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http://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/fsm-edigest/driving-success-in-your-food-business/
FSM eDigest |
December 17, 2013
Driving Success in Your Food Business
By Geoff Schaadt, M.Sc., M.B.A.
Drive out fear.
If you are familiar with the work of legendary management consultant, W. Edwards Deming, this phrase is nothing new.
Sadly, few managers and leaders in North America are aware of his
contributions to the modern business world—a fact that is especially
troubling for food safety professionals.
At the root of it, food safety is about the creation and handling of
quality products using quality inputs and quality processes. And W.
Edwards Deming is widely acknowledged as the ‘Father of Quality.’ In
fact, the national award for quality in Japan is the
Deming Prize.
The Back Story
W. Edwards Deming finished his university education in 1928 with
degrees in engineering, mathematics and physics. It was during this
period, while a Ph.D. candidate at Yale, that he would spend his summers
working for Western Electric where he had his first encounters with
scientific management, productivity and working conditions.
Deming turned down a number of employment offers from private
companies—including Bell Laboratories—to work for the U..S Department of
Agriculture and, later, the U.S. Census Bureau. It was during this time
that Dr. Deming was introduced to
Walter Shewhart, a statistician who is known as the ‘father of statistical control.’
WWII
His prominence in the world of production, quality and statistical
control began during World War II when he was tapped to lead the effort
to teach Shewhart’s methods to the engineers and managers in the
factories that were straining to meet the demand for war materials.
Ultimately,
Dr. Deming and his group trained over 31,000 students in the use of
these tools, and resulted in the formation of the American Society for
Quality Control—now
ASQ.
Recovery in Japan
As post-war manufacturing in America ramped up to meet rapidly
expanding global demand, most executives were focused on production
capacity with quality initiatives taking a distant backseat. Dr. Deming
was largely forgotten at home, but continued to be in demand on the
international stage—being contracted to assist with recovery efforts
throughout Europe and, eventually, in Japan.
It was in Japan that he found a truly receptive audience. As a result
of the overall poor quality of their products, the leaders of the
Japanese manufacturing sector were struggling to make headway in the
export markets. It was armed with Deming’s management methods and his
statistical approach to process variance that Japanese industry was able
to emerge from the post-war ash bin to become the bellwether for
quality products worldwide.
In fact, the Toyota Production System, which led to the Total Quality
Movement and, subsequently, Six Sigma, evolved directly from the
techniques that Dr. Deming implemented during the Japanese
reconstruction.
America Falls Behind
Eventually, as Deming predicted, the U.S. manufacturing sector was
screaming for protections from the Japanese. American products simply
could not approach the level of quality that was built-in to the
Japanese competition, and no one had a good answer as to how things
could be turned around. That answer turned out to be living in an
unpretentious neighborhood about five miles from the White House. Dr.
Deming, at 80 years of age, became the prophet who was, at last,
recognized in his own land.
American companies scrambled to hire him to consult or to attend one of
his four-day workshops. And some of the things that they heard must
have seemed as if Marx himself had been hired to show them the error of
their ways.
Many consider the genius of Dr. Deming to be his successful application
of statistical tools to real-world production and service environments.
And in that assessment, he would most certainly disagree.
While his mission to create lasting improvement began with statistics,
it was his perspective on management—and those who practice the
‘science’ of management—that separated him from nearly everyone else.
He that starts with statistical methods alone will not be here in three years.
- W. Edwards Deming
As a result, Deming codified his philosophy of management in “The
Fourteen Points”, “The Seven Deadly Diseases”, and “The Obstacles”[
1]
The 14 Points
1.
Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.
There it is, right in point one that Dr. Deming diverges from the
modern, Western approach to management. While nearly every corporation
lives by the ethos of “maximizing shareholder value,” Deming advanced
the idea that companies worry less about making money, and concentrate
on staying in business and providing jobs by focusing on innovation,
research, constant improvement, and maintenance.
2.
Adopt the new philosophy. Companies are typically too tolerant of poor workmanship and service.
3.
Cease dependence on mass inspection. Inspecting products at
the end of the process is expensive and creates unnecessary waste.
Quality emerges from improved process, not from additional inspection.
4.
End the practice of awarding business on price tag alone. This almost always results in poor quality of inputs. And quality outputs are very difficult to generate from poor inputs.
