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Quality Systems Series Part 4

stirton — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 05:01:57 +0000

Illustration A

The ISO Process

1. Strategic Planning

* Obtain commitment
* Select registra
* Select conformance model
* Form project team
* Establish timeline
* Assess training schedule

2. GAP Analysis

* Evaluate existing quality system
* Evaluate existing documentation

3. Corrective Action

* Institute changes in quality system

4. Documentation and Records

* Implement document structure and control system
* Institute control of quality records
* Revise documents
* Provide training

5. Implementation

* Implement and monitor changes
* Ensure all gaps are closed
* Maintain records of changes

6. Pre-certification audit

* Ensures operations and documentation are according to ISO model

7. Registrar Documentation Review

* Registrar reviews quality manual

8. Site Preparation
Management prepares organization for registrar and certification audits

9. Certification Audit
Registrar reviews quality system and documentation to determine if quality system meets the conformance model

Quality Systems Series Part 3

stirton — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 05:41:25 +0000

After getting the staff on our side and documenting employee duties and workflow, it was time to write procedures. Here’s where we came face-to-face with ISO document control, one of ISO’s most tedious and time-consuming areas. The thought of notebooks of procedures for every department, each needing to hold only the current revision of each document, and each needing updating every time something changed, just did not make sense for a company where every user had his own terminal. Rising to the occasion, CPI’s programming department developed “ISODOC”.

“ISODOC” is a computer-based document control system that handles all ISO documentation from creation and revision to approval and distribution. Now there are no notebooks, in fact, there’s no paper at all in CPI’s document control system. Current revisions of procedures are always available to staff via their terminals. New documents and revisions are announced to the staff via e-mail. The chances of someone accidentally using an outdated procedure are minimal. ISODOC has made CPI’s ISO document control easy to maintain and easy to administer. Much of the time that our Quality Manager would have spent in updating files and notebooks can now be spent on further refinements to the quality system.

ISO TODAY

CPI has been ISO-9002 Certified for more than two years now. When we first started this journey ISO certification seemed like the goal. We worked hard for it and we got it. Now, however, we see ISO in a different light. ISO is the base around which CPI’s quality system flows. We are proud of our quality system and will continue to improve it whether or not we maintain ISO certification. We consider ISO our assurance that the internal procedures of our various departments will seamlessly connect together.

We consider ISO our assurance that products we receive from vendors are proper and functional and, if not, we have methods of tracking such issues and pressuring vendors to do better. We consider ISO our assurance that customer and vendor problems are handled in a consistent manner across all departments. Through internal audits, ISO is CPI’s assurance that we do not get sloppy in our commitment to quality.

Like so many things in life, you get out of ISO certification what you put into it. If you look at ISO as a possible marketing tool, you greatly limit its possibilities. If, however, you see ISO as a means of creating a quality program that benefits staff, vendors and customers, you begin to unlock its potential.

Here at CPI we are still unlocking ISO’s potential. Customers will gravitate to companies where they feel well treated. In service industries especially, customers will pay a premium for services and products from companies that do a good job. ISO-9000 Certification lets our customers know of CPI’s commitment to quality. The internal quality system that ISO has generated at CPI is our assurance that our customers will remain faithful to CPI. This is assurance you can take to the bank.

Bob Lung is Director of Finance and Operations of Computer Parts Interchange, Inc., a VAR in North Canton, Ohio. CPI specializes in design, development, sales, and installation of integrated and associated information and communication systems.

Quality Systems Series Part 2

stirton — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 05:36:52 +0000

We always kept our customers informed of what we were doing and how it might affect them. We gave them assurance that CPI had minimized the chances of wrong, delayed or mis-shipped products, assurance that CPI will only promise what we know we can deliver, and assurance that if there is a quality-related issue, procedures are in place to handle the discrepancy quickly.

Developing a high-class quality system requires lots of education for the staff, the managers, the customers and the vendors. By letting everyone know what CPI was doing, we demonstrated our commitment to quality long before ISO Certification and allowed opportunity for these people to provide their input and suggestions to the project.

THE CHALLENGES OF GETTING THERE

It is impossible to implement a program as far-reaching as ISO-9000 without coming face-to-face with internal issues and problems. We learned that very early in the game. The sad thing was that many of these problems should have been dealt with years before. Like any active business, CPI spent much more time with day-to-day business and handling occasional problems than we spent attempting to resolve the issues that caused the problems in the first place. Thus, ISO did not create new problems for CPI, rather, it required us to deal with the old problems which we knew we had (and a few that we didn’t).

