Look around your organization. How often do you hear that statement? As an organization the tendency is to do things the way we always done them whether that is the correct way to do them or not. Ford told us the “Quality was job #1” and then they have the reputation on the market as far from it. Honda etc. utilized airbags from Takata and it is costing them widely. These are examples of errors that could have been avoided with the proper effort.
The TLS Continuum tells us that those errors represent the obstacles to the system flow. Those errors are non-value added activities that we inflict on the organization because we believe that is the way we need to do things. And then the customer comes long and demands something entirely different. Lets be more specific and consider what the cost of errors in the processes can mean to the organization.
Mistake #1 –A packing solutions company gets charged with discrimination against disabled employees and it costs the organization 1.7 million dollars.
Mistake #2 – A vegetable packing company allowed a manager to discriminate against a potential employee due to their race and it costs the organization 1.6 million dollars.
Mistake #3 – A major delivery company “classified” its drivers as independent contractors when they were actually employees and it cost them 3.0 million dollars.
Errors have consequences. Deming and Crosby charged us with removing defects from our organizations. Defects are errors. It should be the responsibility of each and every manager and human capital assets of your organization to strive to remove them. We do this by making the corporate mission statement to identify, locate and remove these errors when they are found. The easiest way is to use the Theory of Constraints to find and locate the errors, then lean to remove them and finally six sigma to create a standard of work for that process. We then ensure that we never vary from that standard unless circumstances require us to change the entire process.
Errors define your commitment to the customer. Either you are delivering what they demand and are willing to pay for or you continue believing that you have no reason to change from delivering error ridden end products or services. We constantly hear in the news about the cost of doing business. The major reason for higher costs is the inability of the organization to deliver error free end results.
It is your choice as to whether this is the status quo. It is your organization’s choice as to whether this is the status quo. I tis your human capital’s choice as to whether this is the status quo. On the other hand it is your total organization’s objective to deliver better, faster and cheaper than the only resource you have is to remove the errors from your organizational processes. Do it now not down the road if you are striving to sustain the organization.
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