By now we should be very clear that as a manufacturer
of any products we would like to deliver
consistent good quality product to attract our customer. In order to achieve consistent good quality
product which is process output,Y, we must understand and control the cause
of variation. Cause variation derives from various inputs
Xs (5M and 1E) which needed to transform material to output, Y, which is a product that will be eventually
sold to consumer.
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| Process input man is the human factor |
Out of the 6 process inputs, I have already discussed very extensively on process
input, measure in 5 articles published
on 28 Sep, 29 Sep, 6 Oct, 9 Oct and 12 Oct in this website.
In any organization,
human resource is vital to a
success of the organization operation, which include manufacturing
process. We cannot limit process input,
man, to operator who directly transform the product in the manufacturing
process. Instead we should focus end to
end of man contribution from management team, engineers, trainers to
operator. In most company management
team, engineers and trainers are known as indirect labour (IL) and
manufacturing operator as known as direct labour (DL). It is biggest sin in manufacturing entity to
blame poor quality product on operator.
We must remember and adopt Dr Deming lesson that 85% of the quality
problem are cause by poor management (IL)
at all times. If you deal with
suppliers as asupplier quality engineer(SQE), account manager or commodity
manager, when you spotted a misconduct in operator, you will need to question the management
instead of the operator. Operator merely
follow instruction from management team and/or engineers/trainers. If there is
a misconduct, this could mean that the management team did not give direction
or conduct any check and balance on operator.
This happen due to a lazy management team or sub standard knowledge
management team.
Key to success in managing and controlling human factor
to achieve consistent good quality product would be :-
Top
management
Manage and control of process input, man, should start
from top management such as the company owner
or the top executives. The organization
top management must have the clear quality mindset and understand everybody in
supply chain who is involve in bringing the product to the consumer market
contribute to the product quality.
Ideally there should be a good hiring process to hire everyone with
quality mindset, however this is not
possible. Therefore it is a good
practice to hire at least key position manager with knowledge in quality to
drive the entire organization. The
company should be very fortunate if they get customer in the role of SQE with
quality mindset to drive them as customer is biggest change agent for any
organization.
Hiring
process
The hiring process in a successful organization must have
the capability to get the right person for the right job. Some companies use personality test such as Briggs Myers' test or or some unorthodox method such as
Chinese metaphysics Baizi profiling to understand potential candidate
personality besides assess the candidate skillset base paper qualification and
experience. In my personal opinion this
is a more balance approach, as both qualification and personality will
determine the candidate’s potential in the position. A candidate who is able to perform at optimum
level in a job function will have positive impact on product quality of
the organization. So far I have never
hear of personality test being use in the manufacturing industry.
Sometimes hiring good quality (personality, experience
and qualification) engineers or managers might cost a bit more, however it is worth the investment as this
could have prevent any potential poor quality cost.
Remember pay peanuts get monkey!
Remember pay peanuts get monkey!
 |
| http://www.seniorsaloud.com/2013/05/do-our-ministers-deserve-to-be-paid.html |
Company
Culture
Quality awareness should be from top down. Quality mindset should be instill in all employees as quality is everybody
business. Each and every employee should
be motivated to perform their best at all the times then only consistent good results can be attained. In
late 1980s to early 90s when I
just started my career most company management were dictator style. As we move towards a new millennium most
company had shifted their management paradigm to more open style especially in managing generation X to
millennials.
A superior culture w to adopt in an organization would be lean culture. So far in my career as
supplier quality manager dealing with hundreds of company across the globe I
have NOT seen a true lean culture
company. I have seen quite an number of bogus lean
companies or organizations that mixed up six sigma and lean!
Learning
Opportunity
There must proper training structure in place to ensure
the IL workforce is being systematically trained related to their job function
which enable to contribute to the product quality. Company should send various
functional engineers to quality related training to ensure they
understand that they play a role in ensuring the quality of the product. It is best to recruit or train quality
engineer to become certified quality engineer by American Society of Quality
(ASQ).
Performance
monitoring
Quality should be the main key performance index
(KPI) driver for management and
management must have the capability to drive quality related KPI to the rightful process owner from various
functional group. One of the most
important KPI should be quality cost and there must be a systematic and
consistent measurement of quality cost across organization.
Staff
Retention
Manufacturing industries especially electronic related are
very dynamic, therefore it could have the highest attrition rate compare
to other industries. An organization
should always setup a system which has very little dependence on individual
worker. Critical projects should be
handled by a team and not by an individual.
Although nobody is indispensable including the CEO, however if the a key person leave the
organization it might cause problem that could contribute to product
quality.
An example would be if the instruction of how to make a
product is control by one engineer and there are no proper documented
procedure, then the knowledge will be
lost if the person leave the company.
The company must have a quality management system which ensure all
process are well documented and updated.
Finally top management should developed an attractive remuneration
package, good working culture with advancement opportunity to retain all the
good staff. Some multinational corporation had even created a comfort zone for their employee to retain their talented staff.
We shall focus on the guideline to train and certified operators
to ensure the variation from trainers and operators are being managed in my
consecutive blog.
