The document provides guidance on how organizations can survive economic downturns through quality improvement. It recommends listening to customer needs, establishing strategic objectives, mapping key processes, measuring performance metrics, identifying issues and their causes, prioritizing the most important problems, involving employees, eliminating waste from processes, standardizing procedures, and demonstrating the business case for quality improvement. Quality improvement is presented as a way for organizations to adapt, change, improve performance and competitiveness, and ensure long-term survival during difficult economic times.

1. SURVIVE THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN THROUGH QUALITY IMPROVEMENT Michael Weekes & Whataboutquality LLC St Petersburg – Tampa May 2009 American Society for Quality Chapter 1508

2. The Agenda Listen to the Voice of Your Customer Strategic Direction – Got One? Map Out Your Key Processes Look For The Culprits You Can’t Improve What You Don’t Measure What’s Behind My Issues? How Do I Tackle It? Prioritize the Critical Few Employees are Stakeholders Too! So What’s In It For Us? Clean it Up! Proceduralize

3. Listen to the Voice of Your Customer What characteristics and attributes of your product or service mean the most to your customer? You’re SURE of what your customer needs but are you sure of what THEY think they need? If you’re struggling, you probably don’t know. Quality, Delivery, Price – ALL of these? “ Someone calling themselves the customer says they want something called service”

4. Meet All Three Types of Customer Requirements Spoken Those they reveal upon request Satisfy to the extent they are present and vise-versa Unspoken Expected Basic and often unmentioned A required part of what delivering VALUE means Complained about if NOT met Example: Getting out of your connecting airport Exciting Exceed expectation Harder to discover Give them more than they could have imagined If you don’t they won’t complain Example: a free drink, appetizer, sample NOTE: If you deliver exciting, unexpected value you differentiate yourself from the competition and assure success.

5. Strategic Direction Convert your mission, vision and values into measurable, strategic objectives Once you know where you want to be, how do you get there – what’s the GAME PLAN? How do you know you’re getting there without measurable objectives, per year, per quarter, per month? How do you know what ideas to act on if you don’t know how they align with your strategic plan?

6. Examples From: We will be the Premiere Entertainment venue in the Gulf coast region. To: We will increase the average number of seats sold per performance from 1,273 by 30% by June 30 th , 2009. We will decrease the number of minutes it takes to receive and confirm a ticket order from 13.2 minutes to less than 8 minutes by the end of the season.

7. Map Out Your Key Processes Any organization delivers value and satisfies customers through it’s key processes What are these and what activities make them up, who performs them and how do they relate to each other? How does the relationship between departments, teams and individuals impact how well we deliver value?

8. Examples NOTE the cross-functional nature of the work flow and how different departments depend on one another as suppliers

9. Look for “The Culprits” Two types of culprits: Waste Things that keep the flow from happening Inventories Overproduction / Batching Defects / Errors Moves and Transportation Waiting Variation Multiple ways for doing the work

10. You Can’t Improve What You Don’t Measure In any process, there are three critical characteristics: Quality Delivery Cost How well do you deliver a “quality” product or service to meet your customer’s needs? How often do you deliver on-time? How much does it cost you to deliver these?

11. What Makes Good Metrics? Verifiable – can be tested Quantitative - numerical Simple – easy to understand Common Definition – everyone has same idea Captures Performance – How is something being done? Related to a standard Allows and encourages comparison Supports business strategy, objectives, direction Translates customer needs into a measure

12. Examples Quality Missing items per room service order Insufficient solder joints per circuit card Insufficient knowledge of operator per call Delivery Percentage of late room service orders Percentage of late orders vs. due date Missed completions on new home builds Cost Labor per mortgage application processed Material per package shipped

13. What’s Behind Our Issues? The Cause – Effect Relationship Equipment Policies Procedures People NOTE: by People do not focus on the person as Much as the role, skills and knowledge required. I’m sure our people are the problem! NOT!

14. Examples Problem: 7% of the drive-thru orders come with undercooked or burnt french fries. Cause: equipment – lack of temperature or time controls. Cause: process – failure to define the time and temperature for a standard batch. Solution: justify new equipment based on avoided errors; install and monitor. Solution: develop a visual aide to define the recipe (time/temp) and train personnel and certify demonstrated skill.

15. Pareto - Prioritize the Critical Few Summary of Room Service Complaints (% of total) Food Quality Late (> 20 min.) Lack of Other Variety 40% 30% 20% 10% 27% 14 % 24% 35% NOTE one category represents more than a third of all problems two issues represent more than half of the problem

16. Cause / Effect for Food Quality Issue - Room Service Poor Food Quality PEOPLE EQUIPMENT POLICY PROCEDURE Don’t deliver until The Chef places the receipt with the order The emphasis on satisfying the customer was not understood by most of the personnel No policy in place for room service The broiler was not capable of meeting food prep. requirements NOTE: each cause is just an opportunity waiting to be acted on

17. Employees are Stakeholders Too! We are all in business to make money, but if you make money at the cost of ignoring your employees, you’ll never be as lean as you need to be. Employee involvement is the key to SUSTAINING improvement, making it an ongoing journey, not just an event or a slogan.

18. The People Side of Improvement Quality and Improvement: helps assure job security clarifies job expectations gives the employee a new reason to get up and come to work gives creative thinkers a new role at work and a way to make a difference differentiates the firm from the competition provides focus and a systematic approach to achieve more with the same people

19. People & Quality of Life We spend 40-60% of our life at work – so satisfaction matters Improvement efforts can be a perk – advancement opp. Improvement efforts can build trust – boss & peers Job Factors & Improvement Satisfaction – seeing results, being heard Autonomy – puts work in the hands of process owners Skills and knowledge growth Esteem – you matter Less Stress – more becomes known Stability – making a difference NOTE: History proves that only quality improvement efforts with extensive employee involvement Lead to sustained improvement

20. Clean it Up! Get Rid of the Waste! Sort – define and remove non-essentials Set – organize remaining items Shine – clean, paint and polish Standardize – label and color code Sustain – keep it that way

21. Procedurealize! Define the correct way to do everything Document it - Say what you do Train on it – make it dynamic and living Certify through demonstrated performance Do what you say you do Monitor & Improve

22. So What’s In It For Us? The Business Case – the bang for the buck CEOs, Directors and Managers only understand the business aspect of quality improvement Quality improvement isn’t just something that’s nice to do; it’s critical to your survival. History shows us that by adapting, changing and improving we survive Improvement efforts are not EXTRA costs; they pay for themselves, many times over Improvement is a Lifetime Journey not an event!

23. Conclusion Turn goals into objectives to get some sense of where we are and if we are getting where we say we want to be. Set aside time to find out how we do the work we do, how well we’re doing and what’s behind not doing it right. Map out key processes, activities and workflows to see the opportunities. Measure performance to know where we are and if we’re getting there. Look at the causes behind the issues and take corrective action to improve the process. Involve the employee along the way, to improve and sustain that improvement, building an even more capable team. We can survive through quality improvement and position ourselves for a competitive future that retains talent and draws new business to us

24. Thank you! Questions & Answers Mike Weekes President, Whataboutquality LLC Osprey, FL (941) 356 9434 Email: [email_address] On the web at: http://www.whataboutquality.com Blogging at: http://www.whataboutquality.wordpress.com/ ISBN 9780615272443