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]]>Currently (and in the past), Companies focus their Quality efforts in Manufacturing and Engineering. Certainly this makes sense in that you must design and produce good products (and services) in order to generate revenue and profit. But what about the rest of the organization – Purchasing, Legal, Sales, Marketing, HR?
Is Quality just for Manufacturing and Engineering, and in many cases, only a select few within these functions, or are there reasons to broaden the focus of Quality to include more of the organization? The direct answer is YES. By broadening the reach of quality to involve all functions within an organization, or an enterprise wide quality model, everyone is responsible for quality and therefore cost savings, revenue growth, safety enhancements and efficiencies and effectiveness can come from everywhere and anywhere in the organization.
In multiple industries – Manufacturing, Automotive, Healthcare, Food and Beverage, Education, Government and others, most organizations only have a few “Quality Experts” or a small “Quality Department” that are tasked with increasing quality and blamed for quality problems. When Quality is expanded to include all functions, everyone becomes accountable and responsible for Quality but the benefits don’t stop there.
Expanding Quality to include everyone gets everyone in the action of saving money, increasing revenue, improving safety and increasing efficiency and effectiveness – and this isn’t “extra work”, it’s the work that should be done “all the time.” Expanding Quality also creates positive cultural growth by involving everyone. Everyone speaks in the language of Quality – People, Safety, Cost, and Time and everyone understands the tools and methods of Quality so “plug and play” project leaders can take on projects both within their areas of expertise and outside of them.
So how do you determine if your organization may have an opportunity to improve quality beyond Operations, Manufacturing and Engineering? Simply ask a few people: “Who is responsible for Quality”? If they say “not me” or “the Quality Department is in Building #2,” well, you just may have found your opportunity to improve cost savings AND revenue growth.
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]]>The post The Ice Cream Maker appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>“Be so good they can’t ignore you,” – Steve Martin
How do you win over customers at work and bring families together at home? In his 2004 best-seller, “The Ice Cream Maker,” Subir Chowdhury says you focus on the basics and deliver excitement.
We’ll get into the basics of quality performance in a bit because the excitement step is actually the result of focusing on the basics. Through hundreds of examples, we see people who focus on the basics and pay closer attention to small details come forward with extraordinary products, ideas, and services. These are the ones who make their targeted audiences say “wow.” And as we know, getting to “wow,” is an essential part of great marketing.
As Chowdhury explains, the pathway to winning that kind of response boils down to going beyond satisfying basic expectations but exciting our audience with something unexpected that delights.
In contrast, Chowdhury pulls from historical examples:
Chowdhury is the chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group, located in Bingham Farms, Michigan. The company has a long and storied history of more than 30 years when Ford Motor Co. routinely declared, “Quality is Job One.” The manufacturer formed the Ford Supplier Institute in 1981 to foster unified training programs for suppliers in the automotive industry. Dr. W. Edwards Deming provided the original material for supplier training and also served as the initial instructor for the Institute.
Much of this early work was based on the recommendations and teachings of quality gurus W. Edwards Deming and Genichi Taguchi. Taguchi later transformed that effort into the American Supplier Institute, Inc., becoming today’s ASI Consulting Group.
Positioned as the leader in industrial quality performance management, ASI literally wrote the book on how organizations make quality a crucial part of their culture. From this work, familiar quality standards emerged like Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma, Quality is Everyone’s Business (QIEB), Robust Engineering and Lean standards are now joined by the more recent and easier to understand Listen-Enrich-Optimize (LEO).
When Chowdhury began his work at ASI in the mid-1990s, he found that many people who underwent training often lost interest in quality performance and management methodology. For instance, quality standards like ISO 9000, frequently pushed by big OEMs onto suppliers, were treated as mundane guidelines and wonky rules that interfered with productivity. That realization caused Chowdhury to wonder what good are rigorous quality standards if most employees don’t understand or care about them?
When Chowdhury published “The Ice Cream Maker,” people discovered a straightforward narrative that made quality approachable to everyone. Even opponents of traditional quality standards perked up wanted to hear more.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself,” – Leo Tolstoy
Chowdhury taps the power of illustrative stories to make readers see how important it is for anyone in any job to embrace quality as the root of everything they do. Many people can easily relate to one of the book’s main characters: Peter Delvecchio, the manager of a regional ice cream company, who is determined to sell its ice cream to a flourishing national grocery chain, Natural Foods.
