Archive for May, 2009
If I New Then What I Know Now
When I first started out some twenty years ago, the communications process for supplier management was somewhat akin to the pony express. You pick up the phone and hope to reach your contact or play phone tag for a few days until you finally made contact. You wrote letters and then waited weeks for a response. You got on a plane and traveled all day to meet for a few hours and travel another day to get back to the office, so you could write more memos to make sure everyone who needed to know the outcome of your trip was informed. Then of course there were the endless meetings which resulted in still more telephone calls, travel, memos, etc..
Supplier quality management was and continues to be a time consuming and costly initiative. Granted the pay back, if done well, far out ways the cost. But what if you could accomplish everything you wanted for half the cost and with half the effort. I personally have been a part of the never ending struggle to rain in my supplier base to keep moving forward to drive cost out and improve the quality of the products and services that I am required to purchase. Unfortunately I found that the programs that we put in place ultimately resulted in increase costs of their own.
Just recently I came across the most wonderful supply chain management software. This software enables you to meet all of your supply chain needs while reducing travel and improving communications real time, both internally and externally. With this software you can conduct quality management audits of your suppliers without leaving your office chair. Corrective and preventive actions are real time with communications to all interested parties at the touch of a computer key board. Evaluating and reevaluating your suppliers becomes an automatic process that lets you stay on top of non-conformances, inspection reports, on time delivery, new product development activities and schedule meeting which included supplier and customer input. What a difference a day makes.
Food safety reform
Recent events could be conspiring to bring food safety reform closer.
Take a string of food borne illness outbreaks and product recalls, from the salmonella in peppers that sickened 407 last year and killed two, to salmonella in peanut products this year, which led to at least 691 illnesses and nine deaths. Add spinach, pistachios, and most recently alfalfa sprouts, and you have the recipe for some shocking statistics: About one in four Americans is sickened by food borne disease each year, 325,000 are hospitalized, and about 5,000 die. Since the early 90s, food borne illness outbreaks have more than tripled to nearly 350 a year.
The peanut product outbreak in particular led to a flurry of activity; legislation was proposed at both a state and federal level, including the bipartisan FDAFood Safety Modernization Act, and finally it sounded like everyone was speaking with one voice. All the main players were lined up asking for more or less the same things: FDA power to order mandatory recalls; more inspections; greater transparency from manufacturers.
The FDA’s lack of authority to issue recalls has often been cited as one of the department’s greatest weaknesses, forcing it to rely on the cooperation of food companies. It is hard to believe that anyone would refuse to withdraw a potentially deadly product with their company’s name on, but it happens. Where are we headed with food safety and what will it take to get the powers that be to make real progress toward safer food.
Public Concerns: Looking beyond carbon footprints
You can try your best to avoid it, but when it comes to measuring carbon footprint, almost everything we do these days, either as a business or individuals, is likely to have a negative impact on the environment.
From using a tea pot or popular internet search engine, to leaving on that night light or your TV, reassessing how we use energy in relation to the resultant greenhouse gases is having a major impact on the way we view sustainability.
While commendable, it seems this ‘carbon neutral’ focus by consumers and food manufacturers is creating a catch-all green title that is potentially leaving alternate, or complimentary, sustainability momentum. Momentum, which at times, may offer more efficient greener business practices.
The carbon footprint is used as a means of accounting for the amount of greenhouse gases produced by an individual or organisation in terms of tonnes or kilograms of carbon dioxide, (CO2), equivalent emissions.
Wherever you stand on the global warming issue, businesses, under much media scrutiny, are aiming to cut emissions of gases like CO2 from their operations in intense attempts to ensure less harmful environmental impacts. However, along with the corresponding headlines and news coverage Carbon footprints are generating, fears are growing that as a society, we may on the whole be narrowing our understanding and commitments to environmental sustainability.
Corrective and Preventive Action
Corrective and Preventive Actions are key elements to a Quality Management System (QMS) that is focused on Continual Improvement and Customer Satisfaction. Any ISO 9000 or AS 9100 type QMS should have this type of focus, unfortunately many do not.
It is important to properly use these two sub-systems when building a new QMS based on any quality standard. In order to do this, you must understand the difference between Corrective and Preventive Action.
Corrective Action is based on a nonconformance event that has happened in the past. Preventive Action is based on preventing a nonconformance event in the future. Both are similar procedurally, but with the focus as described. Together, Corrective and Preventive Actions are integral parts of a continuous improvement program.
As one of the key elements to a QMS that will lead to overall business process improvements, it is important to use the corrective and preventive action system. After all, is the real goal to get a plaque on the lobby wall, or to have a continuously improving business?
