Zero defects are a transformative quality philosophy, and practical guide that helps to reduce costs, and improve quality.
Zero defects is just one method of quality management.
The meaning of this question is: there are too many methods of quality management, which is dazzling, and Zero defects is only one of the methods, is it necessary?
Personally, I believe that there are two types of people who say such things: those who do not understand, and those who think they understand. For the former group of people, it is relatively simple, just explain it to them. But the latter category is a bit of a stretch. Because this kind of people go.
In the past, they all had a lot of “quality” backgrounds, and some have even been engaged in quality work. Earlier, we spent a lot of space explaining in detail the historical evolution of the “quality revolution”. The purpose of which is to let this latter group of people “restore” their “quality knowledge” and experience. So as to find their minds invaded by the virus and find the prototype of the virus.
This is also the case, and most of them will “wake up”. Of course, there are also some people who will never admit the fact that they are poisoned. It’s no wonder that drunk people often say out loud that they’re not drunk.
It is indisputable that once they understand it, they become staunch “zero-defect advocates”. Because they know: Zero defects are a symbol of a new quality revolution, a symbol of a new quality culture. To think of it as an approach in the quality jungle would be a missed opportunity for historical development, because Zero defects are precisely the new philosophy and practical guide to guide the development of enterprises. If it is a method, then it is a method to change the old quality culture, a way to change the way businesses are done.
Zero defects are only applicable to manufacturing.
From my personal experience, I can conclude that the people who say these things are generally the service industry and quality control people. They often assume that the “defects” are related to products made by blue-collar workers, and therefore doomed to have nothing to do with their white hands and white-collar workers. The harm of this misunderstanding is that Zero defects are treat as screwdrivers on the production line, rather than scalpels for tissue.
Although the concept of Zero defects originated in manufacturing, since 1965 Crosby has developed it into a quality philosophy applicable to all business companies. It has been widely practices in ITT’s finance, insurance, hotel, medical and rental companies.
If we define quality as the solution to meet customer requirements, then we will be surprise to find that in the whole work process. White-collar workers have the most “defects” and the greatest impact, causing losses up to 5-6 times that of blue-collar workers!
The reason is often simple:
White-collar workers don’t want to get their hands dirty and set their own rules and standards for work. But they like to set rules and standards for others. As a result, their work is full of fluctuations and variations—the difference is that in blue-collar collar it can produce “rework” and scrapping, and in white-collar it can be regret and disaster. And all this means customer churn, employee complaints and dry profits for businesses.
Let’s use cold money to reveal a cold truth: in manufacturing, the loss caused by not doing it right the first time is 20~25% of sales; The service industry accounts for 30~40% of operating costs!
Thousands of companies have shown that to change this, you must use zero-defect work standards as a guide to practice and use the “do it right the first time” principle to deal with day-to-day business and internal and external relationships, regardless of whether you are in the service industry or manufacturing. After all, that division is just a pre-80s game and doesn’t mean anything to the company’s “integrity and satisfaction.”
We have a poor foundation, it is too difficult to do, and the cost of implementation is too great
If you compare Zero defects to a control tool, then there really needs to be a foundation as a basis for implementation. But Zero defects is the philosophy of doing things and the action guide in a complex competitive environment. So it is indispensable for any ship to sail. If the boat is poor, difficult to weather the storm, and there is no compass, that is the real price of action.
Interestingly, when Crosby students were first founded, they wanted to escort companies that encountered storms, but they were preempted by giants such as IBM, GM, Xerox, and Motorola, because they already knew that they would face storms. This is the dividing line between strong and weak. Therefore, the good or bad of the basics is not in the hardware, but in the software, here in the captain (with the finger brain).
Our quality level is very high, there is no need to do Zero defects
At first glance, this is the opposite of the previous question, but it is actually the same coin.
We know that there is no greater sadness for management than complacency. When the water is full, nothing can be put in, and it will become smelly. Looking at the “Fortune 500” ranking over the past hundred years, it is showing you the truth again and again, which is also a fact: if you do not advance, you will retreat. Motorola is a positive example; Xerox is a negative example.
