“If you want to retain those who are present, be loyal to those who are absent.” -- Dr. Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

“Learning cannot be disassociated from action.” -- Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

“The most important measures are both unknown and unknowable.” -- W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis

What's Good Enough? by Kevin McManus

First published by Industrial Engineer magazine May 2002

Two or three times a week I like to help out with providing lunch and break relief on the production line, usually as a packer. As a packer, I am responsible for ensuring that each bottle I place in a case is ‘defect free', while also keeping pace with the conveyor belt. In order to avoid looking like Lucy and Ethel in the cake factory, I have to move swiftly while my eyes and hands search for a variety of defect types. With each inspection cycle, my mind has to answer the question “Is this good enough?” repeatedly.

When things are going smoothly, my abilities as a packer seem adequate. The accumulation table in front of me rarely begins to fill up with bottles, and I am pretty confident that I have not let any defects, be they critical or minor, slip by me. In those cases however where the labels are getting small wrinkles a percentage of the time or a hot stamped expiration date is printing a little off center, my packing inadequacies relative to our ‘real' packers begin to surface.

As I take more time to look at each bottle, the accumulation table begins to fill up. Since I don't want to leave our full-time packers with a full table when they return from break, I find myself having to make some tough decisions. How long should I take to look at each bottle? Are the defect levels low enough or minor to risk placing bottles in the case without giving them much of a look? What level of quality is good enough?

Many of us work in jobs where the quality of our performance cannot be measured with a set of micrometers or a thermometer. I would also wager to guess that the majority of the defects we ask our front line people to watch for / prevent are also of a subjective nature. If this is the case, how should we set standards for monitoring our performance? How do we know if our work is defect-free?

On our syrup line, we define the number of minor label wrinkles that are allowed in a case without it being placed on hold for inspection. We even go so far as to state the dimensional differences between minor and critical wrinkles. The daily reality of our quality performance however rests much more in the mindsets of our people, as even one hundred percent inspection cannot guarantee that a product is defect free. As human beings, we each have our own personal definition of what is good and what is not, and in those cases when go / no go decisions are being made at a rapid rate, we cannot control how people choose to act in each case.

A simple response is to say “Let the customer define what is good enough.” Many organizations however have weak customer listening posts – the amount of usable feedback they get from their customers is sparse, and the number of different types of listening posts in use is low. While we all need to continue improve the systems that are used to gather customer feedback, we cannot wait on the installation of these systems to help us define quality levels. We each need to know now what is considered good enough in the eyes of our customers.

As a leadership team, an engineering team, or a production team, we need to reach consensus on what acceptable and unacceptable quality levels for our products and services are from the perspective of our customers if possible. For those of use in management, we can often work directly with our internal customers to define and clarify their requirements, and a process for gauging our performance against them. Unfortunately, we often treat this customer group as if they did not exist, instead preferring to give them what we think they want. Are you giving your customers the quality of service that they expect?

In those cases where we are working to satisfy / delight the external customer, we should strive to see the product from their perspective, not our own. I feel that our production quality expectations may exceed those of our external customers. For those who might argue that this approach results in excess cost, I would counter with the argument that it also results in excess pride. I would prefer that our people make their quality decisions based on pride, because in the heat of the battle, I believe that pride is a strong defense against the tendency to let substandard product become finished product.

I believe that quality should be designed into a product or service whenever possible. In spite of our best efforts to do this however, the fact remains that we depend on people to help ensure that our internal and external customers are satisfied. Whenever this is the case, we should work closely with these people to help ensure that we have a shared definition of quality and a clear focus on why certain levels of quality are necessary. All too often we simply post the standards, expect people to perform to them, and rework the product when they don't.

As industrial engineers, we often play key roles in designing quality into work systems and helping people better understand performance expectations. In many cases, we help do the latter in an informal manner during our day-to-day encounters with our team members. We also can set an example for what quality service is and how we should work with our internal customers in particular to help better define their performance expectations of us.

It is easy to pick out the really bad bottles, even when the line is moving swiftly. It is much more difficult to sort out defective productive when the defect rates are higher or the defects themselves are relatively more subtle. I have my own perspective on what is good enough, but when I am under pressure to perform, I am tempted to compromise on those standards. I imagine that most of us, being that we are all human beings, go through the same thought processes on a daily basis.

As more and more companies move towards a six sigma-type philosophy, the definitions we assign to the various types of defects we have become even more critical. Since six sigma performance levels allow less than five defects per million, we have to be crystal clear on what is good enough in order to be able to effectively determine if we are making progress or not towards the goals we have established. We also need to appreciate the human element of defect tracking and assessment. In short, we need to make sure that we can answer the question “What is good enough?” in a consistent manner.

Would You Like to Learn More?

Click on one of the following links to learn even more about Great Systems! and the types of systems improvements I can help you make:

	Great Systems! home page
	More articles on performance improvement
	Systems Change: The Key to Getting Better Results
	Do You Need Great Systems!
	Types of Systems I Can Help You Improve

“The only thing I know is that I do not know it all.” -- Socrates