Recently I have had the
chance to work with a number of laboratories around the world that are
relatively early on in their march to Quality Progress (by this I don’t mean subscribing
to the ASQ magazine, but actually trying to making progress implementing Quality
Management in their laboratories). What
I have seen is a lot of implementing new procedures which will be hopefully in
time active and appropriate. But so far maybe not so much.
What I see a lot of is laboratories
deciding they want to get accredited tomorrow or they are told by their
overseers that they have to implement a quality system NOW. So they buy a book, or hire a consultant and
they start by looking at the documents that they have to create: Organizational
Chart, Quality Manual, Mission and Vision statements, Standard Operating
Procedure forms, Document Control List, Corrective Action Form, Quality
Indicator Forms, plus, plus.
So the documents get created
“by the book”, and get set up for use “by the book”. I call this Fit-for-Process; documents that
can be shown to an assessor so that they can get a checkmark in the appropriate
box.
What I also see with these documents
is a ton of documentation that that looks pretty, but seems to exist solely for
the purpose of being seen. They are not
designed so they can be used to actually make the quality process work
better. They become documents of busy
work. What they are NOT are documents
Fit-for-Purpose.
They remind me of Billy
Crystal’s character Fernando who would follow up his catch phrase in some generically
hip pseudo-Spanish accent, “you look MARVELLOUS” followed by “It is better to look good than to feel
good (and you know what I mean)”.
The problem of course is
that the documents get created in response to the question, “what do we need?”
rather than “why do we need?”
What happens is inevitable; documents
get created to record everything on every topic on every occasion. And then fatigue sets in and they get filled
in not with everything or on every occasion, but with less stuff and less
often. And not far down the road, they just stop, and the complaints start; “this
Quality stuff is a waste of time, and we are so busy and we don’t have the time
to waste!”
The problem was not that
Quality takes too much time, it is that implementation was done in a hurry, to
Fit-the-Process, to get that checkmark, to get that accreditation done and out
of the way. The purpose, if there was
any, was solely about getting the certificate NOW.
The reality is the Quality
takes time, and grows with insight and with organizational culture. And if it takes a year or so, then let that
happen.
Quality Management systems
create a framework for planning and assessing risk and reducing the number of
repeated errors. When implemented Fit-for-Purpose,
the process saves time rather than consumes time. When implemented Fit-for-Purpose, the process
reduces stress rather than driving the Qualitists crazy filling in the pretty
documents with the excessive information.
When implemented Fit-for-Purpose, your next steps are refinements, not overhauls
or do-overs.
So as you charge forward
towards getting your stars or your certificate, let me ask you the obvious…”what’s
your hurry?”
Upon reflection, when it
comes to building your Quality system, Crosby was spot-on. Do it Right the First Time (DIRFT).