Can we measure it? (4)

["David C. Snook-Luther" <strategyworkshop@earthlink.net>]

A reposting of one of Jean Marie's clasic posts:

>Date: Thu, 18 Jul 96 12:03:38 +0200
>From: gogue@cri.ensmp.fr (GOGUE J.M. Societe MAST 39 50 99 67)
>Subject: Deming Questions # 20/Gogue



--------------------------  DEMING QUESTIONS  -------------------------- 

A weekly paper including a set of questions copied in the Deming book 
OUT OF THE CRISIS   Chapter 5.  Questions to Help Managers.

By Jean-Marie Gogue

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# 20
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1.   (No 39 in the Book) - Reliability of inspection and test

a)    How  reliable is your inspection at each of these points? 
      How do you know?

b)    What data have you to show whether your inspectors are in line 
      with each other?

c)    What  about your test instruments, or rather, your use of them? 
      Can you present evidence of statistical control of the system of 
      measurement or classification? Visually? Or by instrument?

COMMENTS
Perhaps some readers may think they are not concerned, but inspection exists 
everywhere. Administration, police, schools, universities, department stores, 
wine shops, doctors, etc. have inspection. Even families with children have 
inspection. 

The concept of inspection suffers from the Taylor's cliche' of the inspector  
in a factory , sorting out defective products. But Deming was not an 
engineer, and his teachings were not devoted to factories. In the Deming 
philosophy, inspection is one of the three steps of the universal cycle 
proposed by Shewhart in 1938: Specification, Production, Inspection, that 
he transformed into the Deming cycle: Design, Make, Put on the market, Test 
in service. Thus inspection is related to Knowledge.

Misunderstanding about the aim of inspection leads to a poor inspection 
system, that is a big source of waste. This question is a gold mine.

-----

2.   (No 40 in the Book) - Optimizing the cost of inspection

a)    Where is inspection being carried out where no inspection would 
      minimize total cost?

b)    At which  points are you carrying out no inspection where you ought 
      to carry out 100 per cent inspection to minimize cost? (See Ch. 15.)

COMMENTS
 I remember visiting a French manufacturing plant with Dr. Deming in 1980. 
In the inspection and test areas he asked questions about the cost of 
materials, the investments, the time of operations, the percentage of 
defects. Two weeks later I received a letter where he explained that 
their inspection system was far from the optimum. In some places they 
were under control, with almost no failures, but 100 per cent inspection. 
In other places, no inspection, but out of control with a huge cost of 
defects. He made calculations to estimate the possible savings: about 
2 percent of their sales.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jean-Marie Gogue
President
The French Deming Association
Versailles   France
gogue@ensmp.fr

What happens to the SoPK when we are in new, uncharted waters?  We're not
sure what we do know that would apply to these waters, and we certainly
don't know what we don't know.

In management, ultimately judgment becomes the only alternative left.  The
questions of reliability and validity are elevated to the level of at least
the extremely esoteric.  The real challenge to the SoPK at this point is to
keep the judgments from becoming purely mystical.  The challenge is to move
as carefully as possible, step-by-step, to establish the logic of how we
got from data and information that we have a lot of confidence in to the
judgment being made.  Then we must relie more on the tools of logic without
the aid of concrete data to evaluate each logical step to assess the
validity of the judgment.  Physicists call this approach thought experiments.

"Pure science" makes these inductive leaps across the gaps in their data to
create new theory which they test for its validity and robustness.
Managers make these leaps to decide on a course of action which they test
in the furnace of the applied world.  WED's SoPK is an attempt to fill or
at least highlight some of the leaps managers make unnecessarily or
unknowingly.  

On the assumption that any defense is better than no defense, it is
probably better to shoot from the hip than to get shot with your gun still
in your holster.  You might get lucky.  On the other hand, if you make time
by being faster on the draw, and have the skills and ability to take
careful aim quickly, and shoot before you are shot at, you will improve
your odds.  What are we afraid of?  Bravado can mask the fear of lack of
control, competence can increase control.
David C. Snook-Luther, Ph.D., Principal
The Strategy Workshop
Saratoga, CA
strategyworkshop@earthlink.net
Voice/Fax: (408) 871-0232
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