Quality work out of Fibber McGee's closet

From time to time I've written about the question whether it's possible to achieve Quality work without having a formal Quality system. (Here is one recent post where I touch on it, for example.) In general my argument is that it is always possible, but on any large scale it becomes staggeringly difficult. From this point of view, all our Quality methods are (so to speak) just tips and tricks—gimmicks, if you will—to make it easier to get the results we want.

With this background in mind, let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, I worked for a California startup that had just been acquired by a much-larger company headquartered in Europe. One of the new initiatives was to get us integrated into their ISO 9001 system. To kick-start that activity, Mother Company sent an Auditor out from the Old Country to do a complete review of our system.

There were a lot of mis-matches. The Auditor expected meetings to start on time, but company culture at the startup meant people usually drifted in about 10 minutes late. A lot of procedure documents were either missing or badly followed. The Auditor's opinion soured quickly, and didn't improve as the week went on.

By Dell Publications., Public Domain, Link

At one point he came to our Repair Center. This was part of the Customer Service organization, and it was just what it sounds like. Customers whose units had broken or were malfunctioning could send them in and we'd fix them. If the unit was still under warranty, the fix was free; otherwise, we'd quote a price. Also, the Repair Center sold a lot of extended warranties to customers who didn't want to haggle over a bill when they needed their unit back.

The Repair Center was housed in a space that was scarcely big enough. Cabinets were full of old equipment, with tools and supplies shoved in at odd angles. Technicians regularly had half-completed jobs teetering on the edges of their workspaces, put on hold because they had to contact the customer for clarification of a question; but meanwhile they had started work on another job. There might be more equipment under the desks. It all looked like Fibber McGee's hall closet. 

Here the Auditor drew a line. He stopped at the entrance of the Repair Center and stood stock still. He leaned in to look around, but he would not cross the threshold. I don't know if he was afraid he might dislodge something or trip over it. But he looked around, scowled, murmured quietly "This center will never meet ISO 17025," … and left.

From then on, whenever anyone asked him genially, "How's the audit going?" the Auditor talked about our Repair Center. He described as much of it as he had been able to see, and explained how many regulations it failed to meet. If anyone asked how much work he thought it would take to bring it up to snuff, he just shook his head sadly.

Sooner or later, word got to our Head of Operations. This fellow was a long-time employee of Mother Company, but he was an American; and he had been sent out shortly after Mother Company acquired us, to offer a guiding hand as we assimilated into the larger organization. So he asked for a meeting with the Auditor. I was the Auditor's official host, so I tagged along.

Head of Operations: I hear that you don't like our Repair Center. What's wrong with it?

Auditor: It's cluttered. It's disorganized. There is no control over the space or the tools or the work. I don't see how they can function.

Operations: Compared to what? Are you comparing it to the Customer Equipment Laboratory in the home office, back in the Old Country?

Auditor: Yes, exactly.

Operations: Well help me understand this. Because the Repair Center here is a profit center, that generates something like 25% of the company's annual revenue. Meanwhile that Laboratory you are comparing it to is a cost center, and every year those costs are significant.

Auditor: I'm not concerned with how the company organizes its departments financially. I'm looking at compliance and customer satisfaction.

Operations: Fine, but that's another point. Back on my desk I have a stack of customer complaints an inch thick, complaining about the Customer Equipment Laboratory in the Old Country. And in my files I have just as many notes from customers expressing gratitude for the quick and professional service they got from this Repair Center. So who's offering more customer satisfaction?

Auditor: ISO 17025 has clear requirements that laboratories have to meet, and this Repair Center doesn't even come close.

Operations: Does that standard apply to this Repair Center?

Auditor: I don't know, but I am going to check.

In the end, it all worked out. The Repair Center tidied up their space, labeled their cabinets, and adopted some rules about how to handle work if you have to interrupt it to wait for a customer callback. After some research, the Auditor determined that ISO 17025 did not apply to the Repair Center's work, and the tidying that they did was good enough for ISO 9001.

But how were they able to do such good work all along? Isn't tidiness important? Does it really not matter whether your storage cabinets are labeled?

Of course it matters. The key is that everyone who worked in the Repair Center had been there for a decade!* This was a small company, with a dedicated staff and very little turnover. They didn't bother to label the cabinets, because everybody just knew where everything was. They didn't write down a lot of their operational procedures because everybody just knew what to do. They didn't bother to label work-in-progress because everybody just knew who was working on what.

And this is a valid Quality strategy for some organizations. When the number of people is small, and when the average tenure in jobs is high, you can accomplish a lot of good work following the Everybody-Just-Knows methodology. The only problem is that this approach doesn't scale well, and it's hard to bring on anyone new when your employees start to retire or die. 

As soon as you start to grow, or as soon as you have to work with anyone new, the traditional Quality tools suddenly become a lot more useful. 

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* Strictly speaking I think the New Guy had been there only seven or eight years.