The Process of Quality

Years ago, American quality was nothing to brag about. Color televisions were so unreliable you could buy insurance contracts to repair them. In fact, that was the predecessor of the modern-day service contract. Those days, almost every automobile dripped oil, while mechanics explained, “They all leak; they are designed that way.”

The implications of quality related to consumer products seem obvious, but how can quality impact other areas of the business, such as material handling? For that matter, what does quality have to do with material handling, anyway?

Some aspects of material handling clearly relate to quality, such as avoiding product damage, but quality goes well beyond that obvious example. It extends to all aspects of the business process. A process is simply a sequence of activities by which our work is accomplished. We can think of quality as the degree to which a process does what it is supposed to do (or not do).

Process Quality Defined

In broad terms, a material handling process must deliver [ultimately to the customer] the right item, packaged as required, undamaged, at the right time, properly labeled and documented. Easy to say, but not always easy to do!

Why is this important? First: for customer satisfaction and loss prevention. If we fail to deliver as expected, we will have dissatisfied customers. We will often have to spend money to make it right and may also risk loss of future business. Even if we find the problem before it reaches the customer, there is still cost involved to correct the problem.

Second: to minimize cost and maximize profitability. Quality problems are simply instances in which processes do not work as required. In fact, everything that goes wrong in a process can be considered to be a quality problem. Here are some examples of problems that might not seem at first glance to be obvious quality issues:

• A trailer is loaded and ready to go, but the bill of lading is not yet ready;

• While planning shipment of customer orders, some ship-to addresses are missing;

• When attempting to retrieve a product from an inventory location, the wrong product is there, and no one has a clue as to the location of the right product;

• After loading a trailer, an “extra” load is discovered on the dock, while records show the product as already loaded.

There might be some debate as to whether these are quality problems, since they are not product quality issues per se, but rather process quality issues. But, all product quality issues ultimately are caused by process quality issues. All process quality issues are detrimental to business.

Consider what would happen in your business if any of these four problems occurred. Usually, someone would have to take some immediate action to correct the problem, diverting them from their usual work.

Sometimes, the problem is ignored, creating a bigger problem later. If the “extra” load problem was ignored, and the trailer was shipped missing that load, the customer might complain, prompting extra shipping cost or payment delay because the order was not complete. Ultimately, the consequences of all process quality issues have negative financial impacts, either from reduced productivity, increased overhead, delays, or even lost business.

Process Analysis

The following principles apply to quality of any sort, and we will focus on applying them specifically to improve material handling processes:

• Establish a clear understanding of output requirements for the overall process as well as each step in the process.

• Focus on prevention of problems, not correction. Prevention is much less costly.

• Ensure that each process step guarantees that its output is correct and complete; mistake-proof where feasible.