If you are in the business of making and selling things—I mean physical objects, like shoes or handbags or computers or cars—what part of your organization needs Quality? We all know that we are supposed to say "All of it," but in practice where does the attention go? I spent most of my career working with design engineers, so I know there's a lot of Quality attention on design. And many of the basic Quality tools were first developed in the manufacturing environment, so clearly there's a focus on manufacturing. But after you've designed and built the product, what's left? Toss it in a box and call UPS? How hard can that be?
Not so fast.
Last week, on September 9 at about 8:45 am, the container ship Mississippi docked at Pier G of the port of Long Beach, sailing under a Portuguese flag, two weeks after departing from the Yantian port in Shenzhen, China.* Everything seemed fine until the crew started to release the straps holding the containers down. But at that point some of the containers began to slide, crashing into others like a row of dominoes and falling into the water. No injuries were reported at the time, though the next day one worker reported a sprained ankle. But sixty-seven containers fell, into the water or onto the dock.
So far, I have not been able to find any story that identifies a root cause for the failure. But it might have been something very small. I can imagine that one container wasn't aligned quite right, or that a piece of debris kept it from settling snugly into position. Then the containers stacked atop it would have been similarly out of kilter. I'm certain that the port where the ship was loaded has strict procedures to prevent misalignment of containers; but I also know that when the forces are that large—each of these containers weighs from two to four metric tons even when empty—it doesn't take much. The slightest mismatch or error can bring about catastrophic collapse.
And the consequences are out of all proportion to what must have been a small, subtle root cause.**
- Sixty-seven containers fell into the water or on the deck. Presumably the goods inside those containers—goods bound for retail stores across America—are all ruined.
- But the ship isn't empty. There are still plenty of other containers on-board, only many of them are now leaning at a funny angle so that they can't be offloaded with the normal equipment.
- A 500-yard safety zone has been secured around the Mississippi by the Coast Guard, so that other ships don't collide with it, or with any of the floating containers.
- And Pier G can't be used for any new vessels as long as the Mississippi is docked there. How long will that be? Officials say it could take weeks to finish clearing up the site. So this accident has a follow-on effect on the operation of all Long Beach Harbor.
Just for perspective, Long Beach Harbor is one of the nation's busiest. Forty percent of all shipping containers that arrive in the United States travel through either Long Beach or the immediately adjacent port of Los Angeles (in San Pedro). Disrupting its scheduled operations even partially will trigger new delays on and on, far downstream.
So yes, Quality matters just as much for your logistics as for any other part of the operation—especially now, when supply chains reach around the world. After all, the products you make won't do much good if you can't get them to your customers. And even tiny errors can cost you dearly.
YouTube has multiple videos with news of the disaster. Here's one, as an example:
__________* I used the following news articles as source material for this post:
- Cargo containers toppled off ship in Long Beach port | AP News
- Clean up efforts continue at Port of Long Beach after cargo containers fell into water | FOX 11 Los Angeles
- Dozens of cargo containers tumble off vessel at Port of Long Beach - Los Angeles Times
- More than 60 shipping containers fall off cargo ship into water at Port of Long Beach - ABC7 Los Angeles
- Unified Command Responds to Fallen Containers at the Port of Long Beach - Port of Long Beach
** I say the cause "must have been" small because otherwise somebody would have caught it and corrected it!
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