Training Now? Are You Crazy?
Institute modern methods of training on the job for all, including management, to make better use of every employee. New skills are required to keep up with changes in materials, methods, product and service design, machinery, techniques, and service. Dr. W. Edwards Deming A business acquaintance of mine owned a small machine shop back in the '70's and 80's. The last big recession, for those too young to remember. He had eleven machinists working for him. Business slowed down and the employees knew there wasn't enough work to keep everyone on board, someone would have to go. My friend called a company meeting. ...
Improve Every Process
Improve every process Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production, and service. Search continually for problems in order to improve every activity in the company, to improve quality and productivity, and thus to constantly decrease costs. Institute innovation and constant improvement of product, service, and process. It is management's job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, maintenance, improvement of machines, supervision, training, retraining). Dr. W. Edward Deming Improve constantly and forever, Wow, that is a tall order. Larger companies are able to staff for improvement, but what can the little guy do? The first step is to prioritize, go ...
Constancy of Purpose
Constancy of purpose Create constancy of purpose for continual improvement of products and service to society, allocating resources to provide for long range needs rather than only short term profitability, with a plan to become competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs. Dr. W. Edward Deming How do you create constancy of purpose in an economic time like this? Companies are struggling to stay in business and there are two places to put every dollar of resources so what do you do? First you figure out how to keep the clients you have. That means understanding what makes you different from ...
ISO 9000 is a Change to a Healthy Life Style, Not a Crash Diet
ISO 9000 is a change in the way everyone in the company thinks and behaves. It is not easy to implement correctly and it is very easy to back slide into the old way of doing things. Think of ISO as a corporate change to healthy living from a junk-food junky. Ninety-nine percent of people don’t get up off the couch dust off the potato chip crumbs and start running five miles while munching on tofu. Most people get on the scale and come to the realization they have to make a change. They may start out with a crash diet ...
Don’t Skip the Good Stuff – ISO 9001
Most clients I work with start reading the standard at section 1 “Scope”. This is a significant miss-step. The really good stuff starts back at the beginning in the Introduction. Pick up a copy of ISO 9000 and turn to section “0.1 General” (If you don’t have a copy go to http://www.asq.org/books-and-publications.html and buy it.) Now read the very first line, “The adoption of a quality management system should be a strategic decision of an organization.” Think about this, implementing ISO 9000 should provide a long-term benefit to the organization. It is not just a plaque on the wall and ...




