Even the most comprehensive collection of business tools is worthless without the knowledge and skills to implement them.
Whole system tools
Whole system tools are overarching methodologies aimed at the entire framework of your business.
Six sigma
Six sigma was originally used to manage variation but has recently been extended to engender general improvement across
Understanding
The foundation of quality is understanding.
If you understand what you are doing, then you are on the road to success. If your understanding is limited, then the risk of failure is greater. You cannot promise what you cannot understand, and tools for understanding enable you to both know what is needed and also to know what you can deliver.
Understanding needs to be applied to two areas:
First, the requirement for products and services. You can produce high quality products, but if nobody wants them then they are of no use.
Second, organisational competences, which are the combination of processes, skills and systems that together allow you to design, build and sell your products.
If you know what is required and know that you can build it at a competitive price, then you will be much more likely to be successful.
The following are a selection of tools that can enhance understanding:
Stakeholder analysis
The likely support or opposition by key stakeholders is assessed in light of the power they have to achieve goals.
Value analysis
Activities and products are examined in detail to optimise the value being created
Competitive analysis
The ability of the company to compete in the marketplace is assessed
Pareto diagrams
Priorities are highlighted by a simple sorting of the bars in a bar chart
Control charts
The dynamic distribution of results and hence the stability of processes
Capability measurement
Numerically assesses the ability of a process to businesses. It uses many individual tools as well as engaging senior managers. Its core is an improvement project called DMAIC, whereby you define the project, measure the process, analyze the measurements to understand the real issues and causes and identify an effective solution. You then implement this solution and hence assure longer-term control of the situation.
The excellence model
The excellence model is a whole-business model that encourages use of best practice in all areas. It focuses on connecting enablers in leadership, strategy, people management, resources and processes to improving results for customers, employees and society at large. This is done with a ‘results, approach, deploy, assess, review’ (RADAR) model.
ISO 9000
ISO 9000 started in military contract management and focuses on the management of processes. It therefore fits well within the excellence model. It has a significant interest in documentation and creating a stable base from which controlled improvements can be made.
Conducted well, the standard provides significant assurance. ISO 9000 systems often appear within the process aspects of the excellence model, although its general scope is wider. It also works well with six sigma, providing the system by which improvements are captured and sustained.
Individual tools
Individual tools are most efficient when focused on a particular issue. These tools help understanding and hence make decisions and promises that can be kept.
Meet specified goals
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis: assesses internal strengths and weaknesses against external opportunities and threats.
Experimentation
Gives reliable information about what works in practice
Understanding needs to stretch outside the traditional quality domain of processes. Work on whole-systems understanding often needs to be a collaborative effort, reaching from marketing to manufacturing and beyond.
Decisions
Decision tools are used to identify and select from a set of alternative courses of action. They show what is more or less important, deliberately prioritizing and allowing you not only to make rational decisions but also to see how those decisions are being made.
Decision-making activity is fed by the information gained from understanding, eg where a market analysis that shows opportunity for a new product is balanced by a capacity analysis that shows a limited ability to manufacture in sufficient quantities to meet potential demand. Decision-making is a human process that requires careful communication.
There may be a particular element of persuasion, where conflicting opinions and goals lead to disagreement. Tools here may thus include presentational and facilitative aspects to enable agreeable decisions.
Some of these include:
Scenario analysis: different combinations of contextual forces combine to explore possible future outcomes
Risk analysis: considers the impact and probability of possible actions and how these can be mitigated and contingencies developed
Prioritization: weighted criteria are consistently applied to a set of choices to determine the best option selection, from a list of choices, eg by successive filtering.
Planning, including sequencing of actions and balancing the use of resources negotiation: includes a necessary consideration of what is required and determines whether suppliers are able to provide what is needed
Making promises
Promises are easy to make and easy to break. They happen in two directions: you can make a promise to others and others can make a promise to you. When your promise is dependent on others fulfilling theirs, you must ensure that they have the capability and motivation both to make and meet them.