Much of the story centers around Peter and the manager of the grocery chain and how the extraordinarily successful retailer achieves its renowned high standard of excellence, both in the services it provides its customers and in the foods it manufactures and sells. Quality, Peter discovers, must be the mission of every employee; by learning to listen, enrich, and optimize, he can encourage and sustain the highest levels of quality in everything the company does.
The characters come to life with concerns and goals we all can relate to (keeping their jobs, growing their business, making a difference, doing something that satisfies them in life and at work). And through the power of inspiring conversations and good stories, readers wind up learning what it takes to have it all in life and at work.
When “The Ice Cream Maker” talks about a common concern, workers feeling they are in unimportant, dead-end jobs, his supermarket friend answers: “Trust me, if you have a job, you’re needed – or else your job wouldn’t exist.”
When Chowdhury introduced the LEO (Listen-Enrich-Optimize) methodology, he helped simplify and standardize how we teach quality performance and management to our clients. In streamlining our lessons, LEO also intensifies the essential components for activating a quality revolution within an organization. When we listen to everyone, enrich ideas and data, and optimize solutions, we overcome mediocrity that exudes from the “good enough” mentality.
The change effect from Chowdhury’s book was so significant that Chrysler quality Vice President Steve Walukas remarked, “The Ice Cream Maker should be mandatory reading for anyone entering the workforce.”
The Washington Post summed up “The Ice Cream Maker” by concluding, “In 115 jargon-free pages, Chowdhury boils down most of the wisdom of modern management theory and practice that is equally relevant to chief executive and front line clerk.”
Chowdhury’s book reads like a fun novel rather than a wonky book of rules. It’s full of great conversations that many of us can relate to. The subtitle prepares us with how this conversation provides “An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality the Key Ingredient to Everything You Do.”
We can take heart that the lessons in these pages surpass a simple anecdote about doing better at work. Instead, it’s about doing better in life!
Partial sources:
Open Library: The Ice Cream Maker
Penguin Random House: The Ice Cream Maker
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]]>The post Robust Engineering / Taguchi Method appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>Robust Engineering allows for the Voice of the Customer to be translated into engineering requirements that optimize the functionality of the product or process and make it robust to common failure events/modes.
Traditional engineering focuses on solving problems, failure analysis, and use of a repetitive process of design-build-test, testing one factor at a time, firefighting, and studying in detail the problems associated with interactions of the factors involved. This approach costs more, takes more time, and isn’t always successful.
ASI’s approach to Robust Engineering exclusively uses the Taguchi approach: the Taguchi Methods were first developed by ASI founder Genichi Taguchi, a pioneer of the quality movement . This allows experiments to be performed and prototypes to be tested on multiple factors at once so that the product/process becomes insensitive to use-conditions and other uncontrollable factors. This is called Robust Design, and it provides a more efficient, cost-effective way to improve products and processes.
This revolutionary approach to engineering and design represents one of the most significant breakthroughs in product and process design since the Quality Revolution began. It provides a method for designing products and processes that are minimally impacted by external forces, such as environment, client use, or manufacturing conditions.
This is accomplished using Energy Transformation principles for improving the desired output targeted toward perfect performance, rather than attempting to suppress symptoms.
It enables engineers to:
Simultaneously, using the Robust Engineering process yields:
To learn more, contact Matt Gajda
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]]>The post ASI Mourns the Loss of Dr. Genichi Taguchi appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>It is with great sorrow that ASI Consulting Group, LLC announces the death of one of its founding fathers, Dr. Genichi Taguchi. Taguchi passed away in his native Japan on Sunday, June 2, 2012. “He was a great man, a mentor, and a teacher. His influence on Quality continues to have a tremendous impact throughout the world,” said Subir Chowdhury, Chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group, LLC.
ASI invites you to share your thoughts, feelings and comments about how Dr. Taguchi impacted you by posting your comments on our Facebook page. We will share your feedback with Dr. Taguchi’s familly.
