Question the Answer

     Most of the time, quality control problems—products not manufactured to spec, late deliveries, wrong product delivered, etc.—occur because a process needs to be modified or eliminated.  It probably made sense when it was started, but circumstances have changed and now the process causes problems instead of preventing them.

     The problem you run into is that the workers have reached a comfort zone and do not want to change, or they have been doing something for so long that they cannot remember the real reason they started the process in the first place.  Whatever the case, when you try to find out why something is done a certain way, it is unlikely you will get the right answer the first time you ask the question.  Instead of the cause of the problem, you are more likely to uncover another symptom.

     So you have to keep asking until you have an answer that makes sense.  Here are some examples I’ve encountered during my career:

1. Documentation clerks were unable to get their work done in a timely manner.  When asked why, their first response was that there were too many documents for just two people to process.  If I stopped there, I would assume the issue was not enough manpower, and that hiring another person would solve the problem.  Further questioning, however, revealed that the reason it too so long to process the paperwork was because there were many errors in the documents; the real problem was the loan officers did not know how to prepare the documents.  So the issue was not manpower, it was education.  Once the loan officers learned how to correctly prepare the documents, the documentation clerks were able to process the documents more quickly, and complete all their work in a timely fashion.
2. A furniture shipping company would deliver furniture assembled if the delivery was local, but unassembled if the delivery was out of town.  When asked why, the workers said that it was simply a fact that the longer the distance, the more likely that furniture would be damaged.  This was hard to understand and accept because we knew that moving companies would move assembled furniture great distances without it ever getting damaged.  It turned out that the problem was not really the distance the furniture had to travel, but the type of truck that was used for local and out of town delivery.  The local trucks were equipped with racks and tie-downs that could be used to secure the furniture, but the out-of-town trucks were not.  Of course, if the furniture was not properly secured, there was a greater chance of it getting damaged, especially if it had to travel a long distance.  Once the out-of-town trucks were modified to enable securing of the merchandise, the company was able to deliver assembled furniture to out-of-town customers.
3. The owner of a logistics company was constantly running short of cash, even though he had vendor credit and some customers paid him in advance.  When I asked him why he was having this problem, he replied that he thought it was because his expenses were too high, and he needed help in learning how to manage them.  It turned out that he had actually done a good job of keeping his expenses as low as possible, but had failed to include a profit margin in his pricing.  Thus he had enough to cover his supplier costs, but little left over to cover some of the ordinary and extraordinary expenses that all businesses incur.  Once he began to add the proper profit, his situation improved.

     So keep this in mind next time you try to solve a problem.  The ultimate cause of the problem may not be what you first think it is, and the first answer you get is not necessarily the one that solves the problem.