5.
Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service. Improvement is not a one-time effort. Everyone, especially management, must be committed to ongoing improvement.
6.
Institute training. Most workers are taught their jobs by
peers who don’t thoroughly understand what is happening in the system.
Most have just figured things out on their own.
7.
Institute leadership. The job of a supervisor is not to
tell people what to do or to punish them. It is to state a clear vision
of the future and provide the guidance and instruction to those who need
help.
8.
Drive out fear. Many employees are afraid to ask questions
or to take a position, even when they do not understand what the job is
or what is right or wrong. People will continue to do things the wrong
way, or not do them at all. The economic loss from fear is appalling. It
is necessary for better quality and productivity that people feel
secure.
9.
Break down barriers between staff areas. The silos that
exist between departments or units often result in competition or in
goals that conflict. They do not work as a team, and may actually cause
trouble for each other.
10.
Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce. These never helped anybody do a good job. Let people put up their own slogans.
11.
Eliminate numerical quotas. Quotas take account only of
numbers, not quality or methods, and are usually a guarantee of
inefficiency and high cost. A person, to hold a job, meets a quota at
any cost, without regard to damage to the company.
12.
Remove barriers to pride of workmanship. People are eager
to do a good job and distressed when they can’t. Misguided supervisors,
defective materials, or poor processes stand in the way.
13.
Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining. Both managers and the workforce will have to be educated in the new methods, including teamwork and statistical methods.
14.
Take action to accomplish the transformation. It will take
a special senior management team, with a plan of action, to carry out
the quality mission. Neither the workers nor the managers can do it on
their own. A critical mass of people must understand the Fourteen
Points, the Seven Deadly Diseases and the Obstacles.
The 7 Deadly Diseases
1.
Lack of constancy of purpose. A company that is without
constancy of purpose has no long-range plans for staying in business.
Management is insecure, and so are employees.
2.
Emphasis on short-term profits. Looking to “maximize shareholder value” undermines quality and productivity.
3.
Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance. The
effects of these are devastating—teamwork is destroyed, rivalry is
nurtured. Performance ratings build fear, and leave people bitter,
despondent, and beaten. They also encourage mobility of management.
4.
Mobility of management. Job-hopping managers never
understand the companies that they work for and are never there long
enough to follow through on long-term changes that are necessary for
quality and productivity.
5.
Running a company on visible figures alone. The most important figures are unknown and unknowable—the multiplier effect of a happy customer for example.
6.
Excessive medical costs. (only applies in the U.S.)
7.
Excessive cost of warranty, fueled by lawyers that work on contingency fee.
And Some Obstacles
•
Neglect of long-range planning and transformation.
•
The supposition that solving problems with automation, gadgets, and new machinery will transform industry. New technologies are rarely the solution to quality and process problems.
•
Searching for examples used elsewhere that can be copied, rather than finding solutions internally.
•
“Our problems are different.”
•
Blaming the workforce for problems.
Workers are responsible for only 15 percent of the problems, the
system for the other 85 percent. The system is the responsibility of
management.
- W. Edwards Deming
•
Meeting specifications. The accepted practice, but it will never drive improvements in quality or productivity.
•
“Anyone that comes to try to help us must understand all about our business.” It is possible to know everything about a business except how to improve it.
Obviously, Dr. Deming had a number of opinions that were, and continue
to be, contrary to the ‘accepted’ way of doing business in Western
society.
His approach to running an organization is at odds with the way most of
us have been conditioned to view the food production process. Yet here
we are, 63 years after his lectures to the engineers, scientists, and
managers of Japan turned that country into the gold standard for quality
manufacturing, and many of us who are trying to create safe food
products still don’t understand the basics of variance, or the steps
that managers must take to engage their employees in producing safe
products.
If all this talk of variance vs. process vs. management sounds like nonsense to you, here is a demonstration of Dr. Deming’s “
Red Bead Experiment”—from the Mayo Clinic—that will make it less hypothetical.
Or, to see Dr. Deming himself in action, this short
YouTube clip is quite fun.
Geoff Schaadt, M.Sc., M.B.A., is a consultant with Delta Partners.
Reference
1. This content is sourced primarily from
The Deming Management Method by Mary Walton, (Perigee Books, 1986). A text written with significant first-person input from Dr. Deming.
