|
TRY this simple test. Check this article or any professionally
written reading material. Count the number of letter “t”—both
upper and lower case. Note down how many you have counted.
Now pass this article to your colleague, spouse,
girlfriend or whoever who knows how to count. Ask them to do as you
have just done—count the “t’s” and to make note of how many
they find.
Once more, hand this article to another person
and invite him to repeat the exercise. Repeat the process with three
more persons. Now each of you has written down a number.
Compare the results. Do you have different
results or what? How many “t’s” are there really on this
particular article?
You have just simulated conducting a mass
inspection on a batch of work (in our case, an article) while
searching for defective units of output—the letter “t.”
When you compare the results of the “quality
inspectors,” you’ll discover that you have different findings
over the same product (or article). And so we conclude that it’s
impossible to state with any degree of accuracy the number of defect
unless of course, you do it again and again until you’ve
reconciled your findings with the rest.
But can you afford to do it again and again? In
the remote possibility that you will say “yes,” do you have the
time to conduct repair of defects, which could be more wasteful?
This is how mass inspection works. Or rather
does not work. That’s how W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) had come
up with the rule—“cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve
quality.” Instead, we must “build quality into the process”
where the worker must be responsible enough to correct his work.
In my case, I’ll endeavor to make this article
conform to the best standards of business journalism as defined
“jointly” by The Manila Times and its readers, and not rely on
my editors to correct my work. The rule therefore is how to make the
worker and inspector reside in the same person.
There’s a need to make inspectors irrelevant
because of variability issues that cannot be reasonably handled,
particularly when we’re talking of thousands, if not millions of
parts.
But exactly, what is variability? According to
Wallace Hopp and Mark Spearman in their new book—Factory Physics
(McGraw-Hill 2008), variability is the “quality of non-uniformity
of a class of entities.”
Hopp and Spearman illustrate it by saying “a
group of individuals who all weigh exactly the same have no
variability in weight, while a group with vastly different weights
is highly variable in this regard.” Agree?
Since time immemorial, variability has become of
interest to people and organizations, not necessarily limited to
those in the manufacturing but also in the service industry, as
well.
This could be easily understood when we talk
about physical dimensions, process time, machine failure, quality
measure, temperature, setup time, and so on that contributes to
non-uniformity of product or service result.
And we’re not even talking about the morale
and fatigue of workers, which are not found in the list of Hopp and
Spearman.
There are more reasons why variability exists.
In our everyday life, we see actual situations why traffic rules are
often ignored, usually assisted by members of the national police
and land transportation office, and of course, from time to
time—the supposed metro-wide development authority.
That’s the most
common example. The only teensy little flaw in this gargantuan
stupidity is that—to allow variability in traffic rules
enforcement you need to spend taxpayer’s money to keep these
nincompoops in government service, which is actually—a
contradiction of terms.
The fact that we can think about variability
shows there’s a scientific explanation for Murphy’s Law— “If
anything can go wrong, it will.” This is one major factor, because
mistakes, defects, and ignorance are part of our sinful life that
was handed to us by Adam and Eve.
The challenge now is how to repeal the law.
___
Rey Elbo is a business consultant
specializing in human resources and total quality management as a
fused specialty.
Readers’ feedback may be sent to kairoshq@info.com.ph
|