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]]>The post Case Study Robust Engineering: Robust Engineering Saves Millions For Tier 1 Automotive Supplier appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>Challenge:A multi-billion dollar Tier 1 automotive supplier was struggling with poor product quality and reliability. Automotive OEM customers were not confident that the supplier could meet their stringent quality requirements. The company recognized that poor quality – redesign, returns, warranty, cancellation of contracts – were costing them several million dollars. The company leadership decided to focus on Engineering. They realized that if quality is designed into a product or a process, costs and warranty will be reduced.
ASI Solution:The company selected ASI-CG as its partner to achieve the new mission. ASI-CG and engineers within the company collaborated on an extensive review of the company’s entire engineering process and closely examined areas that had short and long term impact on the company. Although initial projects were focused on fixing highly urgent problems (fire fighting), using Robust Engineering the projects gradually shifted from “problem solving” to “advanced development”, focusing more and more on problem prevention as opposed to fire fighting. ASI-CG also worked closely with the company leadership to ensure sustainability. The application of Robust Engineering precluded fire fighting and helped engineers to focus more on strategic aspects.
Achieved Benefit:The average result of Robust Engineering implementation was approximately 50% reduction in variation and the total financial benefits have exceeded $100 million. One recently completed project achieved $9 million savings in piece part cost reduction. The company now performs over 100 projects a year globally.
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]]>The post What is LEO? appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
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This is where LEO is different. It is about that mindset needed to be successful. It is a fundamental business philosophy that if followed can lead to extraordinary results with an emphasis in 1. Developing Products, 2. Solving Problems, and 3. Improving Processes. If there is focus on the mindset and philosophy behind some of the proven methodologies, the effectiveness of the methods and the people learning and using the methods is far, far greater for your business.
The thinking is that this needed focus on the philosophy can facilitate the culture change by focusing on Listen, Enrich, Optimize rather than on a ‘tool’ or ‘toolset’.
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]]>The post “The Power of LEO” debuts to rave reviews appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>While theThe Ice Cream Makerprovided a 30,000 foot look at the concepts of LEO,The Power of LEOis the 5,000 foot approach that details how LEO has been used to great advantage in real, down-to-earth business situations. It’s written in easy-to-understand, non-technical language and details the overall methodology that makes it possible to apply management tools to achieve maximum advantage.
The Power of LEOclearly presents the case that LEO is a highly successful methodology, a new mindset, and a transformational way to think about the decisions that managers on every level make and the actions that they take. It is a system devised to help organizations of every size, in any industry, dramatically improve their performance, to make quality part of their corporate DNA resulting in measurable improvements in your operations, products, services and of course, your bottom line!
Read what some of the critics have to say:
John Chancellor – Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2EPE3EYX65YGR/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Jon Mueller – 800ceoread.com
http://blog.800ceoread.com/2011/10/11/the-power-of-leo/
Endorsements for the book include:
“Nobody knows quality like Subir Chowdhury, and The Power of LEO reveals the elegant new approach he has pioneered with the world’s top companies. I couldn’t recommend this book more.”
—Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times bestsellers MOJO andWhat Got You Here Won’t Get You There“The Power of LEO will be beneficial to any organization that utilizes its principles and incorporates them into their culture. Subir Chowdhury’s LEO is guaranteed to produce results.”
—Michael King, CEO and National President, Volunteers of America“A no-nonsense book full of real-life case examples, practical tips, and proven strategies. If you’re looking to make quality a way of life, this is definitely the book for you.”
—Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge“We have applied LEO in my hospital and it works. Subir Chowdhury’s book will serve as a powerful reminder to the healthcare industry that its primary goal is to develop, enhance, and delight its most important customer: the patient.”
—Mark L. Rosenblum, M.D., Chair, Department of Neurosurgery, Henry Ford Health System, and Vice President of Clinical Programs, Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital“Most management strategies are great in theory. But how does a line executive put it to use? The Power of LEO shows us how in practical, down-to-earth terms and anecdotes. A most useful read!”
—Jim Lawrence, CEO, Rothschild North America and former Vice Chairman and CFO, General Mills“Subir brings forward a fresh perspective on managing global corporations by listening carefully to key stakeholders, enriching critical business processes, and optimizing the strategic initiatives for deriving maximum value. In an uncomplicated style, he uses multiple case studies to explain how the LEO management approach can solve significant business challenges. Avid readers of new ideas in management techniques would certainly find this work of interest!” —Narayana N.R. Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys Limited
If you’re serious about competing in the global marketplace,The Power of LEOprovides the guidance to transform your organization from a company that does things well into an established industry leader!
