Employee Involvement In Quality Control

It is a fairly safe assumption that employee involvement in quality control is important factor in a business’ success.

Click for handy employer resources here.

However, every day we see examples of poor quality service and products and it makes us wonder what level of employee involvement was in place.

In a slightly surreal sequence recently here at HRwisdom, a water cooler conversation about large scale vehicle recalls due to part defects somehow led to a discussion about the lack of quality control processes that allowed the creation of an outstandingly awful movie called: Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. 

Now, full disclosure, we’re haven’t seen the film, we’ve only seen the trailer. Employee Involvement In Quality Control

However, in case you are secretly harbouring any doubts that a film called Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus could really be all that bad, consider the plot: an enormous shark leaps 30,000 feet into the air and attacks a passing jetplane. 

If you really want to see it (why, oh why?) you can watch a brief clip on YouTube here (it contains a swear word).

So yes, it is that bad and it got us wondering – what were they thinking? Was there any employee involvement in quality control? And if so, would it have saved the film?

Which leads us to the point (yes, there is one).

Employee Involvement In Quality Control

Is it time that all organisations (especially B Grade movie producers) revisited the 14 famous quality improvement principles developed by management guru, W. Edwards Deming?

We’ve listed them here:

Deming’s 14 Key Principles

  • 1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive, stay in business and to provide jobs.
  • 2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
  • 3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
  • 4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of a price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
  • 5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
  • 6. Institute training on the job.
  • 7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
  • 8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. 
  • 9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, in order to foresee problems of production and usage that may be encountered with the product or service.
  • 10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
  • 11a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute with leadership.
  • 11b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals. Instead substitute with leadership.
  • 12a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
  • 12b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objectives.
  • 13 Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
  • 14 Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.

Perhaps if every organisation considered Deming’s wisdom, there would be fewer films about airplane-chomping mega sharks.

HRwisdom