Quality, SPC and Your Career

Topic: Management Improvement

Lead To Succeed (pdf document) by Stephen S. Prevette:

* Succeed as a quality professional by branding yourself and providing a service or product your manager and organization deem worth paying for.
* Lead your manager "your customers" by providing the data they need in a form they can understand.


This is a great article on how to apply quality (Deming, Statistical Process Control, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing) ideas and move forward professionally; even when those ideas are not always shared by the organization.

I caused this increase by using tried and true quality techniques that are more than 75 years old. My work at Hanford has been noticed favorably by people at the Fluor Corp. They believe I am cutting edge. Hmmm.

I will say yes, I am making use of modern computers and software to implement these 75-year-old techniques.

Of course, I like to see my beliefs cast in a positive light. I believe far too often we look for the newest ideas and miss all the great ideas that have been known for decades but are not practiced widely. The key to success is applying good ideas well - not just applying new ideas.

Transforming managers so they are willing to use SPC is not easy. My first interaction with a Fluor manager resulted in my hearing, "We don't know why Westinghouse employed a statistician. Fluor doesn't do statistics."

Success is not as easy as we might hope. Just discovering the ideas of Deming or Toyota or Ackoff is not enough. The great ideas don't, by themselves, convince managers to try a new way of managing. There is a great deal of education needed for most organizations to get to the point where they realize they could improve by applying "old" ideas such as: control charts, lean thinking, spc, not tampering...

The application of SPC and other quality tools can be rewarding. It can provide both financial and professional fulfillment. I believe my application of Deming's management theories has been crucial to Fluor Hanford's success.

More articles by Stephen Prevette.