F
flyin01
I recently spoked to someone who worked in an organization where the new ruling paradigm is that success is measured with a scoreboard and the performance of each department of the organization is evaluated with a number of key performance indicators, including the quality department. Basically the greener the KPI´s the better!
This way of measuring performance may be common in financial sectors and other non technical industries etc who lack quality engineers and quality assurance departments. But I get confused when I hear for example in manufacturing, quality departments are striving to minimize defects by giving incentives to quality engineers to hide problems instead of bringing them up! When performance measurement systems are defined so that goals can be achieved, not by working pro actively and doing real quality work, instead they invite to manipulate and prevent real improvement work, I get confused. Basically the scoreboard can be such that there are actually no incentives for quality people to highlight problems because this will cause unfulfilled goals for them selves and others, since achievements are measured according to certain targets. Not surprisingly then the initially really tough targets can be achieved one by one giving the false indication that everything is great. But since the indicators are intended as indicators (of quality) and these are not showing the true picture the true quality is not in line with what is shown on the scoreboard. All this because there are no reward for someone who blows the whistle on issues others are trying to hide because this person would get flamed instead of saluted.
This thus leads to the question how do you create incentives for someone to bring up problems instead of hiding them in such an organization.
Anyone heard of this kind of problem?
Please share some light on this issue!
This way of measuring performance may be common in financial sectors and other non technical industries etc who lack quality engineers and quality assurance departments. But I get confused when I hear for example in manufacturing, quality departments are striving to minimize defects by giving incentives to quality engineers to hide problems instead of bringing them up! When performance measurement systems are defined so that goals can be achieved, not by working pro actively and doing real quality work, instead they invite to manipulate and prevent real improvement work, I get confused. Basically the scoreboard can be such that there are actually no incentives for quality people to highlight problems because this will cause unfulfilled goals for them selves and others, since achievements are measured according to certain targets. Not surprisingly then the initially really tough targets can be achieved one by one giving the false indication that everything is great. But since the indicators are intended as indicators (of quality) and these are not showing the true picture the true quality is not in line with what is shown on the scoreboard. All this because there are no reward for someone who blows the whistle on issues others are trying to hide because this person would get flamed instead of saluted.
This thus leads to the question how do you create incentives for someone to bring up problems instead of hiding them in such an organization.
Anyone heard of this kind of problem?
Please share some light on this issue!