Quality Thinking

I was reading one of my favorite magazines the other day when I came across an article on the Cost of Quality.  This intrigued me and as I was reading the author made the statement that quality cost can be 20%-30% of sales.  These costs are the costs not only of implementing quality programs, but the costs associated with diagnosing and fixing the errors of your day to day production.  I really have to agree with this 100%.  I have seen our company fix product and even scrap poor products and that just really hurts.  We as managers/owners really get a pain in our side when we have to do things like this.  Not only does hurt the pocket book, but the morale.  It is so easy and so cheap to implement quality thoughts in to your production staff.  It’s the retention that is hard.   We are going through that right now.  We have a younger work staff and we struggle to retain the quality trains of thought sometimes. We are actively reinforcing over and over again the teachings.  That is where the implementation costs really come into play.  But I would rather spend money teaching and reinforcing than patching and scrapping.  A perfectly delivered product speaks volumes for who you are and what your company is about.  I really am starting to see the tides turning as guys are more about how to progress than feel sorry about themselves.  The other day we had an issue with a form that was not caught in time and we had to patch a product.  This was a setback, but what I saw for the first time was immediate discussion about what we can do to correct this in the future.  There was no finger pointing, no complaining, just instant brainstorming and evaluation.  That is quality thinking in my mind and this making me very proud that the retention is happening.  Good things are happening! 

Boost!!!!

Friday I won a sizeable contract for a job.  Great!  The best part about the contract award was the feeling I got from telling the production staff we are finally got a challenging contract.  Our common day to day stuff has been keeping us going, but we finally landed a nice contract to turn us from steady to busy and test our skills.  This got me so excited and who to better share it with, the staff.  It had to be one of the proudest moments of my career to finally see the high fives, the fist pumps, the hoots and the hollers.  It was then that I realized we needed a morale boost and we finally got it.  It was like a complete 180 degree change in mood.  To me, morale is the single most important aspect of merit based shop and we are full of it.  I’d like to share with you a quote that describes my crew.

"Morale is when your hands and feet keep on working when your head says it can't be done." ~ Benjamin Morrell

My crew is full of this morale.  Some days I come to work and wonder why our guys work as hard as they do.  Is it the money?  Is it camaraderie?  Is it me?  Personally I think it’s the projects. Having the ability to say I precast that or they told us that can’t be precast, but we precast it.  It is really nice to give them a good, challenging project, which will test our skills and change the workplace a bit.  The only way to describe it is perfect.  I’m ecstatic I landed this contract not only for me, my company, but my staff.  We needed this, we got it, look out world Dalmaray is running, catch up!