If you know that Zero defects is a double-edged weapon of enterprise competition – on the one hand, customer satisfaction, employee/shareholder satisfaction and supplier satisfaction, on the other hand, cost reduction and profit increase.
Then you must readjust your mentality: hand over the standard of evaluating your own quality level to the market and customers, so as to see quality management as a complete, dynamic and never-ending process.
When the enterprise faces the problem of survival, whether it is necessary to do Zero defects
There are many businesses who sincerely say that the biggest problem we face is sales and marketing, not quality. Obviously, they still stay in the “traditional quality wisdom”, positioning quality on hardware products and expressing quality by the number of defects; Quality is not taken as the standard of work, especially the mark of integrity to customers.
We can imagine that if a person just stares at the customer’s wallet every day. The customer will definitely look at the wallet more closely; And if he keeps an eye on the customer’s needs and meets those needs every time, someone will open the wallet for you.
A boss once said to me: When he first took office, he ran the market every day, but he offend a customer after receiving a single business, and it was difficult to maintain his life; Zero defects changed his mind, he began to grasp quality, and as a result, the work was not finishing.
On the other hand, getting things right the first time can reduce waste such as rework, remediation, and scrap, and increase productivity and profitability, making you more competitive than your competitors.
Whether zero defects are suitable for state-owned enterprises, monopoly industries and high-risk industries.
When US was about to join the WTO, I was invited by the State Economic and Trade Commission to give lectures to state-owned enterprises throughout the country. What they worry about is: the wolf is coming, what are we going to do? I said to them: the wolf is coming; it is not terrible. The key is to master the rules of the game for these wolves and turn yourself into a wolf, and a vicious wolf. The zero-defect philosophy can turn not only Western sheep into evil wolves, but also Chinese sheep into evil wolves.
As the years passed, it began to be discovered that large state-owned enterprises. Especially those in monopolistic and high-risk industries, were themselves vicious wolves, some of them vicious tigers, surrounded by a herd of sheep and wolf dogs that benefited from him. However, when confronting real tigers, they often find themselves “paper tigers”, so they urgently need to find a cure for this transformation. This is why they have created a zero-defect quality culture.
However, monopoly and high-risk enterprises in the aviation, aerospace and defense industries do have their own peculiarities. For example, a large number of original activities, output things cannot be determined, the concept of cost is weak, there is no pressure of competition, etc. Therefore, they instinctively believe that “getting it right the first time” is unnecessary and impossible.
Concept & zero defects
Interestingly, the concept of “Zero defects” arose in this type of enterprise. Americans are smarter than us because their noses are bigger than ours, but because their work standards and/or expectations are higher than ours. In other words, they use the “Zero defects” standard, and we use the “almost” standard of taking one step at a time. Of course, the final output will be very different, for aerospace, one goes to the sky and the other goes to the ground.
This is actually like two people going on an expedition deep into the mountains, and one person begins to prepare all kinds of necessary and emergency equipment before entering the mountain, while strengthening physical training and reading articles by other explorers.
The other person also made preparations, but he always used “I had done this before, but it didn’t work” to reduce his preparations. Because he believed more in “experience”, believing in the ancient adage that “there must be a road before the car arrives”. The two set off.
Lo and behold, two different execution standards and mindsets produce different work processes and finally different results. Isn’t that true of expeditions, but isn’t that of our work?
Therefore, whether it is scientific research, research and development, loans, and driving, it is necessary to reduce the variation of processes and results by reducing the defects in thinking. Fortunately, these people have a more scientific spirit and sense of honor, more professional ethics, and integrity. So once they accept the zero-defect culture of “everything is predetermined, not predetermined, it will definitely produce unexpected creativity.
Management believes that zero defects should be the responsibility of the quality department.
If a company’s top management has this attitude, it must be: either confused or misunderstood.
Knowing is not too much, misunderstanding and stubbornness are the most terrible.
Obviously, they regard Zero defects as a method of quality management, and quality management is the responsibility of the quality department. So Zero defects should be driven by the quality department.
As we talked about earlier, this is a typical traditional quality logic. The result is confusion in the quality department.
