Kirjasta
W. Edward Demingiä pidetään laatuajattelun kanta-isänä. Hän yhdistää tilastotieteellisen ajattelun omiin johtamis-menetelmiin. Oikeasti Deming oli aikansa punk-rokkari ja kasvuhakkeri.
Halusin lukea hänen kirjan, koska hänen ajatteluunsa viitataan usein. Kirjaan oli koottu Demingin näkemyksiä kirjeistä ja luennoista. Lukijan kannalta se oli hankala valinta, koska esimerkiksi kirjeiden sisältö oli kirurgin tarkka leikkaus tiettyyn aiheeseen.
Minkälainen kirja oli?
”The greater the productivity, the better the economic lot of everybody. This is a simple principle and it is learned in Japan at an early age” lause kertoo kaiken kirjasta. Demingin kirja on yhtälö hänen laatuajattelun sekä hänen kokemuksiaan Japanin loikasta teollistuneiden maiden kärkisijoille.
Pakko silti myöntää – kirja oli sekava. Demingin ajattelun erinomaisuus kompensoi sekavuutta.
Mitkä ovat kirjan keskeiset ideat?
Demingin salaisuus on uskollisissa asiakkaista. Hänen mukaan voitto ja kasvu tulee asiakkaista, jotka “kehuvat” yrityksen tuotteita.
”Satisfied customers are not the answer. A satisfied customer may switch. Profit and merit come from loyal customers. A loyal customer waits in line and brings a friend with him.”
Toiseksi Demingin mukaan kaikenlaiset meriittijärjestelmät tuhoavat yrityksen. Kiintiöt, bonukset, yksittäiset tavoitteet jne ovat tuhon alku. Hänen mukaansa ainoastaan parempi johtajuus on mitä yritykset tarvitsevat.
Laadunparannuksella voidaan aikaan saada kykyä investoida kasvuun. Sitä voisi kutsua Demingin kolmioksi – “Quality is improved in three ways:
1. Through innovation in design of a product or service,
2. Through innovation in processes, and
3. Through improvement of existing processes.”
Huono johtaminen
Huono johtaminen on Demingin kirjassa jatkuvasti esillä. Hänellä on loputtoman oloinen lista johdon virheistä – The wrong style of management:
• Management of failure (too late). It is better to work on the causes of failure. Failures are not causes; they come from causes.
• Tampering with a stable system. For example, track down anything that goes wrong with a product or service. This policy does not improve the system. It is tampering, worsening the problem.
• Compile a list or chart to show percentages right or percentages of product or service that went wrong last month.
• Annual appraisal of performance, the so-called merit system – a destroyer of people. • Annual rating of divisions. (A manager of a division is rewarded on the basis of this rating.) • Campaign to reduce costs—as if costs were causes. • Incentive pay, commissions and bonuses.
• Top management failing to understand their responsibility for quality, for innovation of product and processes and for improvement of processes. Quality starts in the boardroom.
• Short-term planning and quick profit.
• Churning money.
• Competition without cooperation. Getting a bigger slice of the pie, but not making the pie bigger.
• Doing business by price tag.
• Short-term contracts.
• Management by objectives (MBO) or management by the numbers.
• Investment in gadgets, computers, automation and new machinery without guidance of profound knowledge.
• Posters and slogans for the workforce.
• Work standards—quotas. They double the cost of production, rob people of pride of workmanship and are a barrier to improvement.
Esimerkki hän sanoo, että: “Our people in the plants are responsible for their own product and quality. We expect them to act like owners.”
Johtamisparadoksi
Toinen hyvä johtamisparadoksi on, että numeraalinen tavoite ilman menetelmää on huonoa johtamista…. ”The worst example of numerical goals came out of our own Department of Education. Numerical goals. No method. No method suggested. Just numerical goals drawn out of the sky. Such nonsense in high places.”
Dmingin polku
Demingin tekstistä on helppo keksiä erilaisia loogisia ajattelukulkuja. Esimerkiksi Demingin polku tai enemmänkin ketjureaktio on seuraavanlainen:
Improve quality → Costs decrease because of less rework, fewer mistakes, fewer delays, snags; better use of machine-time and materials → Productivity Improves → Capture the market with better quality and lower price → Stay in business → Provide jobs and more jobs.