ISO 9001 Documentation is Like a Box of Chocolates
This article will explain how not to over document your management system. To see the positive feedback from the article in Quality Digest “This Article was Delicious”
Excerpt;
• Don’t write a procedure for the sake of writing one. Learn and understand when a procedure is required.
• Don’t write a procedure around how you want to do a process or think a process should be done. The procedure should reflect what you actually do.
• Create the documentation in a format that makes the most sense for the process or people using the document. (Don’t be afraid of pictures and videos, and don’t be afraid to call them “training materials.”)
• Don’t forget that the majority of audit nonconformances are cited because the procedure didn’t reflect the actual process, not because the process didn’t comply to the standard.
For complete article go to www.businessmsc.com or “ISO Documentation is Like a Box of Chocolates”
Reducing Expenses and Improving Workflow
Let’s face it, all the small business owners out there would love to reduce their costs while improving workflow, but it’s impossible to do more with less unless some dramatic changes occur. The fact is, when small businesses grow, often archaic practices can wind up as part of the final business model. These archaic practices often do little in the grand scheme of the successful business, but are in place because of neglect or having been forgotten. For example, it might have been customary to order extra inventory during certain months of the year, but as time went on, this practice could have become unneeded, but is still performed because it’s engrained in “business as usual”. Successful small business management begins with identifying these unneeded processes, and removing them. One of the easiest ways to do move through the identification phase is to perform an audit from an outside source.
Quality internal and external audits can identify useless practices, and show small businesses where it’s possible to save money. Purchase auditing software that coincides with ISO 9001 and AS 9100 standards, and you will be amazed at what these programs can find.
Root Cause Analysis
Root Cause Analysis seeks to identify the origin of a problem. It uses a specific set of steps, with associated tools, to find the primary cause of the problem, so that you can:
- Define what happened.
- Define why it happened.
- Determine what to do to reduce the likelihood that it will happen again.
Root Cause Analysis has five identifiable steps.
Step One: Define the Problem
Step Two: Collect Data
Step Three: Identify Possible Causal Factors
Step Four: Identify the Root Cause(s)
Step Five: Recommend and Implement Solutions
As an analytical tool, Root Cause Analysis is an essential way to perform a comprehensive, system-wide review of significant problems as well as the events and factors leading to them.
Food Safety Supplier Audits
The National Food Processors Association (NFPA) has announced plans to launch a new Food Safety and Quality Systems Supplier Audit Program as a means of coordinating the audits of food manufacturing facilities and their suppliers.
NFPA developed the program after learning that some suppliers undergo as many as 20 audits or more for their facilities, each with different forms and standards. Scheduled for phased implementation next year, the voluntary program will provide a means for companies to apply uniform, industry-wide standards to suppliers rather than standards and requirements of their own. As a result, a single NFPA audit could conceivably satisfy the requirements for several processors, thereby eliminating the need for duplicate audits.
A 26-company task force of NFPA members, including Pillsbury and Kraft, designed the basic elements of the program, including audit standards and auditor expertise. NFPA noted that the program will judge the adequacy and performance in the areas of “quality-related management responsibility and prerequisite programs, HACCP-based food safety programs, production controls, quality management systems and regulatory considerations.”
Building Postive Customer Relationships
Building positive customer relations means a lot more today. It is not good enough to just say “hello” when someone calls or stops by the office. While recognition is a good thing, it doesn’t take the place of meeting the customer’s expectations. Is your company meeting those expectations?
Customers and inquiring, prospective customers have higher service expectations today than ever before. When developing a quality management system the quality policy usually proclaims “We strive to meet or exceed our customers’ needs” but do our actions really show that? Do we set ourselves up to fail by not putting the processes in place to actually accomplish what we set out to accomplish “Customer Satisfaction”? The market-and your competition-have educated the business world and the individual consumer to expect more.
The market has changed, it is now a global market, and customers have been educated, often by your competition, to expect and even demand more and faster service, no matter how they define “service.” If your company is not aware of these customer expectations, you are likely losing business to others who understand this new customer dynamic.
For those companies who wish to separate themselves from their competitors, there are several customer satisfaction techniques that you can use to get improved results:
Communicate, Communicate, And Communicate
Train Everyone to Properly Interface with Your Customers’
Don’t Shoot Yourself In The Foot By Having Administration Or Operational Personnel Communicate The Wrong Message
Positive Attitude – can you guarantee that every one of your personnel communicates a positive image about themselves and your company? People will quickly pick up on a negative attitude. It can turn off a customer faster than anything else you do.
Step 7. 