Here is a Practical Test for QMS Effectiveness

[Govind]

Here is a practical test for QMS effectiveness as we speak..

I realize one of the practical tests for Quality system implementation effectiveness is monitoring the issues and lapses that happen during these “vacation” months.
I guess in North America, June-Aug is considered peak vacation period. Between 30~50% of the employees apply Vacation during this period for a span of 1 to 3 weeks. Some organizations sustain, some do not.

If we start to see signs of :

Frequent Rescheduling of production plan,
Delivery dates slipping,
Issues with quality,
lack of trained personnel to cover the shift,
Delayed reply of Corrective actions to Customers,
Replies to Customers on CAR that are too generic,
Piled up Technical reports for Review, being signed off in the last minute without adequate review,
Reports on hold until people come from vacation,
Back up people, not having access/not trained to work on online modules,
Back up People on meetings with no clue of what is going on ,
Backup People putting over 60 hours a week to keep the function running,
Frequently trying to reach the Vacation folks on their private cell (even though their mail says to use sparingly),

etc,It is evident the organization is run by “heroes” and “fire-fighters” not the QM system.

If the QMS is implemented effective enough, we should not see too many of these incidents.

I think, it would be a good idea, we keep a record of those slipped incidents due to Vacation nightmare and review the root causes end of Summer as “lessons learned”.
Within couple of years, we can let the people enjoy their vacation stress free, keep our internal/external customers happy during these vacation months.

Please feel free to add-in your experiences on QMS/Business slips during these vacation months. If we have not experienced similar incident, we can take a preventive action. If we have experienced similar incident and not solved yet, we can take a corrective action from your ideas.

Thanks,
Govind.

 

[Rachel]

Govind,
I think you are right on the money! I was just talking to my boss about this yesterday - how I'd like to do a time-study of occurrences of NCs. We have been averaging about three or four a month (varying from the serious to the insanely petty). We were coasting through July - then all of a sudden terror hit in the last two weeks (when some key people were away) and all of a sudden we have nine issues for July!

And to think I almost had the database cleared out - we were down to six or seven longer-term ones that were open, and now we're at 15.

Cheers,
-R.

 

[ralphsulser]

I used to track percent nonconformances, and customer complaints over a long time,each year and also found a cyclical spike during June, July, and Aug. due to vacations and inexperienced replacement people. My counter part Quality manager at our sister plant found the same spike at his plant too. We both initiated (after long term data presentation and contunually reminding the boss) a program of bringing in replacements early to get some training.
This helped level out the spikes, but not eliminate them altogether. The follwoing year we brought them in even earlier, and that made a big improvement.

 

[Cari Spears]

...I guess in North America, June-Aug is considered peak vacation period. Between 30~50% of the employees apply Vacation during this period for a span of 1 to 3 weeks...

Of the 65 employees here, 4 of us are women. This is typical of my work environment as I tend to work in sm/med skilled trade type of shops. I've found the same applies to Oct-Nov for hunting season.

Where I'm at now, we don't see increases in NC product or late deliveries - but we definately see a decrease in our efficiencies (which we measure as labor vs. revenue). Meaning - as Govind said - "heroes" and "firefighters" work extra hard and extra hours to compensate. This is effective in protecting the customer, but when you schedule overtime based on due dates rather than workload, you don't make as much profit.

 

[Govind]

Thanks for those useful inputs and participation.

To add to this discussion, one thing I see that feeds into this chaos is lack of "personal management".
We pick up jobs from time to time that far exceed the official list of responsibilities. Fair enough. But we forget to add those newly picked responsibilities
to the official list. They often get left out during vacation transition.

For every responsibility and added responsibilities;
If we could create a list of
inputs, outputs, Output required-frequency,
Primary-Secondary responsible personnel,
Skill set required,
estimated transition time,
potential transition pool of candidates,etc
This will serve as a good memory aide for Resource planning, Constraint management and vacation transition.
As Capri mentioned, few heroes and firefighters can get the job done putting long hours. But, the implementation of QMS should help the organization run smooth during difficult times.
Summer vacations are not surprise. If with the help of QMS, we can plan effectively,this is more reason to implement systems like ISO9001.

Let the ideas flow in..

Govind.

 

[ben]

Re: Personal Management

The Dave Allen book, Getting Things Done, provides a simple way to organize your work life. Highly recoimmended, espeically is advice concerning "the next step," a key to his system