Welcome to QualityHacks, a site designed for quality professionals to share hacks--tips, tools, and techniques--that help them do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively. Don't be shy! Post your thoughts on any topic you'd like. The only request is that it be a helpful tip, technique or tool.
They don’t have to be complicated or fancy. In fact, simpler is preferred. And you don’t have to worry about spelling and grammar and such. We’ll clean it up for you. We just want to give you an easy way to share your tips and techniques.
Here’s some possible topics:
• How have you modified the SPC software package you use to work better?
• How have you set up your document control system?
• How do you manage your gage calibration scheduling?
• How do you communicate quality issues to employees, customers, and suppliers?
• How do you motivate your internal auditors?
• How do you recognize and reward team members?
• How do you use everyday applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. in your quality processes?
• How did you select that last piece of measuring equipment you bought?
If these sound like questions you’d like to see the answers to, you’re probably not alone. If they sound like questions you’d like to answer, rest assured that there a lot of people out there who would really like to know how you answered. Don’t be shy! Your peers are in the same situation you are.
About Me
- Scott Paton
- Scott M. Paton is the former editor and publisher of Quality Digest magazine. He is the managing partner at Paton Press LLC, which publishes business books and provides professional development courses and training for quality professionals. He is also the editor & publisher of The Auditor, a newsletter just for auditors. He is the father of Ian (5), Lachlan (1), and Bronwyn (1).
11 comments:
Creating boilerplate emails in Outlook:
If you ever find yourself typing the same emails over and over and over... try using the Signatures option in Outlook.
Go to Tools/Options and click the Mail Format tab.
Then click the Signatures button.
Create boilerplate signatures to your heart's delight.
When you reply to an email where a boilerplate (or near boilerplate) response will work, simply select Insert/Signature and then the appropriate signature. Modify if required and then hit Send.
We have a 'custom packaging' area where we might make a unit for joe blow in jan 2005, and in jan '07 joe wants another just like the '05 unit. The area keeps files of pictures and marked-up drawings under 'joe blow' in their area. I was scheduled to audit the area, and I knew of these files. I told the area mgmt I could not overlook what i know is there. The area said they could not stisfy Joe in '07 without pictures and mark-ups of the '05 unit. We conferenced with our registrar's home office on this quandry. They advise we consider the files 'records' of what we'd shipped, thus the ISO doc control provisions don't apply. What a parigm shift for us all!!
Your readers may be interested in a book titled "The Game of Work" by Charles Coonradt (I believe that's the correct spelling of his last name).
We applied the principles (based on the use of sports-type competition to work activities) in a service environment, and we were able to improve productivity (on average) from +- 28% to 75% in a six-month period.
You can imagine the savings, and the degree of satisfaction from all involved in the competition.
Good luck!
JMM
6/12/07
Hi, What a great idea. I read your article in Quality Digest.
I am not currently active in QA/QS work (I am a recent immigrant from th UK) but when I was; one thing I introduced within our organisation was an intranet; now being replaced by Wiki's. This was a great way to share information and data quickly and easily. I also utilized hyperlinks in Word and Excel to easily connect references from each application; this made it simple to keep everyone updated and to ensure that all revisions were referenced and recorded.
Mike.
To Peter:
Please rethink your position. The ONLY reason for document control is to ensure that necessary documents are available and correct, both of which were true in custom packaging. Inconveniencing yourselves to comply to ISO 9000 is suboptimal (I think complying to ISO 9000 is good, but registering to it is a complete waste of time, effort and money - a registrar cannot mimic your customers and cannot evaluate your organization better than you can). Figure out how to make those pix legal and extend the lesson throughout your organization. Avoid the trap of "reference" documentation - when you're tempted to label something as reference, found out what is truly necessary and either commit to supplying it or eliminate it. These tips will improve your quality and give your workers more confidence in management.
I hope this catches on, Scott, its a good idea.