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]]>The post The State of Healthcare appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>As we all have seen in the last few years, healthcare continues to be challenged. The future is cloudy… frankly, the future is really dark if you think about it. The National Healthcare expenditure in 2009 was $2.5 Trillion or 17.6% of the GDP. Previous studies have identified a full 30% of total healthcare services provided is waste. That’s real loss, measured in real dollars, that provides no value whatsoever to anyone! Change is coming and all providers will be impacted by the Affordable Care Act.
Here’s another startling statistic, hospital-acquired infections (HAI), or infections contracted by patients while they are hospitalized, cost the U.S. between $35 billion and $45 billion annually. In Europe, someone who gets such an infection has a one in 122 chance of dying; in the United States, the probability jumps to one in seven. That means that Americans are approximately 17 times more likely to die from these presumably preventable diseases than their brethren in the developed nations of Europe. Hospital-related infections could presumably be trimmed down substantially if America prevented deaths related to these infections at the rate Europe does. Ultimately, it comes down to process and the way I see it, the process is flawed!
Currently many organizations are embracing process improvement strategies that have been proven in other industries in order to increase operational efficiency and improve quality and safety. The application of Lean methods is the latest fancy. No question, Lean has many merits but it is not the one size fits all ultimate solution. So what does work? I think its LEO.
LEO for Healthcare draws upon a wide landscape of quality improvement tools and methods. It can be used in a variety of situations to address “fires” as well as reduce waste while improving efficiency in “flow.” Engagements are tailored specifically to the client’s needs. No “off the shelf” training manuals. With the flexibility of LEO, engagements can be project-based or enterprise-wide. With the proper infrastructure and leadership, the culture of an organization can change and everyone from top to bottom can be focused on improvement. Typical results for LEO deployments in the HealthCare practice have resulted in ROIs of 10 to 1 or better, which translates into savings in the millions of dollars.
Here’s some proof, recently completed a project focused on Operating Room (OR) processes for major hospital. Using LEO, we listened to the voice of the customer to determine where their pain points were. Based on that very detailed information and feedback we gathered, we enriched the OR processes by prioritizing problems areas and then identifying the root cause of each one of the problems. Ultimately, we optimized the OR by implementing solutions that eliminated waste, increased productivity and throughput, streamlined the process and ultimately not only met, but exceeded customer expectations. Bottom line, this hospital had incremental OR revenue of approximately $2 million.
Another LEO project for a different healthcare facility significantly reduced Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) in that facility resulting in a savings of $250,000. They found that their HAI rate exceeded the community standard. In the Listening phase, we gathered data and found that there was one area in the hospital that drove the unfavorable result. In the Enrich phase, we developed a set of standardized protocols that when implemented had an immediate impact in reducing the rate of HAI. In addition, and as part of the protocols, we identified a unique set of patient supplies, that when utilized by the staff, resulted in improved patient satisfaction, along with the added bonus of being less costly to the facility. So, in essence, implementing LEO created a win/win scenario for the healthcare facility as well as for the patients being treated.
If you want to change the DNA of an enterprise for sustainability, then hiring a “Black Belt” or “Lean” expert and expecting the results we achieved above is not the solution. Ideally you must involve the entire organization in the process; have everyone take personal responsibility to make an improvement, and have the solutions tailored to your exact needs – LEO in action. ASI-CG Healthcare, LLC (www.asiusa.com/healthcare) has the unique opportunity to help healthcare providers learn how to improve quality while reducing costs and in the process increase patient satisfaction. Feel free to leave a comment or contact me at stephen.velick@asiusa.com.
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]]>The post Great Customer Service appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>Earlier this week I placed an order for some building material from a local Lowe’s Home Improvement Store. I placed the order on Monday morning and they told me that they could deliver it on Tuesday morning. However, Tuesday morning it was going to rain and so they called me and asked if it was OK to deliver it on Wednesday morning so that my order wouldn’t get damaged by getting wet. I agreed and thanked them for being conscious of the weather and its effect on my order. Wednesday morning came and they delivered the material right on time just like they said. So far, everything seemed normal. That is until I got home Wednesday night and realized that they delivered the wrong materials. (I found this very ironic considering the blog I wrote two weeks ago regarding waste in a company (Learning to “See”).
