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Creating Quality Culture in An Organization
Creating Quality Culture in An Organization
Quality
cannot be achieved only through stringent quality control methods and use of
sophisticated instruments or by highly competent quality department. Dr. Deming claims
that 85 % of quality problems are created by people who never touch the product. Also
quality cannot be achieved using flavor of the month approach. When individuals make
quality as a habit, it becomes a culture at organization level. In this paper we are
making an attempt to summarize traits of an organization where quality is a culture.
2.1 Role of Leadership for creating culture of quality – The tale of two leaders
One of the organizations was engaged in manufacture of electric motors. All the completed
motors were required to go through final auditing process. It was a month end and the factory
was yet to deliver more than 50 % of the orders. In such situation one of the quality auditors
rejected the entire lot of motors due to abnormal noise. The plant manager was very upset
hearing this. He called the particular auditor and asked what is the problem and after knowing
the problem, he suggested to release products under deviation.
The reason given was – These motors are used in textile industry and the abnormal noise of this
motor will not be audible in the huge noise created by textile machinery. You can imagine what
will happen for the quality in future. The quality auditor next time takes his own decision to pass
the defective parts and spread the wrong culture.
Another company was making fabricated structures for construction of bridges. CEO of this
company used to do surprise audits at different stages to ensure delivery of quality products to
customers. Once while doing one of such audit, he found one of the structure having abnormal
bend being in the vehicle ready for dispatch. He immediately asked concerned people to stop the
shipment and correct the problem. Not only that; he also asked his team to do a root cause
analysis for such escape. Though it is un intentional, the response by leader shows his
commitment to quality.
One of the key roles of a leader is “Lead by example”. In the above example, the company may
lose one delivery but it sends a strong message to all the employees that any deviation to quality
is not acceptable at any cost.
Another key point here is continuation of these leadership principles irrespective of change in
leadership. This is a big challenge for many organizations.
Imagine an employee joins a company with great quality culture from a company which is
mediocre. He has two choices a) Adjust to new culture OR b) quit the company. This is the
power of culture.
Training and retraining should be a continuous process. Otherwise sustenance will be difficult.
1. Quality First
2. Respect for people
3. Sense of urgency
Now this will be the guiding factors for every employee. They will be questioned by any one if
they deviate from this. Like a compass in the ship showing direction to the captain, the value
system tells organization the right and wrong direction. No one can question this including CEO.
Once again, it depends on leaders, how they drive it and communicate it.