Quality Control or Blame Game?

So “QC” has been the big thing around the shop for a while now. There have been problems, and management is looking for a fix. Too much bad data going out the door, clients upset, and the local VPs get really tired of apologizing, especially when they feel like they are apologizing for the geeks.

We call them project managers, but they are as much sales as anything else. You can tell cause we don’t have a sales force, and their they get judged on the amount of business they bring in. They make promises and the geeks deliver.

There is the usual culture clash, and to everyone’s credit, we have been doing a lot of work around ‘understanding’ each other - How to work together, how not to blame each other, how to improve communication when we speak different languages. The whole “Men are from Mars …” thing. This was good but it did not go far enough, and we have been asked to come up with a “Plan” to “Make Sure this Doesn’t Happen Again.”

And somewhere one of the VPs remembered hearing “Total Quality” or ISO 9000 or something, so the plan has been dubbed a “Quality Control Plan.”

Some very smart people spent a great deal of time on this plan, which pays homage to Deming’s “PDAC” cycle. It talks a lot about specifications, which is good, and a first in our shop.

So far so good, but something started to seem a little off when most of the specifications are written in terms of what to do, not what is to be produced. Then it really fell apart when it turns out that most of the quality checks started with the word “Ensure … ”

This type of check sets up for blame, for a failure on an “Ensure” item can only be attributed on one thing - the person that was supposed to do something did not do it. This completely masks the process, or any underlying causes of process failure, and personalizes the situation.

And, we are to demonstrate that we performed the “QC Check” by checking a box on a form. Guess how many of us are ever NOT going to check that box … especially when “the director will take appropriate action” is part of the remedy for any error listed.

Deming’s philosophy of quality control, or “system of profound knowledge”, rested on fourteen points, the third of which is

“Cease dependence on inspection to achieve Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.”

I don’t get that is what is going on here. Nor do I find this plan following point number eight

“Drive Out Fear”