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