I am a big fan of Dr. Deming. His teachings and advise to world management will stand the test of time. They have so far.
You can go to the website of the Deming Institute and sign up for their newsletter. It won't change your life but will give you tidbits of information to use or think about.
In the recent newsletter, there was a quote from Deming: "How much of our enery is spent trying to fix the people who work in the system, when the trouble comes from causes built into the system by the policies and actions of management?" He is talking about the 80/20 rule. Most opportunities for improvement fall within the responsbilities of management. He's also talking about common cause variation. A production system is no different than a machine. The machine is set up to make a product. A process is installed to surround the machine. This process will exhibit a long term capability that may or may not meet customer's requirements. This capability is the process' common cause variation. What is has been set up to do.
A system is set up by management. They allocate the resources. They commission the writing of procedures and instructions.
This is why auditing is such an important tool, especially process and system audits. A machine's output can quickly be measured with a gage. But how do you know if processes and systems are capable? Auditing.
Before you blame a person, make sure processes and/or systems are functioning correctly. Put another way, make sure you have an audit process that it is giving valuable feedback for the continuous improvement of your processes and systems.
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2 comments:
I am also studying more about Deming. I do believe that if the flaws lie within the systems, it is a managements decision to provide the necessary tools and use the abilities of others to seek and correct these flaws....and audits will reveal majority of the problems. It is when the problems do not get resolved at a root cause will they become a "huge" problem. I am one to believe that you must use whatever it takes to get to the best results. But without a managements support, it is a long road to travel.
Deming was well ahead of his time. You are absolutely right, if the management support is missing, then all these fancy tools we talk about are worthless. Deming saw that years ago. He made a career out of preaching this message.
Have you read Out of the Crisis? It is a great book by Deming.
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