The Integration Dr Blog

Let’s presume that you are working a problem in your facility – the problem is a rather thorny one, and is affecting multiple management standards.  How should you handle the root cause determination, and the corrective action resulting from it?  For reporting purposes, how do you report it for metrics – as a problem in all three metrics?  Do you pick one and let the other standard metrics alone?  What’s the best way to handle this?

Here’s a hypothetical problem:  you’ve noticed that a chemical used in your facility has been used up  prematurely, so there is insufficient quantities to maintain production; you investigate further and discover that an employee was trying to attach a hose without the correct safety equipment and process equipment in place, and he was injured; before he could turn off the valve, the chemical poured out onto the tank farm floor, resulting in a chemical spill.  The resulting problem affects the product quality, employee safety and health, and requires a chemical spill cleanup – so we’ve got an impact from a QMS, OHS, and EMS standpoint.  What’s the best way to handle the root cause determination, and the interim and final corrective action(CA) ?

Our first step is the put an interim CA in place to ’stop the bleeding’.  Our first concern is the employee   – let’s make sure that they’re safe and getting the attention they need.  Ensure that all safety precautions are in place, then institute chemical spill cleanup per your environmental procedures and following manufacturer and MSDS recommendation, paying particular attention to containment and prevention of chemical down drains that lead to water supplies, or out the door and to the soil.  Now that we’ve got the basics covered in the short term, we want to focus on a) understanding why this happened, and b) ensuring that this won’t happen again.  In order to do that ’smartly’, we want to assemble a small team from the major groups affected, to step through a formal corrective action process — determine the root cause — in this case, determine how the spill happened in the first place.  The team should also determine what permanent CA will be implemented, and take steps to put the permanent CA in motion (ordering new supplies, reviewing spill procedures, safety procedures, etc. and determining what will ensure that this problem won’t happen again, for this reason).  Finally, the org should determine what steps need to be taken to prevent this in the future (preventing this from happening for other reasons), and what this impact may have to product quality.  Do customers need to be notified that shipments may be delayed?  Can an expedited shipment of the chemical be ordered and delivered?

Now let’s take a minute to go back and review:

- Quality is affected – shortfall of one of the raw materials

Fix:  investigate expedited delivery

- improper handling resulted in a chemical spill – both environmental and occupational health and safety implications

Fix:  review the existing environmental and safety procedures; update as required;

- Preventive action:  how could a spill have happened if not this way?  How could an employee have been injured if not this way?  How could our product quality have been affected if not this way?

Is there anything we’ve forgotten?  Anything you’d do differently?  Let me know – I’d love to hear your comments!

With all of the focus on Toyota’s trouble lately, Lean (and to some extent, Six Sigma also) have come under additional scrutiny as whether they are viable tools for improving quality on an ongoing basis.

It is unfortunate that two tools which have contributed millions in currency (dollars, euros, yen, etc) to a corporation’s bottom line are becoming tarnished as a result of one of their top-level implementers coming under fire for quality problems.

Both Lean and Six Sigma focus on improvement of the process – Lean through the elimination of the 7 wastes; Six Sigma through identification and elimination of the causes of defects and error, and minimizing output variations through the standardization of processes.  Each of these tools has their place, and each has their strengths.

When should you implement this information?  Which tool should you use?  Our experience has been that companies will implement Lean first, including 5S for getting, and keeping, an area in order; and for streamlining their process (material supply, material flow, information flow, delivery, etc.).  Six Sigma is used when the process is complex, high dollar, affects several areas, and requires significant technical support (most often from a Black Belt or Master Black Belt – a professional who has been trained in statistical techniques).  Lean Sigma is most often simply a combination of these two techniques.   As for when, as soon as your process is no longer in flux, you can start to work on improvement.

Why should you consider integrating Lean or Six Sigma into your system?  As part of continual improvement.  As part of the organization’s desire to get better ROI (Return On Investment).  To motivate the employees (yep, employees usually love implementing Lean in their work area).  Or because you want to identify and eliminate areas of waste or inefficiency (which goes back to the first reason – continual improvement).

