How Quality Supports Sustainable Operations

This series explores how to ignite excitement and make quality relevant in your organization.  This is the number one barrier for quality within organizations - getting the necessary buy-in, support and engagement from all areas of the business.  Management must be committed, all quality support groups must be well organized with plans that align with the goals of operations, and operations must be engaged. 

The trouble is, throughout generations, "quality" is very rarely seamlessly assimilated into daily operations.  This series will dive into what traditional operations-centric organizations value most and how to plug "quality" in to support those values.  

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Forbes Magazine recently published 8 Business Trends for 2022, the first being the desire for sustainable operations.  So, that's as good a place as any to begin the work of aligning our support roles toward our business values.  And if sustainability is an important value, how can our quality practices support this value?  

First, let's talk specifics.  What quality tools or practices do we have that could help in this regard?  In Forbes Trend #1, "Every organization must seek to eliminate or reduce the environmental costs of doing business." 

How about our management systems?  The management systems describe our policies, in some cases our processes and procedures, and our training structure.  Is sustainability included in the systems?  What specifically can we drive with the management systems to support sustainability in practice?  Further, a component of sustainability is adaptability.  Are our management systems adaptable as the world changes?  How well has your management system adapted to the recent massive changes to how the world operates?

How about our lean practices?  Is sustainability addressed in our lean practices?  Where we have implemented 5S, kan ban, visual management, have we been mindful of how sustainable those practices are?  Have we looked for waste not only in our operations, but in the lean practices themselves?  How much paper waste, energy waste, etc is there?

How about our six sigma methodologies and tools?  Are we applying our six sigma technologies in a way that supports sustainability?  What design, root cause problem solving techniques, error proofing, risk analysis, statistical studies are currently deployed?  Do they consider sustainability in the business?  Could they be leveraged more?

And finally, has quality taken the time to connect the dots with operations to intentionally communicate and highlight collaboration in support of a common goal?  This is an important step to point out that the quality effort is in support of and not in opposition to operational objectives.  The quality effort must continually set the example through constant public self-reflection and application of the suggestions for improvement they regularly offer areas outside themselves.  This supports the credibility and commitment toward continual improvement by all. 

One of the most important things to remember, all-the-time, is that quality efforts exist for the sole purpose of supporting successful operations and the customer experience.  Our constant pursuit must be to leverage our management systems (ISO9001, ISO45001, ISO14001, IATF16949, AS9100, etc) PLUS our lean practices PLUS our Six Sigma tools PLUS our continual improvement efforts toward the achievement of better outcomes for operations and the customer experience.  

For some new ideas on this, get Tribal Knowledge - The Practical Use of ISO, Lean and Six Sigma Together, a simple guide to UNITE ISO9001, lean and Six Sigma to create a robust quality system with better results.  Read what ASQ American Society for Quality – Quality Progress Magazine had to say about it.