Quality Function = Policemen?

I call a project review meeting with a group of engineers from various functions. A quality engineer ( a lady ) told me that her function in the project is a policeman to ensure the project management compliance.

This is not the first time she told me that, she is a police. In fact, some other colleague from the same department do told me the same story. In their mind, the “Quality” function is just like a police, summon the peoples that violating the rule and regulation. Unfortunately, I don’t buy the idea and we end up in a debate each time the topic brings up.

My point is simple, I m a professional project manager, I manage my project according to the project guideline that set by the project office and I deliver result that meeting organizational target. Why do I need a team member only act as a police, only counter check my work? I don’t need a police who only eat up my project budget, but never deliver value. What I need, is someone who can add value to the project activities.

I need a Quality function in my project to support product reliability requirement and risk assessment support when team is challenging some technical limit. This is what I want, but I don’t see her capability after few round of meeting with her.

Per my understanding, the role of Quality function is to in contact with customer, document what the customers’ expectation and transfer it into a internal operational guideline. Oh yes, this is what I did when I was a manager of a quality department. I have to ensure we deliver the service that the customers expect, inspection is just an unhealthy quality control function, I only do that when something goes wrong. I spend most of my time collecting product quality information from my customer, understand it, and share it with the product development team and setting a right specification for manufacturing.

As a quality engineer, you must able to quantify the impact to customers if defective parts being delivered. With this, only you can communicate to the peoples in the operation and drive for continuous improvement. This is what I expect.

I hate the peoples who only highlight concern and risk, but can’t even quantify the impact. Working in a transcontinental project team, conflict is unavoidable, each team member are free to void up their concern or opinion, but bottom line, concern or opinion should follow with the quantitative impact. If someone only highlighting his concern without a quantitative business impact, in fact, he is no different like making a noise in the project.

Do you agree ?

Ramp Up Failure

My day plan spoiled by someone approaching me to look for historical data of a complicated project that claim is a failure of the year.

I admit, the project isn’t run smoothly from the beginning, mainly because of technical constraint and competency. When the project sign off from the management board, the whole world know that it is a very complicated project and the risk to fail is high. As the project hand over to me, I don’t have other choice except moving forward, so as the technical engineers in the project team. A lot of effort has been put in by the project team to develop solution and over come the technical constraint. Personally, I feel that their achievement should be recognized and appreciate regardless the end result of the project. Since everybody knew that the risk to fail is high.

The product is now in the mass production stage, yes, we gone through a hard time to stabilize the assembly process over the past six month. Finally, the team can release their hand and it is time to finger pointing. Therefore, somebody started to claim it as a Ramp Up Failure, they start to review the history and search for more evident to support his claim.

According to the definition, Ramp Up Failure in this context mean the project / process not meeting the general target set. Like process yield must be above 98%, machine MTBA must above 60 minute etc. Regardless project complexity.

Since few month back, people started to bring up the topic and discuss or debate. They spend a lot of time in data collection and compilation; spend a lot of time preparing nice Power Point slide; show off their presentation skill in the management meeting, just to prove their statement right. “IT IS A RAMP UP FAILURE”

I m not involved in the discussion; therefore I don’t know how much time and effort spend in debating the case. However, my personal observation, the discussion is totally non value added. The topic will just go round and round and round to fill up the working hour of the peoples that make them looks “value added”.

I feel really disappointed with such management practice. The people in the project team who struggle to bring business for the company were discouraged by the unfair punishment. In fact, they had developed something that difficult to achieve, there are technical breakthrough in the project. Why it is a failure?

In fact, the groups of people who only sit in the meeting room spend time discussing the nonsense are not the qualified peoples to review my project. My argument is; how much they understand the project and product complexity, how much time they spend at the site to personally feel the situation when the technical engineers dirty their hand to fix a problem? How much time they contribute to the project? Do they really understand the root cause and ready accept the fact?

Enough, what ever past is past, no point to argue. Why not you spend more time in your core function?

No Waiting Time Please

I believe no shopper like to queue up at the cashier to make payment. However, we can’t avoid such situation in our daily activities. We have to accept the fact and live with it. It is part of the Malaysian culture I guess.

I do believe all service provider like toll operator, bank, supermarket, pos office know about the problem, but they just no plan to improve it.

Why?

Because no complaint from their customer. Even there are, the voice of the dissatisfaction will not be loud enough to impact their business.

The photos below taken from Jaya Jusco Ayer Keroh Melaka, the cashier is crowded with a long queue most of the time, the situation getting worst during the peak hour.





I think the management of the World Class supermarket chain should do something to overcome the bottleneck at their cashier.

In business, priority should be given to the customer who ready to make payment. We can’t let them wait, even a single minute.

Big Boss Is Asking For Help

I receive a mail from the VP, asking for help to improve the operation performance as the KPI of the business segment I work for is far below the target. After go through his mail and the KPIs attached, I sympathize his situation, other than that, I don’t think I can do much to put the situation on track, because, I m just a small flies in the organization and my power of influencing is so limited. There are so many experience managers on top of me, everybody has their own thought of management practice. Getting them to believe in Six Sigma and Lean could be a big challenge.