14 kohtaa
Demingin liikkeenjohdon teoria perustuu seuraavaan 14 kohtaan:
Point 1
Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
Point 2
A new theorem: I’m afraid that it’s new in a lot of American industry. Dependability of service is an important quality characteristic. Reliable service reduces cost. Delays and mistakes raise cost.
Point 3
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.
Point 4
End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust. ….. One company that I work with is reducing their number of vendors from 4,000 to 800, and they are allowing themselves five years. (Toimittajan vaihtaminen maksaa liikaa….)
Point 5
Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
Point 6
Institute training on the job. Use effective methods by which you can improve the system. People are part of the system. Management could improve the system by making it possible for people to understand better what is acceptable and what is not.
Point 7
Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production-workers.
Point 8
Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
Point 9 <= siilojen murtaminen / tear dow the pyramid
Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
Point 10
Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
Point 11
(a) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
(b) Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
Point 12
(a) Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
(b) Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
Point 13
Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
Point 14
Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.
Teoria
Demingin teorian 14 kohtaa tuli hänen kokemuksistaan. ”The 14 points of management” -perustuu neljään tekijään:
– Variaatioon, jota Deming muuten fanitti pitkin tekstiään.
– Systeemiajatteluun, koska johtaminen on systeemien johtamista.
– Tiedolla johtamiseen, ei mutu-tietoon.
– Psykologiaan, koska se auttaa ymmärtämään ihmisiä.
Milloin Demingin teoria tuottaa tuloksia:
• Pikavoittoja on tiedossa kun työlle saadaan määriteltyä standardeja (No. 11).
• Keskipitkän aikavälin voittoja on saatavilla jos pelko onnistutaan poistamaan organisaatiosta (No. 8)
• Pitkäkestoiset voitot saavutetaan kun siilot murtuvat (No. 9), mutta sen jälkeen voittoja on vaikea estää Demingin mukaan.
Mutta onko yrityksillä varaa Demingin ajatuksiin? Koska tuloksia hän ennustaa syntyvän 5-10 vuoden kuluessa. ”Unmistakable advances will be obvious within 5 years, more in 10.”
Hyvät uutiset
Hyvät uutiset sen sijaan on, että työn ilo voidaan aikaan saada nopeasti, jos ihmiset saadaan ymmärtämään kuinka tärkeää heidän työnsä on ja tieto miten heidän työnsä vaikuttaa. Siihenkin Demingillä oli menetelmä, jota hän kutsui “The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Cycle is a flow diagram for learning”:
1. The first step is plan: ideas in people’s heads about improvement or innovation, new method or comparison of methods.
2. Step two. Do it, carry out the test, comparison, or experiment, preferably on a small scale, according to the layout decided in step one.
3. Step three. Study the results. Do they correspond with hopes and expectations?
4. Step four. Act, if we get that far. And what do we mean by act? We mean adopt a change, or abandon it, or run through the cycle again, possibly under different environmental conditions.
Kuusi tapaa
Kuusi tapaa, jolla Deming suositteli käyttämään tilastollisia menetelmiä laatujohtamisessa:
A. Not how much product, but how much acceptable product is what counts.
B. The only way to get a critical dimension right, and to know that it is right 100 percent, is to know that it is being made at a safe distance from the required tolerances in the first place.
C. Safety, economy, and quality assurance all require specification in terms of a distribution.
D. How much variation can you take out of your product, and how much improvement can you achieve without making expensive changes in your equipment or raw material? The statistical method helps to answer these questions.
E. Statistical control furnishes a rational basis for deciding whether specifications should be changed.
F. Two problems are always present in the production or purchase of materials; Problem A. What to do with this lot? (Accept it, reject, pass, scrap, rework, regrade, or further inspect it before deciding which to do.) Problem B. What to do with the process? (Leave it alone; or look for some identifiable cause, make some adjustment, use different raw materials; carry out more or less inspection than you have been doing on previous lots.)
