Re: Statistical Control and Purpose

[Alan Meekings <alan@meekings.demon.co.uk>]

Steve,

I your recent post you wrote:

>With respect to Dan's comments, I do find myself in a position somewhat
>contrary to Dr. Deming's, Shewhart's and Wheeler's predictions.  The issue
>is - does an "uncontrolled" process eventually gravitate towards stability
>and statistical control, or does it go chaotic?

I'm with you on this one, Steve.  

For example, it's my observation that in rail maintenance depots across
Europe, the non-availability of parts at the moment they're needed has
historically tended to settle in the range of 18-25%.

This is an industry with a common history that has pretty much escaped
the fundamentals of quality and systems thinking in the post-war era.
Push-scheduling, in a reactive "find-and-fix" culture, is the norm.

In these circumstances, people react as best they can to get the job
done.  For instance, supervisors start squirreling away stores to keep
the work working, and store keepers scrounge parts from colleagues in
other depots without updating their computer records, and so on.  Things
settle down to an inherent level of inefficiency.

It's not good, but, on the other hand it's not chaos.  People intervene
to keep things ticking over, but they do so from a misguided mindset.

It's not their fault.  It's just that no-one has shown them a better
way, or given them the chance to apply what we would call the Deming
management philosophy.

If you were to draw a control chart of the non-availability of parts,
I'm sure it would show the process was "in control".  Inefficient, yes.
Out of control, no.

I agree with you, Steve, that, in the world of work as we know it today,
systems tend to settle down to an inherent level of inefficiency.  It
typically needs new thinking (like quality means on-target with minimum
variation, rather than conformance to specifications) to prompt a leap
to a higher level of performance.

Regards,

Alan Meekings
+44 (0)171 340 3277
+44 (0)385 258741
alan@meekings.demon.co.uk
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