I joint the organization 3 years ago, I would say, since the day I report to work, I m facing quite a big culture change until today I m still trying hard to adjust myself to suite the organization culture. In fact, the business segment was not performing well over the past 3 years, why?

Here are the few reasons I observed;

- Overall KPIs was not linked to the sub functional departmental KPIs. As I mentioned earlier, there are many experience managers having their own management thought, each manager set their own set KPI to report their departmental performance, but these KPIs seldom liked to the overall KPIs that measure the overall business segment performance.

- People’s mind set. I face the problem since day one I joint the company, may be due to the influence of deep corporate culture, many of them, especially those have many years experience in this company, are so reluctant to change. In other word, talking to them with the Lean and Six Sigma way is really a great challenge.

- The way the people handle problem. Problem Statement formation is the first step in Six Sigma GB or BB project. A good problem statement help the team focus at the right direction. I don’t see good problem statement being define in most case, but people just jump into the conclusion and point out the root cause.

- Another characteristic of the peoples (especially the managers) like to twist and turn the problem by asking a lot of question that may not directly linked to the problem. They ask a lot of questions, demand for huge number of data and information, hopefully they manage to find something to justify them to pull away from the discussion.

Well, this is the organization culture that I have to live with. My manager told me before; the environment is as such, if I can’t take it, the only way for me is to leave the organization. I wish to, if I have got the chance.

I m not sure how many of the so call experience mangers in this organization will respond to the VP with a constructive idea. The VP is the one that can change the situation. Have to exercise his power to push the people to do something. If he believes something will change by sending out an email like this. Hmm…let see what will happen.

Six Sigma In Telekom Malaysia

I was in a project management training organize by PM Global fro 23 – 25 / 04/08. Quite a good training program actually, I have to admit that I have learnt a lot of new thing in the field of project management.

Other participants mostly come from well known utility service provider such as TNB, Telekom, Shell and Petronas. Obviously we have a big gap in interpreting the term “Project” among us.

To them, a project is simply a construction or fabrication work involving land, brick and metal and so on. Whereas I used to interpret the term differently, a project to me is a short term assignment that may not be part of the main stream business operation activities.

Anyway, I believe the trainer manage to put our mind set on the same track (PMBOK definition) after the three days training.

I have a chance to have a short discussion with the Assistant GM of Telekom Malaysia regarding Six Sigma deployment in her company. From the discussion, Six Sigma is not widely buy in by the company because they feel that the data driven problem solving methodology is more suitable in continuous manufacturing system. Six Sigma is not suitable for service provider like Telekom.

Common problem : No Data !

I pick up her point, but I didn’t argue due to time constraint. Look at the banks, insurance companies and hotels that successfully in their Six Sigma deployment, these evident is more than enough to prove that Six Sigma is applicable to any service industries including Telekom. My Six Sense tells me, the biggest challenge is still the Passionate of the company top management.

Personally, I have seen numbers of success story of Six Sigma project in service line. Oh Yes, I just recall my memory, one of my GB actually work on a telephone network project and he manage to save quite a number of phone cost for the company.

Six Sigma in Telekom : Why not ?

What about Six Sigma in solid waste management ?
This is the true challenge I would like to put in sometime to learn.

Last update : 28/04/08

Operation Cost Saving

Cost saving again... thank to the rising oil price, many companies started to consider the need of total cost saving program to fight for rising operating cost. My company just turn on the energy saving program a week ago, from the way they cut the energy consumption, I can feel that they are quite serious this time. I'm happy to see this happen because they have been wasting the resources for so many years and not bother to change.

I also hear about the same initiative happened in the company that my wife work with. During the last diner she told me her boss call all the management staff in to have a brainstorming session and ask them to think of ideas to cut down operating cost. In fact, I can't recall how many time she had told me the similar story, again and again I tell her operating cost saving should start from the P&L statement, not simply pool a group of peoples into a meeting room and throw the problem to them. We can't solve any problem if we don't even know what went wrong, at which location the problem happen and how serious the problem. We can't tell just because we don't have a proper performance measure in place.

Therefore, to have a better understanding of the problem, her boss must go back to the basic, i.e. flip through the accounting sheet, list down all the cost center and understand the cause and effect to the operating profit. Only call for brainstorming session after all the information in hand.

SPC Chart To Monitor Cpk Value ?

Receive a mail from my Manufacturing Engineer, he want me to review a process performance as the Cpk value reported is “Out of Control”! I m shocked while reading the mail, I scratch my head and try to figure out what he is trying to tell me. I quickly flip through the report I send to him, notice that the Cpk value reported is 1.8, which is very good. Hmm, just don’t understand why he keeps saying it is “Out of Control”.

The best thing I can do is call him for clarification. Over the phone he told me the process Cpk control at 1.67 +/- 0.05. 1.8 is out of the UCL range, it is not acceptable and I have to provide him an improvement plan.

Now I realize, he seem like using a SPC chart to monitor the Cpk value. Can we do that?

Anybody mind to share your opinion?