November is World Quality Month!

How is your organization marking the occasion?  October and November are US National Quality Month and World Quality Month, respectively.  Don't miss the opportunity to engage your team in the importance of quality to your organization!

Bringing in a fresh face from outside your organization can help re-energize your quality effort and reinvigorate your team by inspiring new ideas and a renewed interest in quality and continuous improvement.

Invite a quality expert in for a workshop, or maybe host a virtual event.  I've been an ambassador for quality across a diverse array of industries and love the interaction with business leaders, quality professionals and everyone in between.  And I'd love to work with you to revitalize your company's quality culture.  Here are some ideas of how we can throw a "Quality Party" and get everyone focused on quality:

1.  Have a 1-day book club.  Get copies of "Tribal Knowledge - The Practical Use of ISO, Lean and Six Sigma Together" for your team to read.  Then I'll come on site (or via virtual event) to have an interactive conversation about the book - their takeaways, their questions and their ideas for continuous improvement.  

"Tribal Knowledge - The Practical Use of ISO, Lean and Six Sigma Together" is a practical guide to developing and implementing a comprehensive business management system which integrates quality, environmental and safety and incorporates lean and Six Sigma to reduce waste and variation."

2.  Get brave and have a "WTF (Why That Failure) Happened?"^TM workshop on a real life problem your company is currently having using either "5 Why" or "Fishbone".  I'll facilitate either on-site or virtually.  We'll focus specifically on creating a safe environment for problem solving, opening ourselves to possibilities, gaining confidence in brainstorming, and learning the problem solving tool itself.  Contact me and let's customize a workshop today.  

3.  Host a Treasure Hunt for "obsolete" and "unnecessary" documents.  Award prizes for each document found that can be removed from use (or combined with another) to reduce your documentation and make your system leaner.

4.  Enroll them in an online learning class to help them better understand ISO9001.  And to celebrate, there's a special offer for US National Quality Month and World Quality Month!

"ISO9001 in Plain English" is an on-demand, easy to navigate series all about translating the complicated language of ISO9001 into easy to understand Plain English. Each video averages just 15 minutes, so you can quickly find and focus on the specific clause you're looking for. With a total of 6 hours of content for the whole series, this is a great resource for people who are new to the standard, internal auditors who may not deal with the standard every day, or managers and executives who want a quick reference or refresher.

5.  Host a kaizen event to tackle one specific area or opportunity for a quick win to energize your team and regain some momentum toward continuous improvement.  Some ideas to think about:

• 5S/6S - are you ready for 6S?  or have you tried it once in the past, but it just didn't stick?  Let's have a do-over. 
• Value-stream mapping - do you have a process that needs a once over?
• Metrics for management review - are metrics accurate?  does everyone agree on their validity?  is reporting simple and easily accessed?  are both current metrics and trends being analyzed?  are targets aggressive enough?  Let's clean it up.
• Are documents and training seamlessly aligned?  The reason documents around the quality system exist is to communicate knowledge to users (=training).  Let's get some use out of all that effort and make your system leaner.

If you need help facilitating, contact me and let's customize a 1-2 day on-site kaizen event today.  

However you mark the occasion, be sure to make it fun and engaging for your team.  Quality can be a tough sell.  Take the opportunity to make it a CELEBRATION!