process or part is on the scale of poor to perfect quality?” Responses to this question—whether from a CEO or from a production worker—immediately reveal the status and direction of the individual’s and the company’s continuous improvement journey.
Why does this simple question cut directly to the crux? It’s because all work behaviors originate from underlying beliefs: what a person or a company believes defines quality, will determine their actions towards quality.
If someone believes that quality is defined as, “Falling within the specification goalposts,” then they will stop improvement as soon as a process crosses within the allowable spec boundaries. When parts fall just outside spec boundaries, they will spend effort in trying to figure out a way to get the parts to pass—tweaking the measurement system, asking for a waiver or deviation, etc.
Genichi Taguchi (b. 1924) formalized a definition of quality based on true principles. He stated that, in reality, customers desire a process or part to hit an ideal, single target value. The further the process or part deviates from this target, the more the quality of the process or part degrades. This is the basis of the famous Taguchi Loss Function. With this definition of quality, there is no end for improvement; there is always the need and opportunity to improve quality, even when parts or processes are within allowable tolerances.
Belief drives behavior. Below is a comparative table I use to illustrate the behavior changes that naturally occur when individuals accept and adopt a definition of quality based on true principles:
Ask yourself, how do you define quality in your work? Are you shackled to an out-moded belief? Or are you on the path of continual improvement?
Tags: behavior, definition, excellence, operations, principles, quality, taguchi, values
