Quality - White Glove ...

Quality – White Glove ….

This blog is a companion to http://bcswonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/create-job-opportunities-with-pie.html. It introduced the idea of Productive Innovative Engine (PIE) Team Players as represented by fingers, each of the fingers and arm is focused on the creation of a product or service.

This blog brings the concept of Quality to bear on the PIE Team.

The following definition of Quality came to me in the 1990s when I was teaching at NCA&T.

“Quality comes from Ownership with Integrity and appropriate Resources in a healthy Paradigm – lhb”

Note, that an “O” and an “I” make a “Q”. At first I started with Ownership, Integrity and appropriate Resources, but after thinking about it, realized that you could have Ownership, Integrity and appropriate Resources, but not necessarily have Quality. When you have an environment that is at cross purposes and discourage things working compatible together, that is not a healthy paradigm and Quality suffers.

This concept of Quality has been robust and has been accepted by many as the essential ingredients of Quality. It does not supersede other Quality concepts but complements them.

While reading “Skunk Works” by Ben Rich & Leo Janos, and thinking about the recent BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Space Shuttle Disaster, it triggered me to include Quality as an integral part of the PIE Team. Quality has always been a part of PIE Team thinking but is not quite as evident as needed.

I propose in this blog to add a second hand with a white glove that brings to bear quality described above. In Military Inspections the white glove inspection was a way of determining if the barracks was clean.

When you think of the white glove, which also has five fingers they stress the importance of various types of quality that is normal in industry. It also places emphasis on having appropriate resources such as financial, skills, tools, processes, facilities, best practices, etc. Creating a culture for a healthy paradigm is a primary function of the Quality hand. The Quality Hand must be vested with competence and authority to over ride poor decisions made by the PIE Team. In other words Safety and Quality must not be pre-empted by schedule or profit drivers.

ISO 9000 standards are responsibility of PIE Team and White Glove Team.

Maybe the concept of PIE Team Finger metaphor and white glove working together will result in a Creative/Innovative Quality Product/Service. It is worth thinking about.