G. There are two kinds of mistakes occasionally made in any quality control program: 1. Looking for an assignable cause of variation or increasing the amount of inspection, when the variations in quality are only random. 2. Failing to look for an assignable cause of variation, or failing to increase the amount of inspection, when an assignable cause actually did exist.
H. Each point on the control chart is derived from inspection tests carried out on a supposedly homogeneous batch of product.
I. It is the responsibility of every industrial executive to acquire an appreciation of the fundamental principles underlying the statistical method. Then when statistical methods are used in. his plant the organization must be such that action can and will be taken when need is indicated by the control chart.
J. Control chart uses include the following problems: Mass production in the usual sense is not necessary to their use. Most of them can be handled satisfactorily in no other way.
Japanin teollisuuden loikka
Japanin teollisuuden loikkaan oli yhdeksän syytä Demingin mukaan:
1. Genuine and resolute determination on the part of management to improve quality. 2. Confidence in their ability to lead Japanese industry forth from the bad reputation that Japanese products had built up in the past, confidence in Japanese scientific ability, and confidence in Japanese skills. Confidence also, I might add, in statistical methods.
3. They were Japanese, with industrial experience, and with an inbred pride of workmanship.
4. Japanese top management, statisticians, and engineers, learned the statistical control of quality in the broad sense of Shewhart, as defined further on.
5. Management took immediate interest and learned something about the techniques of the statistical control of quality as well as about the possible results, and still more about what their own responsibilities would be. Proper arrangements for contact with top management, at the outset, was one of the fortunate features of statistical education in Japan.
6. Statistical education became a continuing process. Statistical methods cannot be installed once for all and left to run, like a new carpet or a new dean. They require constant adaptation, revision, extension, new theory, and new knowledge of the statistical properties of materials. Perhaps the main accomplishment in the eight-day courses that began in 1950 was to impart inspiration to learn more about statistical methods.
7. The Japanese learned the difference between a statistical problem and one in engineering, chemistry, management, or marketing. They learned that statistical knowledge is not a substitute for knowledge of engineering or of other subject-matter, and that knowledge of engineering does not solve statistical problems.
8. Japanese manufacturers took on the job themselves. They did not look to their government nor to ours for help. When they arranged for consultation, they sent a ticket and a cheque. They gave financial and moral support to statistical education, mainly through the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers.
9. Suggestions and technical information have a fairly clear channel from lower to higher levels of supervision and management. A Japanese executive is never too old or too successful to listen to the possibility of doing it a better way.
Mitä meidän pitäisi tehdä kirjan perusteella?
1) Variaation johtaminen on Demingin keskeisiä ajatuksia – kuinka hyvin onnistuu ennustamaan variaatiota ja johtamaan sitä. Variaation kutistaminen eli tasalaatuisuuden tavoite oli Demingille keskeistä: “Understanding variation is critical to good management. Take the idea of continual improvement, which says that the only way you can improve a process is to continuously shrink the variation.”
2) Variaation lisäksi toinen keskeinen teema on ihmiset….. “If you understand how people work in a system, and treat people as part of that system, quality of your products and services will improve.”
Mitä minun pitäisi itse tehdä?
Opetella toimimaan Demingin johtamisen määritelmän mukaan….. “Leadership and Management of People What is a leader? As I use the term here, the job of a leader is to accomplish transformation of his organization. He possesses knowledge; he himself has been transformed. He has personality and persuasive power. How may he accomplish transformation?
1. First he has theory. He understands why the transformation would bring gain to his organization and to all the people that his organization deals with, the customers, suppliers, environment.
2. Second, he feels compelled to accomplish the transformation as an obligation to himself and to his organization.
3. Third, he is a practical man. He has a plan, step by step.”
Mitä muuta opin Demingistä? Tilastotieteellisen lähestymistavan hyödyntämistä johtamistyössä.
Yhteenveto
Kirja kuudella sanalla:
“Paper profits do not make bread: improvement of quality and productivity do.”
”Everyone Doing His Best Is Not the Answer”
”There Is No Substitute for Knowledge (Information Is Not Knowledge)”
”Deming would point at tables of data and say, “Tons of figures—no knowledge.”