The first step in developing any Quality Program must be to document the status quo. Since no one person had a grasp of everything that went on at CPI, it was necessary for each staff member to contribute. This was made easier through extensive staff education.

We wanted to bring home several points to our staff: ISO-9000 is not simply a set of rules. It is a list of procedures and guidelines that not only determine how the company should run, but also defines the entire corporate attitude toward quality. ISO spells out how CPI defines quality, how we intend to implement it, and how we handle things when we fail to live up to our quality standards.

This quality applies to our customers, our products and services, our vendors and our staff. When this total quality commitment permeates all areas of a business it’s surprising how fast the staff lines up to help. We also made certain the staff understood the long-term benefits of working for a quality-oriented company: Jobs become easier because duties are defined and understood; managers need to make fewer “judgment calls”; customer complaints are reduced; new or temporary employees are trained much easier. We also made certain that the entire staff understood the correlation: Quality Service = Happy Customers = More Customers = Better Bottom Line = More payroll dollars.

Having a staff that understands our quality goals and does not feel threatened by ISO is a must before their cooperation can be obtained–and we needed their help. First, we needed job descriptions for our employees.

In small fast-growing companies, job descriptions can easily lag behind the need to quickly add staff to handle increasing workloads and to handle new products and services. By making certain that each employee fully understood ISO and what it would mean to both the employee and CPI, job descriptions became much less stressful for everyone.

Documenting current procedures became the logical next step. Although managers had a good grasp of their departments, we were surprised when we found how poorly they understood workflow outside their area. When workflow has never been adequately documented writing procedures can be long and tedious. None of our managers thought documenting current procedures was fun, but each found it very revealing. Problems were found that we never knew existed.

Quality Systems Series Part 1

stirton — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 05:29:32 +0000

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a worldwide federation of national standards bodies, developed a series of quality standards known as ISO 9000 family standards. These standards provide a framework for a Quality System, which is a series of checks and balances that ensure quality. Illustration A lists the ISO process.

CPI and ISO; THE BEGINNINGS

In the fall of 1993, an article appeared in the local paper stating that the local college was creating an ISO-9000 consortium. This didn’t mean much to those of us that read the article; few of us knew what ISO-9000 was, and some weren’t even certain what a “consortium” was. Little did we know that Computer Parts Interchange (CPI) was about to commit itself to this project. For the next two years we were going to learn more about ISO and Quality Systems than we ever knew existed.

Having been in business for ten years, CPI provided depot and on-site repair of computers and peripherals, sold data communications products and provided maintenance agreements to customers in Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Wanting to expand these services nationwide, we really did not have time for this ISO thing (whatever it was)!

Before we knew it, we were one of ten companies participating in the consortium. Through it, CPI came in contact with people who had already gone through ISO certification as well as bona fide ISO auditors (who, contrary to popular opinion, did not sport a pointed red tail and carry a pitchfork). We soon found out what ISO was all about and what it would take to become ISO certified. It would take much time and effort but the final result, improved products and services, more efficient internal operations, and improved staff morale and production, would be worth it. That was something certainly worth working for. Maybe we would have enough time to pull this off after all.

We knew right from the beginning that there was no one currently employed at CPI with the time and the skills necessary to head this project. Therefore, we hired the Quality Manager of a company that had recently obtained ISO certification. With our newly hired Quality Manager and the help of the ISO Consortium, we began our two-year journey to certification.

BENEFITS OF ISO CERTIFICATION
ISO Certification requires no small expenditure of time and resources. To do all that work simply for the right to put an ISO-9000 Logo on our letterhead seemed wasteful.

From the beginning, it was CPI’s belief that the process of getting prepared for ISO certification was far more important than the actual certification itself. An ISO Logo might draw in new customers, but if there is no real quality system behind the Logo, the new customers will quickly sense it and go elsewhere.

From the very beginning the staff was made aware of the benefits CPI expected to obtain from ISO certification; better organization of products and processes, more efficient use of staff, and fewer customer problems which can disrupt normal work flow and defocus people. The possibilities of improved internal efficiencies combined with the international recognition of ISO Quality standards made ISO certification look particularly appealing to a company expanding from local depot and regional on-site service to offering these services nationwide.

