Monday, November 19, 2007

Culture Wars

The new Quality Manager (i.e. "my boss") came on board today. After he had spent a couple hours filling out various HR forms, the VP of Quality had a meeting with us.

Seems the recently-fired Quality Manager was mired in the "old culture" and wasn't getting the administrative-type Quality Systems stuff done. My observation was that he seemed to be spending 97% of his time gaging product or fighting fires.

The new QM and I are the great white hope for the "new culture."

I have a hazy idea that this means everyone in the plant is expected to follow the established, written procedures, so that we will have a system that will stand up to our customers' plant audits. Seemingly simple things like signing and dating forms are not consistently being done.

I wish I could say that I have a warm, fuzzy feeling that upper management is totally committed to this concept. I've asked some very basic questions about the list of duties I am to perform and I have have gotten in return what a less charitable person than myself would call "ye olde blow-off."

I am going to try to use this indifference in a positive way. That is, I'm going to interpret these sort of non-responses as carte blanche to re-invent whatever I feel needs to be re-invented. I'll find out what the road blocks are and see if there are ways to make compliance "user friendly" for the folks on the floor.

I'd like to see an in-plant PR campaign to get people on board with the "new culture concepts." Things like fifteen minute departmental meetings, notices, posters and the like would help to promote the "right way" of doing things. It's corny, but unless you know what your targets are you can't know if you're hitting them.

We'll see, we'll see...

Next: Too Many Marshmallows

5 Comments:

Blogger RED MOJO said...

Sounds like you're on the right track. I hope you like your new boss, and he is open to your ideas and suggestions. Well, no one said this would be easy.
Don't put up the poster with the cat clinging to a branch, that says "hang in there baby" If you can not do that, that's half the battle.

November 19, 2007 10:10 PM  
Blogger Gale said...

I like it! Do you get a design posters and stuff like that? Or do you order propaganda from the standard type propaganda catalog?

November 20, 2007 2:51 AM  
Blogger furiousBall said...

Oh, and remember: next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.

Pragmaticism is fun ain't it?

November 20, 2007 12:09 PM  
Blogger Lee said...

Fingers crossed for your tremendous success!

November 20, 2007 12:22 PM  
Blogger Craig D said...

Well, it has been three days with the new Quality Manager, now.

The VP has been having us work on actual Quality System issues, so maybe we'll get to make a difference..?

There certainly is lots of room for improvement. The index to the Quality manual hasn't been updated since 2003, for instance. OUCH!

Thanks for all the encouragement.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!

November 22, 2007 6:48 AM  

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