Quality Is Everybody\\\'s Job

Of all the wastes that are prevalent in most businesses, the ones which can have some of the biggest negative impact on the organization are mistakes. Mistakes are bad for many different reasons. They are the kind of waste that spreads to different parts of the company and are seen by many different individuals. Specifically, the mistakes that are seen by the customer are really the worst thing that may happen within the world of waste in business.

Once the mistakes get out of house and begin to make it into the hands of the customers, then fixing the problem just got a whole lot worse. It is one thing if a mistake happens and it is caught and the problem is fixed and none of the bad parts ever made it out of the plant. It is another thing entirely if the bad parts make it into the hands of the end users.
It's almost impossible to then convince the customer that it's a one time problem and it will be fixed. The customer, especially if it is a new customer, can easily lose any confidence that they had in you and your product. There is a fine line that must be walked that if once crossed, it is very difficult to get the customer back on the right side. In order to prevent a mistake, which is nearly impossible to do, you must have some safety measures in place.
Even though it is almost impossible to prevent every mistake, you can limit them and what is more important, you have to be able to catch the mistake quickly enough so that it does the least amount of damage. In fact, if there is a mistake made, it should ideally be seen after the first incident and then corrected. But that means that you have to be looking for the mistakes and have some program in place that can spot them immediately.
This is not just a job for the people in your quality control department, but it should be something that everybody on the team is aware of and can help out with. The men and women on the floor, assemblers, painters, and electricians, anybody that's working with the parts should know what to seek out and be able to spot something if it's wrong. Working together, there should never be a case where the parts got through the wall of safety and into the customers hands.