If you ever get a chance to watch an aircraft being built, take it. Walking through the aircraft hangar at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, CA, facility, you will see two unmanned aircraft, each with a 130-foot wingspan, parked behind yellow tape. The scale of the aircraft and the desert setting make it feel like a movie set.
Undoubtedly, you have heard—perhaps spoke—the first two statements. You are in the business of process improvement, after all. You want to be sure you have an effective quality management system (QMS).
If you subscribe to Quality, it seems safe to assume that quality is a priority for you. But even when it is a priority, achieving high levels of quality is an ongoing challenge that requires effort from every member of the organization every day.
Quality doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t come as a result of just the corner office, but of countless people in the organization. Achievement of a robust quality culture is an outcome of the combined efforts of the minds and hearts of everyone working together toward a common cause.
Certainly, quality professionals play an important role in their organization’s pursuit of improvement and customer satisfaction. However, managers must ‘walk the talk’ in pursuit of customer satisfaction.
Much of society has been taught to believe that failure is negative and results in the loss of much effort and resources. This is only true if we allow this thinking to become reality.
If you’re old enough to remember The Lone Ranger, Tonto and Silver (the Lone Ranger’s trusty horse) you’ll also remember the famous silver bullets. Unfortunately, silver bullets only exist in Hollywood, not in the real world. I’ve had several conversations with people whose companies are using lean transformations to pursue the magical silver bullet.
Without a doubt, quality professionals are expected to be well versed in technical skills. Proficiency with the various quality tools and techniques is paramount for the quality professional to lead their organization to performance excellence. In the current environment, that’s just not enough to be truly successful.