To solve the bell, you also have to tie the bell person. Once managers understand that Zero defects is a culture of excellence, cost and competitiveness, they will take responsibility.
Statistics show that our customers who regard Zero defects as the responsibility of the number one have achieved remarkable performance. While those who are entrust to the quality department and are only nominally name are often in vain; Not only are they the same thing, but they can only not accept them.
Zero defects are the art of turning sheep into wolves, and it’s hard to imagine management being willing to be sheep and forcing their subordinates to become wolves.
Think about it, what that looks like!
Zero defects are a philosophy, and Poke-Yoke is effective.
Those who hold this view treat Zero defects as a gun and place it with other weapons.
They say that Zero defects are good, but they need to hit tanks even more. Some were not convince and retort: “No, zero-defect aircraft can fight, let alone tanks.” “If you can fight planes, you may not be able to fight tanks.” … People get caught up in an argument and forget that they’re putting Zero defects in the wrong place. Zero defects should not have been in the arsenal in the first place, but in the command. Because it is the idea of directing those who fight tanks and planes, it is a way to prevent their heads from making mistakes.
Using this method, it can help us classify the mistakes that are often prone to errors in our minds and manifest themselves in our work, find out the rules, and then control them so as not to repeat mistakes.
This is prevention. Japan’s Mr. Shigeo Shingo went down this path and developed a Poka-Yoke method. Shigeo Shingo called it the “zero-defect control method”, and it is use in the workshop with remarkable results, which can effectively control those errors that are prone to occur. Unfortunately, it was never use outside the workshop, especially the white-collar workers’ office space. Therefore, it is often only to shoot flies and not tigers, and the overall effect is greatly reduce.
Zero defects are a goal or a result
This is the most misunderstood question. Due to the misunderstanding of Zero defects, people often only regard Zero defects as the goal. Not the result; The bad thing is that as a goal, there is often a voice over: It is just a goal that is constantly pursue, it is impossible to achieve, it is just something that motivates everyone.
See? That’s when conventional wisdom comes into play again. Therefore, the torch of the quality revolution must not be extinguish. Many people put forward the “pursuit of zero-defect quality” as if they have a modern quality concept, but they don’t know that it is a beautiful lie – the beauty lies in the zero-defect garland, and the lie is because they still hold the old concept of quality. The definition of zero-defect quality is clear and simple: meet the defined requirements, do what you say, and get it right the first time.
So, zero defects are a goal, that is, an identified requirement; It’s a result: you have to do what you promise to do 100% and to the letter. Therefore, zero defects also clearly reflect the “integrity” of an organization or a person – not more or less quantitative problems. But quality problems that meet or do not conform; One is probability theory connect by relative words such as “may” and “maybe”, and the other is the philosophy of choosing with the absolute action of “Yes/No”.
The current state of zero-defect management in the world
Many people ask me: If Zero defects are a sign of world-class quality excellence, why do you rarely hear world-class companies talk about it?
This should be view from three aspects, one is that modern managers. Who graduated from Western business schools, have a zero-defect philosophy as their basic business philosophy. And “as it should be” is their mentality.
Second, world-class companies, such as IBM, GM, Motorola, HP, and Xerox, have been creating a zero-defect quality culture since the 60s, and it has become their daily work habit today. If you want to be a person and do something, you have to do it, there are no other rules.
Little spice!
This is a basic requirement.
This is similar to Qin Shihuang’s perception of the three realms of the word “sword” in the movie “Heroes”:
The first is that there is a sword in the hand and no sword in the heart.
The second is that there is a sword in the hand and a sword in the heart, and..
The third is that there is no sword in the hand and no sword in the heart.
If express in form and God, zero-defect management must first be tangible. And basic policies, systems and various requirements must be repeatedly strengthen and familiarise with the heart. Before it is possible to enter the stage of visible and godly, and only when a habit is forming can it enter the stage of invisible god.
The third is quality control personnel and experts. Although Zero defects have become the basic content of modern quality management’s knowledge system, because they do not understand management and always cannot get rid of traditional thinking, it is more appropriate to describe them as half-believing and suffering from gains and losses. This also requires another climax of zero-defect ideas to carry out the second quality revolution to the end.