Lean "replacing" Quality/ISO - A System vs. A Tool

[wmarhel]

nice distinction. Unfortunately, Womack, et al, emasculated the Toyota Production System, resulting a collection of tools, when they wrote their book "The Machine That Changed the World" and created "Lean". Perhaps at the time they felt that Americans weren't capable of "handling the truth". Pity. TPS is a powerful system and is - as you say - much more than the sum of it's elements...

This is very true. Taiichi Ohno himself had problems with the term "Toyota Production System". He firmly believed that it was a management system, and that it would be prove be such in time; which it did and still continues to do. Further evidence can be seen when one looks at companies such as Danaher, which firmly embrace this practice within their own Danaher Business System.

Wayne

 

[Harold P]

The general Lean agenda seems to receive more attention from top management and in many cases dominate other “quality and change” agendas. The comments and attatiude from management are as though Lean should somehow replace the Quality/ISO process or at least control it under thumb.
Thoughts or similar situations?

I'm not surprised by this based on my limited experience with management and ISO systems. Management is typically excited by things they can see and easily measure. Lean definitely allows them to see changes occurring in the workplace. The impact on everything from performance to safety to the bottom line lets them tout the improved numbers and show pretty graphs with lines heading in the right direction. (Note: I'm not saying that this is what Lean is, just how it is seen by management.)

ISO systems are more low key and are made up of a lot of behind the scenes work. The outputs are not flashy and since it deals mostly with quality and to be honest typically quality problems they choose not to focus on it. Also, ISO tends to be a lot of paperwork and meetings because companies set the system to look pretty for customers and auditors. This often means that the system is setup to reflect some dreamy future state as opposed to setup like we really run the business on a day-to-day basis, which of course the system is not used as it should be and everyone rushes around before the audits to update things. Also, most of the executives that I have dealt with did not really understand what ISO was and what it could do for the organization if used effectively.

Harold

 

[harang]

I believe that having a Quality Management System is a good foundation point and that's where these tools come in (Six Sigma/Lean).

These will never replace the system but will come handy for problem solving and process improvement of the system.

 

[JaneB]

ISO systems are more low key and are made up of a lot of behind the scenes work. The outputs are not flashy and since it deals mostly with quality and to be honest typically quality problems they choose not to focus on it. Also, ISO tends to be a lot of paperwork and meetings because companies set the system to look pretty for customers and auditors. This often means that the system is setup to reflect some dreamy future state as opposed to setup like we really run the business on a day-to-day basis, which of course the system is not used as it should be and everyone rushes around before the audits to update things.

I'm sorry that this has been your experience - it's a problem with the understanding of what the Standard actually says and requires, and thus poor implementation. As you say:

most of the executives that I have dealt with did not really understand what ISO was and what it could do for the organization if used effectively.

Exactly. If they did, they wouln't tolerate such silly systems of 'paperwork and meetings' for a moment.

A real, dynamic and well implemented quality management system a la 9001 becomes 'what we do everyday to manage and improve our business' - what's boring about increasing customer satisfaction? continuously improving? improving processes and services/products?. Such a system is a different thing altogether, and will happily embrace, work with and make excellent use of such tools as Lean and 6 Sigma, as Harang and others say.

A system is, by its very nature, something that is more than the sum of its parts.

 

[handsofman88]

A real, dynamic and well implemented quality management system a la 9001 becomes 'what we do everyday to manage and improve our business' - what's boring about increasing customer satisfaction? continuously improving? improving processes and services/products?.

Hit the nail on the head here Jane.......dynamic & well implemented - that's exactly what we try & deliver to our clients ...problem is six months down the track, the employees we trained have left the organisation or been redeployed, senior managers replaced and our once dynamic and well implemented system is no more.

I must say that since we started recommending web-based management systems we do notice there is less leakage of corporate knowledge in these organisations and it is therefore a little easier to pick-up and rebuild systems that are less than dynamic.