I called the store and explained to them what had happened. The customer service representative asked for my name and looked up the receipt in the computer. She apologized for the mix up and told me that she would have the shipping manager call me first thing in the morning to fix the issue. The shipping manager called first thing in the morning (6:50am) just like she said. He then asked me when a convenient time would be for him to come out and exchange the material. When I told him that any time would work, he explained that they could be at my house within an hour. I agreed. Sure enough, within an hour the delivery truck showed up, exchanged the material and apologized profusely for the mix up.
All in all, the wrong material was sitting in my garage for less than 18 hours. The response by the Lowe’s team, once I explained the error was immediate and without hassle. With only a minor coordination effort on my part, the right material was at my house before I had a chance to use it anyway. This is what I call excellent customer service!
Sure, errors are going to happen. Even with the best systems in place, people are going to make errors occasionally. The nice part is that in general, people are very forgiving of human error as long as it is corrected in a timely fashion with little to no hassle. Obviously Lowe’s has done a good job of instilling in their people the concept of good customer service. They realize that their customers are their revenue stream and it pays to keep them happy.
This is not the first time I’ve had a good experience with the customer service representatives at this Lowe’s store and due to my continued happiness with them, they will remain my store of choice when it comes to my home improvement needs.
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]]>The post Learning to “See” appeared first on ASI Consulting Group | Quality Performance.
]]>My friend currently owns two houses; one he lives in and one he leases out through a property management company (we’ll call Company X). Periodically Company X needs to go into the rented property for one reason or another. Before going into the rented property, Company X contacts my friend to let them know why and when they are going to need to enter the property. Each time this happens, my friend politely reminds them that they will need all three keys in order to gain access. My friend doesn’t have to remind them of this but does so out of consideration.
So, the other day, a representative from Company X showed up at the rental property with only one key, and then called my friend wondering why they couldn’t get in! Now, Company X is a nationwide property management company, not some fly-by-night outfit run by Joe Shmo out of his basement. It seems reasonable to expect that Company X would have processes in place to prevent this sort of error from occurring.
Let’s assume for a minute that the representative from Company X had to drive 40 miles round trip – 20 miles to the rental property and then 20 miles back to the office to pick up the rest of the keys. Let’s also assume that the representative was driving a car that gets 20 mpg. Under these assumptions, the representative wasted 2 gallons of gas due to that error. At the current price of $4.00 per gallon, that would equal $8.00 in wasted fuel. Now, let’s also assume that the representative makes $15.00 per hour and the wasted trip took him one hour. The total paper cost to Company X for forgetting the keys would be $23.00. That is $23.00 that comes out of Company X’s bottom line profit. This is pure waste and lost profit all because Company X doesn’t have a system in place (or the system they have doesn’t work) to make sure that small errors like this don’t happen. However, the reality is likely that Company X has very few systems in place to even recognize that this was waste in the first place, let alone measure it, track it, and fix it.
In other words, Company X can’t even “see” the waste, no wonder they don’t fix it. I don’t believe that any company would purposefully waste money if they knew that it was happening. If someone from Company X accidentally dropped $23.00 out of the cash register, I’m sure they would pick it up. I just believe that many companies don’t know how to “see” waste when it is not as obvious as “green-backs” on the ground. I think that most companies could be improved if they just learned to “see” waste.
When first starting to work with a company, I often hear people say things like, “It’s just $23.00, what’s the big deal?” or , “Yeah, but that is just a one-time thing.” These viewpoints come because people can’t see waste. When someone comes in and points out one thing, it seems obvious to them at that point. However, because they haven’t learned to see waste, they believe that it is an isolated incident that doesn’t happen anywhere else. Over time however, these same skeptics marvel at how much waste has been right in front of them the whole time but they couldn’t even see it!
Learning to “see” waste is one of the key differentiators between the LEO methodology and the traditional process improvement techniques. Most techniques just teach tools and how to use them (which is necessary and useful). However, tools are better utilized by a person who can also “see” the need for the application of a specific tool at a specific time. Without being able to see the specific need, people will miss apply tools or worse yet, not apply any tools at all! We’ve all heard of the old saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
pry looking around and spotting waste. You will soon realize that waste is everywhere once you learn to recognize it. If you can’t see it, give us a call, we’d be more than happy to teach you how to “see.”
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