Sunflower Feeder

stirton — Fri, 27 May 2011 08:26:42 +0000

What you’ll need:
Empty plastic produce holder (used for strawberries or tomatoes)
About 80 paper clips
Heavy brown string (a 190-foot roll of jute twine costs about $1.50)
Sphagnum (or green) gardening moss (comes in small bags). Or you can use grass clippings if they are chemical-free.

Scissors
Wax paper (or newspaper)
Four bag ties

Background:
Sunflowers are popular with many birds, including cardinals, chickadees, house finches, purple finches, titmice, sparrows, and the American goldfinch.

What to do:
Cut 24 lengths of string, each about 21 inches long. Starting at the bottom of the produce holder, weave the string all the way around. Leave a few inches sticking out so when you weave all the way around, you can tie the two ends together and shove them inside the container. Don’t cut off straggly ends — just push them inside or they might unravel.

Use all your string to weave the whole container. (Don’t worry, the object is to have fun, not make a perfect looking container. The birds don’t care!) The string helps to strengthen the plastic container, provides a natural-looking surface and keeps your sunflower seeds from falling out of the feeder.

After weaving, cut a 3-inch by 4-inch piece of wax paper (or newspaper) and push it into the bottom. Then put a little pile of moss or grass clippings into the container — this helps aerate the seed (and the birds like to forage through it). Take your bag ties and make a loop with each one at each corner. Be sure to feed your bag ties through both the plastic and the string for extra strength. Make four paper clip chains of 20 clips each. Attach them to the bag ties. You can adjust your paper clips by adding or removing some to make your feeder level.

You might want to connect the top of your four paper clip chains together (with an S-hook or another bag tie) depending on where you hang it. Make sure you can take it down easily for cleaning and refilling. (The birds might take the moss or clippings to pad their nests so be prepared to add more.)

Black-oil sunflower seeds are available at feed stores, specialty bird stores and many pet stores. It may take the birds awhile to find your feeder, but once they do, remember to keep it filled and clean.

When we Stand Firm, Good Triumphs

stirton — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:35:11 +0000

This is going to be one of the most important years in the history of Avery County. This is going to be the year that we are led by our own intelligence and put the best interest of the county first. Now is the time.
We will not allow ourselves to me reconquered by the forces of greed and ignorance. How are we going to avoid this? By the simple means of communication.

I’m going to tell you exactly what the old political machine is doing in its attempt to retake control of the county government. What I need you to do is continue to pass on what you have heard to me. Then I will turn around and share that with the rest of the county.
These same people have been using the county to further their own interests for almost 40 years. This was allowed to happen because they were able to convince the people of the county that what they really wanted was to preserve the simple mountain way of life. This is a lie. Stop believing it.
There is no way to preserve anything without making informed, intelligent decisions about our future. Most of those we have in county government now are able to do this. We do not need to re-elect people that are incapable of such decisions.
So, here we are at the crossroads. The dark forces will meet again in January to try and plan their strategy. Their leaders will also meet behind closed doors, or at their favorite restaurants, in an attempt to figure out how they can best sneak back into power. They will develop intricate plans, but if I find out about them, I will tell everyone. The political process should occur out in the open.
Lucky for us, they have decided to print their plans and beg everyone to look at them. You don’t need to bother, I’m doing it for you. They have already started campaigning for their first candidate for the county commission on the front page of their newspaper. In case you missed it, which I’m sure most of you did, they offered a grand history of the accomplishments of retiring court clerk officer Brenda Singleton.

All of the things she has done for the county were promoted. They didn’t mention the fact that while working for the court, she was the primary source for inside information that was used to defame the enemies of the political machine. She provided whatever was needed to the former editor of this paper when The Journal was a tool of the Green Hat Gang.
In my opinion, this article was an attempt to lay the groundwork for her campaign for the county commission. Singleton will get the support of the old political machine, and this will translate into votes from those people who feel that they ‘owe’ something to the old machine for whatever reason.

These votes need to be countered by those concerned with the future of the county. I could be completely off base on this, but I don’t think so. Either way, don’t say you haven’t been alerted.
At least two or three others will emerge from the Green Hat Gang over the next few weeks. You can read this column to find out who the latest is. You can then tell your voting friends not to vote for them.

