6 | Process
We Are All Idiots
I first saw poka-yoke in action when I helped Zytec with its Baldrige Award-winning application in 1991. The company had adopted Japanese quality improvement approaches, including hoshin planning, to create robust processes for manufacturing power supplies.
Poka-yoke is Japanese for “avoid mistakes.” In “Poka-Yoke is Not a Joke” (Harvard Business Review, February 4, 2010), Michael Schrage tells the story of how Shigeo Shingo introduced his idea to Toyota assembly line workers, describing his clever techniques to make production processes “idiot-proof”:
“One of the plant’s employees burst into tears,” Schrage writes. “‘I am not an idiot!’ she cried. A stricken Shingo quickly recanted. He scrapped ‘idiot-proof’ in favor of declaring his initiatives essential to making assembly lines ‘mistake-proof.’”
The spell checkers in document creation software, from word processing to email creation to filling out online forms, “mistake-proof” your writing. They are poka-yoke devices that have saved us all from embarrassment. New luxury cars use technology to stop the car if the driver falls asleep or isn’t paying attention to how close the car in front is getting. That’s poka-yoke. Hospital employees draw an “X” on an arm or leg on which surgery will be performed. Poka-yoke.
Poka-yoke works because we are all idiots, especially when it comes to tasks we repeat so often that we stop paying attention to how we do them. Like writing. Or driving. Or operating, if you’re a surgeon.
In the Process Management category of the Baldrige Criteria, you are asked how you prevent defects, service errors, and rework. Poka-yoke is one way…
5Feb2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise
When you’re doing Baldrige, it’s easy to get immersed in fixing the problems with your management system, which is good as long as you also keep looking outside your organization to see if adopting a new system should get as much attention as improving the old one.
For example, Padmasree Warrior wrote on Cisco’s blog (click here) about the Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise (NGCE), which is a very different type of management system. Here’s how she describes it:
Priorities are set by clusters of experts that make decisions. Decisions are communicated real-time through social media applications. Work is shared on a secure collaboration technology platform. Individuals are able to apply themselves to the work based on their skills and availability, regardless of their geographic location. Expertise outside the Enterprise is included ‘on-demand’ to bring necessary knowledge to bear. Funding is directed based on milestones. Direct accountability is embedded into the social network. Finally, organizational functions become less relevant and ‘Re-orgs’ become obsolete. Leadership is defined as the ability to influence, envision, and execute―rather than the authority to command and control.
Despite its innovative design, NGCEs must still address the components of a management system addressed by the Baldrige Criteria, which Warrior lists as “strategy and planning, delivering value to customers and partners, human capital, innovation and design, manufacturing and distribution, marketing, and messaging.”
28Jan2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedProcess Management Review
I realize there’s a lot of stuff on this site that may obscure what you’re looking for. If you want to read about process design, management, and improvement, these articles will interest you. Just click on the name of the article to go to it.
- 10 Critical Questions: Process Management. Questions you can ask to evaluate your work system and how you design, manage, and improve your key work processes.
- Identifying Key Work Processes. Where to look for your key processes.
- 3 Steps to Finding Your Key Processes. Questions you can ask to determine your most important internal value creation processes.
- The Process Matrix. A good way to identify your key work processes, requirements, and performance measures—and to see what’s missing.
- 5 Powerful Process Questions. How Brevard Public Schools create a system of process management and continuous improvement.
- The Power of Process. Cargill Corn Milling’s Best Practices Model.
- Process Management: DMAIC for Everyone. You can use the DMAIC process to identify, analyze, and solve process issues.
- My Personal Baldrige: Process. Steps you can take to apply process thinking to your job.
Process thinking and a systems perspective are key characteristics of Baldrige Award recipients. If you know what your key processes are and systematically improve them, your management will deliver a competitive advantage.
4Jan2010 | Steve George | 2 comments | Continued3 Steps to Finding Your Key Processes
The Baldrige Criteria ask what your key work processes are. Baldrige defines these as “your most important internal value creation processes.” If you’re still confused, use these three steps to identify your key work processes.
- Based on what your key customers tell you, what does your organization provide them that they value? What are the main products or services that key customers expect to buy or receive from you? What are the processes that produce each? What are the steps from the input of materials and/or information to the output (the product or service)? How would you name the process for internal identification?
- Which processes are essential to your organization’s purpose? Which processes cost the most in terms of time and money? Which processes will help you compete in the future? Which processes transform information or materials to make it valuable to your customers?
- Rate each process using these questions: How central is the process to our organization’s strategic plan and competitive success? How central is the process to attracting new customers and retaining existing ones? Which processes do key customers feel are central to their satisfaction and loyalty? (And don’t assume you know the answer: Ask them.)
The processes at the top of the list tend to address product/healthcare/program design, production, and delivery, customer/patient/student support, supply chain management, and key support processes.
To find out more about process management, read:
- 10 Critical Questions: Process Management
- Identifying Key Work Processes
- 5 Powerful Process Questions
- The Process Matrix
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24Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedInnovation in the U.S.: The Bigger Picture
“For the past three decades, funding for science research has slipped, the education system has continued to decline, and immigration policy has become less and less rational. Tax and regulatory policies have been made with more thought to domestic special interests than America’s long-term competition,” writes Fareed Zakaria.
Zakaria acknowledges that the U.S. has long been the global leader in innovation in “Is America Losing Its Mojo?” (Newsweek, November 14, 2009). But it’s losing its lead. According to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, “in recent years, the United States has made the least progress of the 39 countries analyzed in improving its innovation capacity and internal competitiveness.”
What does this mean from a Baldrige perspective?
For businesses, it means establishing processes to detect the innovative products, services, and systems being developed by competitors worldwide. Zakaria gives examples, such as a fourfold increase in global pharmaceutical patent applications since 1995 and the dominance of foreign manufacturers in solar, wind, and battery production. It also means managing for innovation, a Baldrige core value that seeks new dimensions of performance.
For education, it means fixing a system that, as I noted in “Reinventing Education with Baldrige,” needs far-reaching innovation. As Zakaria writes, “Whether measured by the percentage of kids with high-school diplomas or performance on standardized tests, America is not producing the kinds of workers needed in a knowledge-based economy.”
For government, it means funding the kind of basic research that made the U.S. the worldwide leader in innovation. Zakaria describes three great waves that pushed the U.S. to…
18Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued10 Critical Questions: Process Management
The Baldrige Criteria describe a process model. Six of the seven Criteria Categories ask powerful questions about the key processes necessary to operate a high-performing organization. Your responses to those questions are evaluated based on the effectiveness of your approaches, how widely and consistently they are deployed, how systematically they are refined, and how well they are aligned with your organizational needs.
The Process Management Category asks how you design your work systems and how you design, manage, and improve your key work processes. The best way to evaluate how well you do this is through a Baldrige assessment using the Baldrige Criteria. You can find out how to do that here. If you cannot do a full assessment but want insight into how to improve process management, here are 10 critical questions to ask and answer:
- How do you design and innovate your overall work system (how the work of your organization is accomplished)?
- How do your work systems and key work processes (your most important internal value creation processes) relate to and capitalize on your core competencies?
- What are your key work processes?
- How do you determine the key requirements for these processes and what are they?
- How do you design and innovate your work processes to meet these requirements?
- How do you ensure that the day-to-day operation of these processes meets their key process requirements?
- What are the key performance measures and in-process measures used to control and improve these processes?
- How do you control the overall costs of your work processes and prevent defects, service…