Borrowing on Mike's comment, if this does get popular I hope you can upgrade it to a wiki, allowing updates/edits to be made to posts(with easy comparison/rollback potential) and/or comments to each individual 'hack' that is posted.
There are some good, free and inexpensive wikis out there. For needs from the individual all the way to an enterprise, you can use Wikimatrix (wikimatrix.org) to choose among the available wikis with their Wiki Choice Wizard and compare selected ones side-by-side.
I work in an aerospace build-to-print job shop. Lots of our shipments have to be Source Inspected by our customer. So parts sit out, unpackaged, awaiting inspection and acceptance. But the paperwork has to go into the office for shippers and certifications. That led to marrying up the parts and paperwork again, using the identification stamped on the parts. It typically took 10 minutes per job to find the right parts among lots of similar parts and verify serial numbers. Sometimes parts were moved 'out of the way' and hours!! were spent looking for them.
I printed pages in landscape that just said 'Parts' on one half or 'Paperwork' on the other and then had a 3" high letter or number on them that matched (e.g., Paperwork 8 and Parts 8). And I printed them on different colors of paper. Then I cut each sheet in half and made two sets of half sheet laminated cards.
Then my inspectors turned in the paperwork with, for example, a blue 'paperwork' card with a big 8 on it, paper-clipped on top of the traveler. When the cert package was done the clerk took one look at the Source table and found the 'parts' card that was blue and had a big 8 on it. The serial numbers always match, and we only have to look at one job, no matter how many simimlar parts on sitting on the shelf. The cards can be read from across the room if necessary, so even parts that are moved can still be identified as waiting certs for Source.
Then the cards go back in the set of boxes, one for paperwork cards and one for parts cards, to be reused again and again.
I would be interested in the topic of measuring office work standards and performance.
Regarding the motivate employees question you raised, I believe that employees are usually self-motivated and that weak or poor performers, need to understand that in return for salary and benefits, they need to perform and accomplish results. Lack of results eventually should translate into no job.
Jim:
There are many ways to measure office performance, depending on the environment and what you want/need to accomplish.
In my case, a contact center, we utilized the usual parameters applicable to this type of work (e.g. call center stats, quality of service, schedule adherence, seat utilization/ocupancy, phone lines reliability, etc.) The key to our success was that we utilized a sports-type competition to motivate our employees. The end-result was a dramatic turn-around in productivity (an improvement from a team avg. of 28% to an avg. of over 75% in a six-month period of time). Of course, this entails a well-thoughtout process, and one that is presented (w/all the rules and performance measurement criteria) in advance to all concerned. You need to have buy-in from top (i.e. executive level) to bottom (i.e. the employees).
By the way, we never told our employees that there would be any benefits (or prize) at the end of the tournament (i.e. no carrot was promised). (We did provide a surprise to the winning team at the end of the competition.) The driving force was the human competitive spirit.
As I mentioned before, the book titled "The Game of Work" by Charles Coonradt is a good read to start.
Let me know if you have any questions.
...Best of success!!
JMM
In trying to make calibration a little easier, I use a different color sticker for each month. A large board in the plant tells everyone "If the color on the equipment you are using is i.e.RED, calibration is due"
So operators can check the date or just look at the color sticker and bring the equipment to the lab for calibration.
This also allows the use of paint spots for equipment that can't accommodate a calibration sticker.
Scott, this is a good idea. I think that used right it can help me strengthen my weak points and help others with my strong suits. I like what I have read so far. I would caution Wayne, however, on the use of colored labels unless they contain the necessary information required by ISO 10012-1 or if done by an outside lab, at a minimum the requirements of ANSI Z540. My particular forte is in calibration and aerospace AS9100 requirements. Calibration is one of the least understood with regard to what it is for and how to do it. I have found dozens of system variations, good and bad, and on the ones that are not so good the root cause was always lack of understanding of the standard and which standard to use as a guide.
I work for a registrar and have done for over 17 years. I have done at least 200 calibration lab auidts and AS9100, ISO 9001, ISO 13485. I will be glad to share my experience with those on this site.
Bobby
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