Re Engineering Brands 3

stirton — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 05:29:38 +0000

Certain vendors who invest deeply in the skills necessary to convert customer information into deliverable value to the customer would also build strong customer-centric brands. In general, vendors who offer information-intensive products like newsletters or knowledge-intensive services like medical care will have the greatest success in building customer-centric products by tailoring these products or services to the needs of individual customers.

A customer-centric brand can’t be built without information from customers about their needs and preferences-information they often provide reluctantly. In the end, customer-centric brands require an intensely personal relationship between the business and the customer. We may not think of them as owners of customer-centric brands, but the traditional family doctor or the local financial adviser exemplifies the kind of relationship required. These relationships begin with a limited request for information from the customer; in exchange, the doctor or adviser quickly turns that information into helpful advice. Ideally, a series of value exchanges creates deep bonds of trust that deliver on the customer-centric brand promise: I know more about you than anyone else and can be trusted to use this information and insight in your interest.

Customer-centric brands aren’t restricted to individuals in professional and personal service occupations. Rich information capture and analysis capabilities and the ability to tailor offerings cost-effectively for individual customers make it possible for large institutions to develop customer-centric brands.

Although still at a very early stage of development, Amazon.com is building a customer-centric brand based on its ability to track book purchases by individual customers and to use this information to offer tailored suggestions of other books that customers might enjoy. Now a global company can play the role the local neighborhood bookseller plays-building a powerful customer-centric brand in the process-by using the Internet and related information capture and analysis technologies.

Re Engineering Brands 2

stirton — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:51:18 +0000

Today, brands are largely product-centric -they are statements about the vendor or the products offered by the vendor. Brands say: Buy this product because the vendor has a reputation for high-quality products or excellent service or because the product itself is a reliable or low-cost product. In an environment where return on attention becomes the key measure of performance, a new kind of brand will emerge-a customer-centric brand.

Customer-centric brands have two components-they assure the customer that the vendor knows and understands that individual customer better than anyone else does, and they promise the customer that the vendor can tailor products and services to meet that individual customer’s needs better than anyone else can. These brands thereby assure customers that they will receive a very high return on any attention they focus on the owner of the brand. They also offer the promise of increasing returns-the more attention the customer gives to a brand, the more the brand owner will learn about the customer, and the stronger the value of the brand becomes to the customer.

Successful infomediaries must study their customers and anticipate their needs.

Some brands today have moved partway in this direction. These brands speak to customers as members of a specific market segment. They urge customers to buy their products or services by claiming that the vendor understands the needs of that segment better than anyone else does. For example, Disney has been successful in the past by developing a brand addressing the concerns of parents with small children. Nike did the same for urban youths. But none of these brands says anything about knowing the customer as an individual with unique needs and preferences. This is the challenge and opportunity for customer-centric brands.

Who will deliver on the promises implicit in a customer-centric brand? Certainly infomediaries will have a natural claim to knowing the customer better than anyone else and could tailor bundles of products and services to meet the needs of the individual customer. For this reason, infomediaries will develop very strong customer-centric brands.

Specialized intermediaries might also build strong customer-centric brands by developing expertise working with customer profiles to configure tailored bundles of products or services to meet the needs of the customer. These “personal shopper” intermediaries might become junior partners of the broader-based infomediary to offer customers expertise in specific product categories.

For example, specialized “clothing consultants” might take on the role of a personal shopper in on-line environments, building unique skills to match the individual fashion preferences of a customer with a deep understanding of evolving fashion trends and to suggest wardrobes tailored for the customer. Clients who want help deciding which products are right for them might seek out these specialized intermediaries.

If, as in the case of today’s personal shopper or personal banker, these intermediaries demonstrate their commitment to and skill in tailoring offers to an individual customer’s needs, they, too, might develop customer-centric brands. Unlike personal shoppers or personal bankers today, these “personal shopper” intermediaries wouldn’t be pushing the products of their employer. Instead, they would operate as consultants, collecting fees from the client and perhaps a surcharge on products purchased as a result of their recommendations (much as interior decorators do today).

Re Engineering Brands 1

stirton — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 05:14:38 +0000

By leveraging the capabilities of electronic networks, infomediaries will help undermine the value of brands in conventional markets. They’ll do so by removing the two constraints that make brands viable today, both of which have to do with scarce resources:
1. Limited information about vendors.
2. Limited “shelf space” for access to products or services.

