First Audit Stop - Employees Washroom - Learn all you need to know about a company

You can tell all about a company from the condition of the employees washroom


  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .

Sidney Vianna

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Admin
#51
ralphsulser said:
Ditto Jim, good answers from the real world of competitive manufacturing:agree1:
Even though both of you are on the "right" side of the discussion, we are on the losing end of the poll. It is kind of deja vu. :mg: Scary! Democracy @ work.....:eek:
 
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Al Rosen

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#52
Sidney Vianna said:
Even though both of you are on the "right" side of the discussion, we are on the losing end of the poll. It is kind of deja vu. :mg: Scary! Democracy @ work.....:eek:
No, just an indication of where those who voted "yes" spend there time when performing an audit.:D
 

Sidney Vianna

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#53
Craig H. said:
I'll bet the Enron and Worldcom bathrooms were the picture of cleanliness and organization, with the newest and finest fixtures available.
Are you inferring that, even though they had immaculate bathrooms, we should have not bought Enron or Worldcom stock?;) But their toilets were spotless:rolleyes: ... All we need to know....is there....Isn't it? How could 21 astute people be so wrong? :bonk:
 

Sidney Vianna

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#55
Al Rosen said:
Sydney, you haven't voted. Are you on the fence?:mg:
Only when they revise the poll with a third option: HECK NO! YOU-CAN-NOT-BE-SERIOUS!:mad: option, I will cast my vote. PS. On your penultimate post, are you inferring (subliminary) that people spend time where they feel most comfortable? :lol:
 

Al Rosen

Staff member
Super Moderator
#56
Sidney Vianna said:
Only when they revise the poll with a third option: HECK NO! YOU-CAN-NOT-BE-SERIOUS!:mad: option, I will cast my vote. PS. On your penultimate post, are you inferring (subliminary) that people spend time where they feel most comfortable? :lol:
I think I could do that and yes that is a way of looking at it.:applause:
 

psyched1

Involved In Discussions
#57
JSW05 said:
All businesses produce some form of scrap, so its presence shouldn't necessarily be surprising or form the basis of any form of judgement. Now if scrap is piled in places where it might impede operations or create a safety hazard, that's a different story. But if it's in a yard in the back of the building and isn't bothering anyone, why worry about it? As for raw materials, if materials intended for use in production don't seem to be properly stored, there's cause for further investigation.
Scrap out of doors is typically not segregated or identified for long with weather conditions.(unless you live in sunny California) My suggestion is to question the vendor and inspect that area. I'll bet no one would direct you to that area as part of the company tour.

JSW05 said:
No, it's a sign that management doesn't pay attention to bathrooms, and nothing more, unless you have data that shows a positive correlation between dirty bathrooms and substandard production output.
Perhap unsanitary bathrooms is not a problem in your audits but I bet there is a correlation between unsanitary bathrooms and employee's missing work due to illness.

JSW05 said:
I used to work for a guy who couldn't throw anything away. He had a couple of semi trailers full of old production parts, accumulated over many years, that he (and everyone else) knew would never produce any revenue. You could look at those parts two different ways: they might be a sign of the "packrat mentality" you disdain, or they could be a sign that he was willing to produce more parts than might be needed in order to be able to respond quickly to unexpected customer requests. The fact that he couldn't throw them away is indicative of nothing--insofar as contemporary production was concerned, they were totally irrelevant.

A lot of job shops have to keep their machines running any way they can because of the miniscule margins they have to work with. As a customer, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you continually ask for price reductions, your suppliers will do what they need to do in order to comply.
I would rather pay a premium for ontime and right the first time rather than use a vendor who canibalizes machines to just keep it going. Eventually the vendor will fail you!

I've worked for penny wise dollar fools that lost numerous days of production because they would rather cannibilze a compressor to keep a worn out piece of equipment than buy a new one. After losing a total of 15 days production each time sending people home he got the idea we needed a new compressor. You don't want to know how that affected our on-time delivery.

JSW05 said:
Maybe they did prepare, believing that the auditor would focus only on relevant aspects of the supplier's business.
Arent all things relevant in an audit? If an unclean bathroom or a scrap filled back lot leads me down a path of focusing on equipment, maintenance and infrastructure in my audit how is that bad thing?
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#58
psyched1 said:
Arent all things relevant in an audit?
Absolutely not--you don't really believe that, do you?

psyched1 said:
If an unclean bathroom or a scrap filled back lot leads me down a path of focusing on equipment, maintenance and infrastructure in my audit how is that bad thing?
It's not necessarily a bad thing. All I'm saying is that if you make associations based on fallacious reasoning (dirty bathrooms=bad supplier, e.g.) the path you decide to concentrate on might be misleading.
 

psyched1

Involved In Discussions
#59
If nonconformances or equipment and maintenance comes up good how much time have I wasted? These are items that should be a part of a good audit.

One of the best audits I survived was by an ex-Marine who got under machines looking for product segregation (Im in pharmaceuticals). He discovered things I thought we had covered. When he left he gave me solid assessment on what needed to be fixed and how. His information gave me the buy in from management to make changes that needed to be done and his next audit he was hard pressed to find something.
 
Q

QualityPhD

#60
But it provides a great palce to begin

... recently I had the opportunity to audit a company in the Midwest US where the bilingual instructions in the women's restroom were very specific as to what should be placed in the toilet and flushed (as opposed to being placed on the floor near the toilet).... OK, enough said about the details....

Later in the day, having to relieve myself, I visited the employee's restroom in the production area (as it was closer than going back to the conference/office area). Sadly, even the signs in both languages posted for the employees were not effective in controlling the "Please Flush the Toilet" and "please place all flushables in the toilet" phenomena.... AHA!!!! Audit trail!!!! ...training.....

Since the company had some areas for improvement in communication with non-native-English speaking employees.... and the instructions written in the other language were not helping the little "problem"... a better view of employee training was in order....

For employees who are not literate in English and require translation of work instructions, etc. to their native language, one cannot assume that merely translating a written document to the native language suffices for effective training activities....

Thus, my bathroom story ends....:applause:
 
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