Quality Culture - Teaching Quality is as Important as Safety

[Greg B]

Quality Culture

I thought someone might be interested in the way I have tried to piggy back our quality reporting system to our safety system. We have a strong safety culture and people will automatically fill out a Safety Report if a Safety Risk or Incident is identified. They will not however always fill one out a report if it is a quality issue. They are not always aware of their responsibilies toward the product so I have started to sell the quality message on the back of our safety message and sold the whole lot as a PROTECTION tool. (in conjunction with awareness training)

SAFETY protects the People and Plant,
QUALITY protects the Product and Process,
ENVIRONEMNT protects the Planet.

I have had a good response from the employees. I have attached one of the posters that I use in the teaching (selling) process. I start by extolling the virtues of the Safety System and how it protects our welfare I then go on to explain that the QA system does the same for the product and and thus it too protects our welfare by potecting our livelihood etc etc. This is not designed for the higher end of the workforce but at the lowest common denominator. I'd like some feedback and some other ideas people have used to break the Ice with Quality and Training.

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

I like it...

It looks good, Greg,

We are doing much the same thing, trying to connect the Quality, environmental and safety aspects whenever possible. After all, it does take all three...

/Claes

 

[Jimmy Olson]

Hi Greg, welcome to The Cove

I like the poster. It looks like a good idea to tie everything together. We are kind of the opposite from you. We actually have a pretty good quality culture here (I know, pretty amazing), but not a very good safety culture. Don't get me wrong, it's a safe place to work, but people just don't follow safety procedures like they follow everything else. Plus if something does happen nobody hears about it. So we are looking at revising our safety program and basically starting over. The idea of tying the quality and safety programs together have been a thought that I would like to do. If Randy is still around after reopening I'm sure he will chime in with some good advice.

Keep us posted so we can steal ideas from you

 

[Greg B]

Richard and Claes,

Thanks for the support. I'm glad people may get benefit some from my poster. I try hard to get the message across and slowly its fitting in to place here. Our Safety Guys are starting to teach Behaviour Based Safety. It is a bit like Pavlovs Dog if you ask me but they feel sure that they can improve on our safety performance even more.

Keep an eye out and I'll put some more stuff up, that you may find handy, in the coming weeks

Greg B

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Looking forward to that, Greg,

You're right about Pavlov: We have a lot to learn there... Management systems are after all mainly about communication and psychology.

And hey: If I forgot to say it before... Welcome to the Cove

/Claes

 

[Brad Serangeli]

Looks great. Our company has adopted the slogan of "quality saves lives" since our products are considered life safety. It has been much easier than I thought with "mixing" our quality and safety procedures.

 

[chengang]

Certain companies, such as Dupont, have a safety culture for all business process. In the company I am working for, we have SHE department and implement "STOP" (safety training observation programme) in mfg plant. We passed ISO14001 certification and was preparing for OHSAS18000 system.

The problem is, during the organization restructure taken place recently, none of these systems work.

 

[Mick Ferry]

Safety and Quality Reporting

Greg,

Sounds like a great idea you have. I have found that a key element in getting employees to report/document is the feedback they receive. People will be more motivated to report if they know what is being done about the issue they identified.

We developed a simple feedback list of the reported items (safety, quality, production, environmental, etc ). The list is distributed and reviewed with area employees on a monthly basis- it was eventually put online for real-time review. We also added performance measures (# items submitted, #items complete, # items open, % completed within anticipated due dates,etc.). The % completed wthin due dates was the primary focus/measure- after all that is the outcome we are looking for.

We also took it furthur and developed acceptable criteria for submitting issues. This was also measured with feedback.

Mick