ISO Motivators - Ideas for visual aids throughout the plant

[kmyers]

As part of getting my company certified, I would like to place some visual aids throughout the plant. The content of these will be:

What you can do to ensure quality
What ISO means to you
Teamwork between company and operator

Also anything you folks can think of. If you have some ideas and/ or examples to help me get started I would be very appreciative.

Let me add that ISO is new to almost everyone in my company and I am trying to get peopl excited and on board. Most of our operators come from tiny machine shops and never dealt with a QMS before.

Thanks

Kris

 

[Craig H.]

Re: ISO Motivators

I generally don't like slogans, etc. One thing that it would be smart to do, though, is to post copies of the quality policy. If you have a newsletter, place it in there, too.

Wouldn't it be embarassing if the auditor came in and asked one of your employees what the quality policy means, and they respond;

"What quality policy"?

 

[kmyers]

Re: ISO Motivators

I have the policy posted in each department. I would just like some visuals throughout the plant to help get people thinking and to try and keep things fresh in thier mind.

 

[Marc]

When I used to do implementations regularly I had a collection of 'motivational signs' I put up all over the place. Here are some. In many the fonts are screwed up - These are from 10+ years ago from programs on an old OS 9 Mac and they didn't carry over.

But like I say, maybe some ideas.

 

[AndyN]

Re: ISO Motivators

I generally don't like slogans, etc. One thing that it would be smart to do, though, is to post copies of the quality policy. If you have a newsletter, place it in there, too.

Wouldn't it be embarassing if the auditor came in and asked one of your employees what the quality policy means, and they respond;

"What quality policy"?

I agree and it's also good enough for Dr. Deming! What is more effective, in my experience, is for the management (line supervisors up) to hold team huddles to reinforce 'quality' as well as 'safety' and anything else applicable to the operations of the business.......

 

[pondo]

The way to get people excited and on-board is to have them contribute to the creation of the visual aides. If they are part of it they will appreciate the end game of certification.

 

[Marc]

I agree. I used to use the 'posters' as motivation, but I worked so closely with the people that I knew many of them. It became an issue of getting them excited and involved. Back around 1994 (and many times afterward) I convinced upper management to get everyone t-shirts which had "Audit Me! I'm ready!" printed on them and all the employees, even uper management, wore them the first day of the audit. Back then it was fun and exciting to me. I really felt like I was accomplishing 'something'. And I was.

I remember one client where the first meeting with everyone the gal who was in charge of document control sorta hissed at me. I met with her later and she said the standard: "Yeah, you come here promising the world, but like the other consultants we've had here before for these 'special' programs, when they left nothing had changed. This won't be any different." A number of months later, after the audit, she came up to me and apologized. She was almost in disbelief on how easy her job had become now that everyone was doing things like they were supposed to. I got comments like that a lot and I have to say it made me feel really good.

I got people motivated by getting to know them, many on a somewhat personal level. I kept their interest in mind as the project proceeded. In the end of an implementation I left with a feeling of fulfillment and satisfied clients.

 

[John Broomfield]

As part of getting my company certified, I would like to place some visual aids throughout the plant. The content of these will be:

What you can do to ensure quality
What ISO means to you
Teamwork between company and operator

Also anything you folks can think of. If you have some ideas and/ or examples to help me get started I would be very appreciative.

Let me add that ISO is new to almost everyone in my company and I am trying to get peopl excited and on board. Most of our operators come from tiny machine shops and never dealt with a QMS before.

Thanks

Kris

Stop trying to sell ISO!

Train your top managers to sell the obligations and benefits of our company's management system instead. Hopefully your management system is named for your company and is not stored on the "I-drive".

As to teamwork, focus on process teams serving internal customers and make it clear that a team comprises a group of people with different strengths helping each other to determine and fulfill requirements (make sure your bonus system or performance appraisals do not undermine teamwork).

Make sure the managers promise the employees regular State of the System reports (3 parts: what it does well, what it does less well and what management is doing about it).

Provide training to a cross-section of employees outside of QA to conduct process audits and to serve on problem solving (root cause removal) teams; 5S, lean, TPM and other important initiatives may follow as required.

Ensure managers and supervisors spend time with employees monitoring the processes to reinforce requirements and to help them.

Blame the system not the individual for things that go wrong. Attack the system not each other and this helps remove fear. The leader of your company should be prepared to publicly accept responsibility for the performance and non-performance of the system; this removes fear too.

Then you can have the top managers promise to take seriously all suggestions to improve the system for 30 minutes every morning face to face with the employees making the suggestions. Have them demonstrate their commitment to requirements, customers (including internal customers) and to continual improvement.

Kick this off with a one-day workshop for the awareness leaders (so they can learn about their system/how it works and develop their presentation and messages for the interactive employee awareness sessions) and invite the employees to rename their system if it is now named after ISO.

Forget about the posters.

 

[kmyers]

Thanks for your input everyone. But let me say this RELAX!. I am not trying to "sell" ISO. Everyone in my company is on board and I am not shoving this down thier throats. We have weekly meetings with all employees. I do have thier inputs, and most are more than willing to help. I just want to make our plant visual as well. I was merely asking for some ideas that would help reinforce the ISO thought process visually.

 

[blackbird]

Hi Kymers
sounds like you've made some good progress so far & i understand you don't want people to get too complacent.
I try to utilise the PDCA model so as to get the 'visual' buy in.You can obviously explain you have 'p'lanned the activities, the 'd'o is what the team(s) will implement, 'c'heck together the activities are effective & 'a'ct on the improvements identified. I think most people can relate to this approach & also explain where 'they fit' into ISO, this helps with buy in...... just for the record , i'm not a big lover of big slogans dangling from ceilings & walls to remind everyone the customer is king & right first time. i agree with Marc. you have to communicate at different levels to accomodate different attitudes & understandings, after all the system is not yours, it's everyone's in the business.
Good luck.