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So you have been in the Quality world for many years. Admit it, you are the underdog. No matter if the whole company revolves around you, you are not the Operations Manager nor are you the Sales Leader. You are the underdog.

They like you when they need you and they spit you when they don’t. You are the hero when a fire breaks out, but they throw you to the trenches when everything is running good. Luckily things have change quite a bit since the early Dilbert days of Quality, so let’s have some good old fun remembering the good, the bad and the ugly side of quality.

1. When the Quality Manager promotes a salary increase based on employees passing one of the ASQ Certifications. That is Good.
2. When somebody asks the Quality Manager during a Management Review how he arrived at the standard deviation of one of the charts and he doesn’t know what Standard Deviation is. That is bad.
3. When an Auditor learns that the Management Representative likes to play golf and therefore replaces part of the audit time with a tee time and they go golfing. That’s ugly.
4. When somebody is being disrespectful of the Quality Manager and does not want to follow procedures because it “slows” him down and the President sticks out on the side of the Quality Manager. That is good.
5. When the Quality Manager comes in late, rejects the product after it has been producing for over 2 hours, then he leaves. The next day is Saturday and he is not around and therefore the same quality of product is accepted. That is bad.
6. When the Production Manager ignores Product Specifications and orders tweaking of the machine settings left and right during the day but at night he is not around so absolutely no changes are made and everything runs just fine. That’s ugly.
7. When the Operations Manager is so in tune with Quality, knows all Quality Objectives and Production metrics and ensures corrective actions are completed. That is good.
8. When the Continual Improvement Department answer several corrective actions with the same root cause analysis “Failure to follow procedures”. That’s bad.
9. When the organization claims to have a Quality Management System, which they bought on the internet and was certified by a non-accredited Registrar. That’s ugly.
10. When somebody in the organization issues a corrective action to the ISO Consultant because the ISO Consultant did not do something right. That is good!
11. When the ISO or Lean Consultant tells the organization that the best and only way to accomplish certain tasks are his way. That is bad.
12. Finally…last but not least, when a customer’s Quality Department tells the organization they cannot ship a defective part without the proper deviation. The organization sends a request for deviation to the customer but receives no response. Then the organization gets a very low mark in the On Time Delivery section of the score card by the customer’s Purchasing Department. That is Ugly!

True or False? You be the judge. As for me, I will continue to advocate and help organizations improve and be proud of being in the Quality world. If you are dying to know though, write me at [email protected].[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]