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Home:
Miles Hamby, Ph.D. Dissertation
& Research Consulting Business
Management Consulting |
Process Improvement Training & Consulting 1.
Identify your product. 2.
Define its quality characteristics. 3.
Describe your production process. 4.
Constantly improve your process to meet those characteristics. This is the foundation of TQM - Total
Quality Management. If your process is faulty, your product will be
defective. If your process is inefficient, your profits will diminish. Well
known in manufacturing, this principle applies as much to the services
industry, government, and military operations! Identify Your Product. Before you can begin to improve your product, you must know what that product is. Makes sense! However, many companies do not really know what they produce. This is especially true today with the preponderance of business being service industries. |
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Define Your Product's
Quality Characteristics. Once you have identified your product, you can
identify its measurable characteristics from which you will determine whether
or not the specific product is acceptable. In the manufacturing industries,
these characteristics are often dimensions, such as length, width, and
height, and their respective tolerances, such as 6 mm ± .01 mm. In the service industries, these characteristics are not as
tangible, and thus the challenge is to quantify non-tangible characteristics.
For example, if the product is the submission of a document, spelling errors
can be used as a quality characteristic and the standard may be set at 'zero'
errors. If the product is pizza delivery, the quality characteristic may be
delivery time and pizza temperature. The standard, then, may be delivery
under 30 minutes with temperature above 110° F.
Defining your product's quality characteristics is fundamental to assuring
the consistency of the quality of your product. Unlike you know exactly how
your product should look, you will never be able to
control its quality. Describe Your
Production Process. Controlling
the quality of your product necessarily means changing something that causes
a change in the product characteristic. For example, if your product is
reports and you find them insufficiently factual, you must change how the
facts are gathered, reviewed, or compiled for publication. This is all part
of your production process. In order to change your process effectively and
efficiently, you must know what that process is. Describing your process can
take several forms including something as simple as listing the steps
involved on a notepad. The most popular method is the process diagram which
is often a series of pictures of connected steps that depict the movement of
the product through its production from beginning to end along with a
description of the action on the product at any given point. The more complex
the product, the more complex will be the process. This often involves
identifying control points, measurement points, and critical paths. Constantly Improve Your
Process to Meet Those Characteristics. To effect a change in the final quality characteristic of your
product, examine your process to determine exactly where a change input would
cause the desired effect in the quality characteristic. For example, you may
find you are getting complaints from customers about missed service calls.
After examining your process, you may notice that the message taker does not
understand what to do with the service order after it has been received. The
fix may be as simple as retraining the message taker or even installing
automatic equipment. Process Improvement Training
& Consulting. Expertise in a specific product is intuitively
invaluable to the production of that product. But, what is often lacking is
expertise in how to continually improve that product. I can help! My knowledge of TQM principles, practical
experience in production process improvement, experience in teaching TQM, and
training as a Maryland Governor's Performance Excellence Award Assessor,
combined with your product expertise, can help reduce your costs,
improve your product, and increase your market share. Clients. My clients have included Northern Virginia
Community College, Universal Power Systems, Upper Occoquan Sewage
Administration, Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative, and Amron Corporation. Services provided have included
designing and delivering team building seminars, teaching TQM principles and
techniques, and consulting. If you want to reduce costs and increase
market share, I can help. I offer
For more information, drop me an email mailto:DrHamby@cox.net with your specific
questions or call me at 703-768-1353. Remember ~ your flight through life is
sustained by the power of your knowledge. ~ Miles |
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