Waiting for it to break?
“Why fix it if it ain’t broke?” is the canary in the coal mine.
Just because something works, doesn’t mean it works well. The good news is that designers, project managers, product developers, engineers, factory workers, and others often spot issues that are working marginally and in need of improvement. Despite this, most organizations wait for things to fail before they acknowledge there’s a problem before resources are allocated. The problem with this is that once it fails it is now too late and now there's been a big negative effect. Is it worth waiting to fix it until it breaks? Aside from being expensive to fix and replace returns, it is hard to undo the brand damage caused by releasing a shoddy product.
product quality issue = tarnished brand, returns, higher costs
manufacturing issue = production delays, higher costs
We all know that the most pressing projects typically get the resources at the expense of marginal benefit projects when resources are limited and understandably so, but this does not mean those marginal problems go away. Issues that need attention will continually pop up whether the company has adequate resources to deal with them or not. To make matters worse, marginal benefit projects that deal with quality or manufacturing issues can get worse over time until they become emergencies.
So then, how to best deal with these seemingly non-priority projects?
One solution is to put continual improvement and non-emergency projects in the front row, right alongside the glamorous and critical projects. Products should not be released until the most important issues are solved and quality/manufacturing issues are within acceptable limits. Using a manufacturing defect rate, efficiency or performance of a part or system can be a clear-cut way to measure what is acceptable versus needing improvement from the manufacturing and product performance side, and using customer satisfaction metrics offers critical insights into what customers love and hate the most and where the most improvement is needed.
Returns are another way to measure issues, but this is a dangerous one, equivalent to the "don't fix it if it ain't broke" mantra. Customers have differing levels of what is acceptable, and many customers will keep silent and not return a product, giving the false impression that all is ok, when if fact, this customer will not buy again and instead of recommending the product to her friends, she might just complain…all is not ok. This is also dangerous in that the company needs to know who they are regarding thresholds for acceptable and unacceptable. This should be driven by the level of wow desired relative to perceived customer expectations and tempered with a healthy dose of manufacturing and service reality.
Broken is a poor measure of greatness. Commit to continual improvement and early intervention before marginal and weakness turn into an emergency.