Much of the later quality activity that is involved in ensuring promises are met can be eased if the specification of that promise is assessed correctly. Traditional quality is about meeting promises made by others. However if promises are made that cannot be kept, then the quality of delivery is guaranteed to be poor.
Tools for making promises include basic documentation and review standards that ensure that what is being built can be effectively constructed and accurately tested. Communications about the promise, as well as internal specifications, are important here. If a marketing flyer is incorrect or ambiguous, then incorrect expectations may be set and customer dissatisfaction assured. Such tools include:
- Specification includes a necessary consideration of what is required and determines whether suppliers are able to provide what is needed
- Documentation that is accurate and clear and fulfils its purpose
- Contracts that capture legal promises by suppliers that enable reliable promises to customers
meetings where face-to-face agreements can be made
- Goal-setting, where individual employees are included in the interlinked system of commitment
market communications that makes clear promises to customers
Improvement
Improvement tools build systems that can deliver promises on time and to specification. Improvement tools are often used within the framework of an improvement project methodology, such as the DMAIC steps of a six sigma project. Activities for which specialised tools are used include process mapping, performance measurement, causal analysis, brainstorming, training and the evaluation of results.
Improvement tools fall into two categories. There are the improvement frameworks and project methods through which improvements are made. The six sigma DMAIC framework is just such a tool. Improvement tools also include those used within improvement frameworks to understand and analyze problems and find creative solutions.
Sustainable improvement
New tools need effective support and leadership to bring about lasting improvements. You will need:
- a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve with the tool of your choice. Create real evidence that it can be done and a step-by-step procedure on how to do it
- change champions – motivated people at shop-floor level who can drive the tool forward
- support from management
- an action plan of who is going to do what by when
- to commit resources to implement and support the new tool
- to create the time to allow everyone to be trained in new ways of working
- to measure the improvements and communicate progress to everyone
- to allow people time away from their daily roles to take on board changes
- to allow the freedom to make a difference
- to make people aware that mistakes and failures through the change process are learning opportunities
The traditional toolset for improvement projects was defined by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers and is known as the ‘first seven’ tools:
Cause-effect diagram: plots the hierarchy of causes of problems and by which root causes can be identified.
Pareto chart: uses the ‘80-20’ principle to identify the key problems.
Check sheet: captures manual data at the coal-face of activity.
Scatter chart: pairs of measurements are assessed to determine correlation bar chart and other visual displays that ease decision-making.
Histogram: shows the static distribution of a set of measures control charts
A later set of tools – the ‘second seven’ – has extended this basic toolkit to help improve the more qualitative problems that are typically found in service areas:
Relations diagram: maps out inter-relationships between problem elements.
Affinity diagram: builds a bottom-up tree from a set of chaotic data.
Tree diagram: rigorously breaks down something into its constituent parts.
Matrix diagram: maps relationships in a simple matrix.
Matrix data analysis chart: finds relationships between disparate items.
Process decision programme chart: identifies risks and their relationships and simple actions to mitigate them.
Activity network: interdependencies in plans are identified and the critical path calculated.
Assurance
Quality assurance is the home territory for quality activity and is concerned with ensuring that what is delivered is done so to promise or specification. This includes all work within manufacturing as well as delivery to customers and after-sales service. After design of the manufacturing processes, quality activity and tools may be involved with ensuring mistakes are not made as well as more traditional inspection activity.
Assurance also means making sure suppliers deliver to requirements and includes supplier management:
- checklists ensuring key actions are completed
- education of people in work areas to ensure the right skills and knowledge
- measurement against delivery criteria
- mistake-proofing, using simple solutions to prevent human error
- acceptance sampling, to check that supplied items meet requirements
- auditing of internal processes and external suppliers
Assurance is the last stage in the work required to economically deliver quality products and services and run a successful business. Across all stages, tools often wielded by people who may have varying levels of expertise. ‘A bad workman blames his tools’ as the saying goes. So too in quality work, where the delivered quality of the goods and services depend on your ability to choose and use the right tools.