How can you implement?  We’ve had good success with implementing in a pilot program to ensure that we have good buy-in, that the company culture will allow this tool to be used effectively, and to get a ‘quick win’.  Once the organization sees what we’ve been able to accomplish, other groups start asking US when they can get on the list to get “that Lean thing” implemented in their areas.  So consider rolling out Lean or Six Sigma in phases, to allow cycles of learning and refinement to take place while you are implementing across an enterprise.

Interested in finding out more about implementation?  Contact us at info@mcdcg.com or 512/280-7175 and let’s chat!

2010 – the Year of Integration!  [Well, McDonald Consulting Group has declared 2010 the Year of Integration, at least...]

This blog will introduce you to concepts for integrating your systems, including:

• Quality Management Systems (QMS)
• Environmental Management Systems (EMS)
• Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS)
• Sustainability
• Lean
• Performance Excellence (PE)

and more.

Stay tuned to find out how you can use this info to integrate you systems – and your systems thinking!  We’ll post every Thursday on a new topic – and feel free to suggest a topic you’d like to see covered!

I am a transplant from the northeast.  Although I have lived in Austin for almost 15 years, I still have many remnants of northeast living within me:

1)      I’m perfectly happy with the windows open (vs. the A/C on) if it’s not too hot;

2)     I look forward to colder weather, hot apple cider, and using my fireplace;

3)     I do think that 113 degrees is just TOO DANG HOT

4)     I think that swimming in a pool less than 80 degrees is OK.  [In fact, I think that many pools in Austin, in the middle of a hot summer, are more like swimming in a bathtub than taking a refreshing dip…]

However, over time, I’ve adapted to living in the south:

1)     I no longer own 14 different wool suits (in fact, I don’t own any since Austin is not a ‘suit’ kinda place);

2)     I have learned to appreciate a milder winter – there’s something to be said for not scraping ice off your windshield on a daily basis, or removing snow from the driveway in order to get out;

3)     I like the outdoors-y-ness of the South – walking/biking trails, etc. that encourage us to get out and get moving;

4)     I like living in the middle of the country (for those not intimately familiar with geography, Austin is pretty central in the south – equidistant from both coasts, which helps when commuting to one of ‘em.)  I also like living in the central time zone for the same reason…

In order to make this a reality, I had to integrate my two lives – my northern life and my southern life.  When I first moved here, I found out that my summer wardrobe was not sufficient to bring me through eight months of warmer weather, and my winter wardrobe was way too extensive for four months of cooler weather.

When integrating management systems, a similar recognition is necessary.  Although there are great things, in and of themselves, about each of these systems, some of these great things are in too high a percentage (woolen suits); others are in too low (summer suits).  Some things have to go by the wayside entirely (our snow shovels, snow blower, ice scrapers, etc.)  Notice that I did not say that these were lousy tools, or tools that had outlived their usefulness; they were simply tools that didn’t fit our new system.

Do you have tools, techniques, etc. that work great for one system but may not fit well with the new integrated system?  Don’t feel bad about whittling them down; although they served their purpose when it was needed, they are not needed any longer.

Do you need to make things work better together?  Look at ways that you can do so easily (keeping the wool jacket – sans skirt – as a winter jacket to pair with slacks) – can you implement the internal auditing program across multiple systems easily?  Can you expand management review to incorporate multiple systems?  What works and what doesn’t?  Adapt your system to make it work better together.

The Integration Dr. is officially in business! We’re excited to bring not only our business services, but also this blog for important and pertinent resources for our friends and customers. Come here to receive news about integration, OHS, QMS, EMS and other industry-related topics. Enjoy the convenience of also having articles, videos and our own thoughts posted regularly. It’s an open forum and community so we hope to engage in mutual conversations to help and learn from one another. Lastly, please feel free to talk to us and ask us questions about our services, or just go to our main page at www.integrationdr.com