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Upside Down Excellence

Simplifying Quality for Business Success. Monthly tips on driving excellence through innovative quality strategies. Learn how people are the key to making quality work. From containment techniques to streamlined processes, discover practical insights on empowering your team for success.

Checklists
Featured Post

🔁 Checklists: Today's Heroes

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader Concept: Adherence to procedures defines today's heroes. Checklists are the vehicle to do this. Details: (2 min read) I recently read a book called The Checklist Manifesto. The premise of the book is right in the title; checklists are more useful than you think. I highly recommend it! Many industries never learn from their mistakes. Their response is to try harder next time or to just cover the issue up. (Can you relate?) Quality has a...

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader How is quality responsible for competence? Do you use the word competence in your workplace? Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe Here I don’t like calling people incompetent. I prefer certification. Here’s the thing about ISO 9001, it tells you what to do, but not how to do it. You have the freedom to rename, change, and modify nearly everything so that it works for you I deleted all their Work Instructions An example: at a...

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader So this past week I needed to justify why we have to inspect parts. (This is obvious right? Apparently not.) My initial thought was to go to ISO 9001 8.6 and throw the book at them. And in my early years as a quality manager, that is exactly what I would’ve done. Quote the clause and say you need to do this. But then I wondered what is that going to get me? What will they learn? And what will that do to the company culture? Was this...

Change is scary

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader Quality professionals are supposed to be change agents. But what does that mean? And how do we do it? (Sorry about the delay - this newsletter took more time than usual. I want to make sure you get the most value out of this newsletter.) To understand change management, we must understand some of Deming’s teachings. After Deming’s 14 points, he later developed his Theory of Profound Knowledge. It’s a bit of a grandiose title, but really...

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader This process if done correctly will create the most loyal customers. This method got a client of mine off their customer’s top worst supplier list in <30 days. You screwed up, now what? Your customer has bad parts, what are you going to do next? Here’s the thing: It’s not the problem that defines us, but how we fix it. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe Here Did you know Quality is also the customer service department for your...

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader I hate auditing. Or I did. My thinking was: I already have enough problems, why am I going looking for more? Not very quality-minded, I know. Here was my pattern over almost a decade of audits: Audit. Find nonconformances. Issue a corrective action. Assign it to me. Fix it by updating the procedure and training the employees. Then I go back to the normal level of chaos. What changed? Well… I got into supplier audits, I started helping...

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader What’s wrong with the word “quality”? What is Operational Excellence? Here’s an idea - get rid of the quality label! We’ve all been there. If it’s a quality idea, then quality must do it. Quality Planning - Quality must lead it Quality Review (Management Review) but it’s entirely separate from actual business review Document Control - those are just Quality’s documents. If it says quality or comes from quality, it’s just for quality. Why...

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hey Reader What is Quality 4.0? What was Quality 3.0? What about Industry 4.0? IoT? LLM? AI? Confused yet? Me too. Let's dive in! What is Quality 4.0? Q4.0 is the integration of technology and people, improving connectedness and collaboration. But not only about new technology. Rather it's about combining people, processes, and technology (3). Quality 3.0 was the automation of processes using computers (2). But it largely ignored the human...

UPSIDE DOWN EXCELLENCE Quality that's simple Hello Reader, Have you ever been asked to implement absurd requirements? Do you struggle with meeting compliance requirements? Have you ever felt that no one else understands what quality really means? I've been there. I started in corporate culture, implementing processes and requiring compliance with things I didn't understand or agree with. But it was the expectation. Corporate said so. I made no progress and felt like no one cared about...