In the process, they will undermine the two basic planks of a conventional marketer’s power base-control over information and presence-and force marketers to find new sources of economic power. Marketers can either evolve into infomediaries and regain privileged access to information, or they can focus on product innovation and commercialization by developing the skills needed to deliver tangible value back to customers more quickly than anyone else.

For example, when customers lack detailed information about the full range of vendors or the functionality and pricing of their products, brand becomes a proxy for imperfect information. Rather than overinvest in collecting difficult-to-find information, customers rely on brands to assure them of a predictable product experience. McDonald’s may not offer the best meal experience, but it does offer a predictable meal experience relative to a no-name restaurant where the consumer may experience either a gourmet treat or food poisoning.

Brands play a similar role with regard to limited shelf space. From a vendor’s viewpoint, brands help “pull” customers into retail stores. In the process, they help the vendor persuade the retailer to dedicate some of its scarce shelf space to the vendor’s products. Similarly, retail brands help customers decide which retail stores to frequent. Given the limited selection that scarce shelf space affords, customers look to brands for assurance that the limited selection will be consistent with their buying preferences.

Info mediaries will help remove shelf space constraints by providing access to an essentially unlimited range of products and services in an on-line environment. On-line vendors like Amazon.com exploit the economics of networks to offer customers access to any book published (including out-of-print books that have traditionally been the most difficult to find). Info mediaries carry this process one step further-they will enable the customer to search across multiple book vendors, maximizing selection based on such factors as price and shipping lead times.

At the same time, infomediaries will help clients access detailed information about individual products or services through their profiling and agency services. Not only will customers be able to access information from vendors, they will also be able to examine detailed product reviews and evaluations by third-party firms.

Infomediaries will also be able to generate information of their own. For example, a client might want to find out how many other clients of the infomediary have bought a particular brand of computer, how many of these computers were returned as defective, and how many of the clients repurchased the same brand of computer. The infomediary’s profiling database could readily provide this information.

As reverse markets erode shelf space and information constraints, does this trend mean that brands will disappear? Not at all. It does mean that the role of brand is likely to change and that, in the process, ownership of the most meaningful brands may change.

In an environment of unlimited selection and access to information, the scarce resource becomes customer attention. Customers still face one unyielding constraint: they still have only 24 hours a day. Where and how they choose to use this time will have enormous economic consequences. With limited time and unlimited choice, customers will likely focus their attention on providers that best understand their needs and can, as a result, maximize their return on attention by delivering highly tailored bundles of products and services.

A Giver and Taker in Action

stirton — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:41:26 +0000

To give you some sense of how the giver-taker scenario plays out, take a look at this classic case. When Claire and Larry first came to see me, Larry found it hard to explain why he was so frustrated with a woman who was so anxious to please him in bed. “It’s annoying sometimes,” he told me. “She never gives me a chance to approach her for sex, because she’s always there, always anticipating what I want. She doesn’t wait for me to warm up to her.”

Unbeknownst to him, Claire was boiling too. She felt she was doing all the sex “work.” “If I don’t approach Larry, we’d never make love,” she sighed. “He doesn’t give any thought or creativity to our sex life.”

Without ever openly discussing what they wanted from their sexual relationship, both Claire and Larry made assumptions about what the other wanted. Both were wrong.

Claire had settled into the giver role, but the pressure had turned sex into a source of anxiety and fear; her overwhelming need to please superseded her own enjoyment. If she wasn’t “working” at sex, she believed, she wasn’t earning her keep in the relationship.

Larry, on the other hand, had unwittingly become a taker. He claimed Claire was “oversexed,” when in fact he was a bit threatened by his wife’s more expansive sexual nature. When she suggested a new position or a new fantasy, Larry wondered, “What does she want to do that for? Aren’t I good enough?” And because he is the main wage earner — Larry is an engineer, and Claire works part-time in a lingerie store — he feels that he is already carrying more than his fair share of the family burden. Larry spends all day solving complex problems at work. Why should he have to be Don Juan in the comfort of his own home?

If Larry and other takers like him have orgasms and enjoy sex, then what’s the problem? Apart from angering their partners, they’re also limiting their pleasure. They keep themselves emotionally distant and cut off a part of their sexual selves by not participating more fully in sex.