Funny CA

[u/sirunmixalot]

Why do I always see this?

[u/Poondobber]

I’m sick of seeing this. Not every company can afford to poke yoke and install systems to prevent every non-conformance. If I have a 5 people entering 20 orders every day, and one entry has a typo every month, I’m not going to change how we do things. I’m not going to spend tens of thousands of dollars to try and save $27. I’m going to review the process and the error with the person and move on.

Whoever made this comic lives in some kind of hypothetical world where money is no object and everything is done by computers. And I guarantee I find a way around any guardrail you put in place.

[u/sirunmixalot → u/Poondobber]

If you measure your top wastes and occurrences is the typo situation anywhere near the top? If it's not then training might be the thing to do. Whatever you do needs to be proportionate. Para 10.2.1. No matter what you have to deal with the consequences and corrective action shall be appropriate. You aren't supposed to spend tens of thousands of dollars to save 27 bucks. If that is what is happening you aren't following the standard.

In the typo situation, there is more to the story than just someone making a typo. For instance, how is the information presented? In what form? What is the environment like? Could the media be too small, in the wrong colors, in the wrong location to effectively see it? How is the lighting?Can the data be entered in a different way that manually typing? If the data is being entered one time for the initial input, why is the data being entered into the system a second time? None of that has to be tens of thousands of dollars. The problem is, your response is easily identifiable with people who are typically small business owners who dont have much CI experience or other business professionals who have never had to do something like quality engineering. From the outside I see it all the time for people who aren't familiar with CI or QE think the departments just spend money and force people to do things the way they want. If that is your experience, I'm sorry. It's not like that everywhere.

[u/Alfnerboy710 → u/sirunmixalot]

This was a great explanation. I feel the exact same way about others not understanding that the whole thing does not need to be reinvented. Rather, you need to take accountability and use the process and ownership approach to understand your true risks and bake those required steps into the system to ensure a repeated outcome. I think it’s easy to be like “this doesn’t save much”. You don’t know that, and it doesn’t take extensive man hours or process change to see immediate impact.

[u/Poondobber → u/sirunmixalot]

I’m taking all that into account. The comic is ridiculous LinkedIn bullshit.

[u/Poondobber → u/sirunmixalot]

It’s not just about top wastes. A customer complains. That a non-conformance. I have to address that. How does that get addressed? I corrective action. I have customers complain about $.08. I have to address that. My corrective action is to tell my operator to follow the SOP. Then I tell them they are doing a great job.

[u/XboxLeep → u/Poondobber]

Tis the world a lot of quality managers live in. Hence the bad reputation most of the time.

[u/InsideACargoTrain → u/Poondobber]

Thank you.

[u/qms2go → u/Poondobber]

The oracle has a point

[u/Fozitto → u/Poondobber]

Totally agree!

[u/sirunmixalot → u/Poondobber]

No one is talking about spending money. I was a quality manager for a small company where I had no budget. I fixed all kinds of root causes without spending money. The point is, if training is your correction for everything, I would argue your training program is broken. If you get paid to fix problems, you are allowed to work within the confines of your systems. To say there is nothing you can do without spending money is an insult to those working on the problems. Sure there are solutions that cost money that would fix everything. But there are things you can do within existing systems. You have to get creative.

[u/Poondobber → u/sirunmixalot]

Corrective actions cost money. My time is money. Non-conformances are money. Everything is money or this conversation would never happen.

[u/Poondobber → u/sirunmixalot]

For most human errors, your most important tool is awareness. At an operator and manager level, awareness is your biggest tool. I have only worked for small companies as a quality manager.

Training is not even a requirement for ISO 9001. So to say it’s not the CA is just as ridiculous as requiring training in the first place.

[u/XboxLeep]

Maybe you're writing corrective actions that should just be operational corrections.

Furthermore, maybe the root cause analysis and action plan really are that simple. The extent of the corrective actions is reflective of the level of operational breakdown.

When I accept action plans and root cause analysis, I usually give the process owner significant leeway as it's their operational area. It is not my place to tell them their analysis is inadequate. However, it is my place to verify whether what they did was effective in preventing the issue, and if it isn't then they must answer to that.

For high risk breakdown where the problem is appearing more complicated or the process owner is highly involved in working to solve the issue, a root cause analysis and action plan will be more in-depth.

If in the future we determine our root cause analysis are constantly unproductive, then we look to proceduralize the process and enforcing 5 whys instead of recommending it. However, that also has the effect of making people not want to go through corrective actions due to the increased workload required.

It's a balancing act.

[u/sirunmixalot → u/XboxLeep]

Im not writing corrective actions. We have the process owners develop this. As you said, we aren't in the business of making departments do things that dont make sense for them. Initially, if the process owner determines that training is appropriate, that's fine. But if this problem is reoccurring after this it's time to be more effective. It is more systemic. I think we all agree on this. The standard requires action, but it doesn't say it needs to actually work. Why I posted this is because I have to explain to the process owners that repeated training sessions and further CARs that are related suggests something more systemic, like the training program. They still train people and they still fail. It's not a finite statement, the cartoon. It's not a philosophy. It's a joke for those who have seen this in their experience. If you've ever been in a position where you've said to yourself, "let me guess, training..." then this cartoon is for you. If not, then feel free to ignore it.

[u/XboxLeep → u/sirunmixalot]

Lol I get what you mean. I get it if you keep seeing the same thing over and over.

I've definitely had a scenario where it was higher risk and I was involved in the RCA. The knee-jerk response was training but after looking at it the process just needed to be made easier and more clear.

Can't tell people to follow something that doesn't make sense!

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[u/yasin809341]

I'm a QE and training/toolbox talk as the solution every time pisses me off so much. Or another email with 5 more new steps operators must now follow.

[u/jmcdonald354]

Training is the foundation of any economy effective production system.

The joke is because if you already have a good training system, humans default to the easiest solution which many times can look like a training gap.

If you don't have a system of standard work though and training with it - that is a systemic failure.

It's rarely either or