The Quality Program That Became 180 OPEX

It was already July and we were set to miss our quality target for the year. The quality manager asked if I had any ideas. In truth, I didn't. But I love a challenge. 

I'd just read The Power of Habit and I was enamored with the idea of using habits to improve process. 

So I set about building a method, and it came out pretty simple. I proposed that people break rules for 2 primary reasons: They don't know the standard or they don't think the standard is important.

I proposed that if a person asked you about standards daily (to build habits) and then explained them to you if you didn't know... that would fix either or both of those issues.

So I built it. A process and a database to drive and record the engagements.  

One quality inspector. Five semi-randomized questions each shift. One hour a day. We prioritized stations by where the problems were most frequent. 

Instead of inspecting for failure, we used each interaction to discuss the standard and to demonstrate, socially, that it mattered. We used the database to record their compliance/knowledge. 

When someone got one wrong, we just retrained on the spot and documented it in the database.

We launched the first week of August that year.

In the first month, deviations fell by 66% and we held that the whole year. 

One day I pulled the day-shift quality tech aside and asked how the extra workload was hitting him. He told me they'd saved so much time not chasing rework and deviations that it had made his job easier.

We had actually reduced our labor demand and we handily beat our target.

That result bought us something more valuable than the metric: credibility with the floor. We had managed to deliver the accountability and process adherence they'd been demanding for years.

So we kept going. We had some machines that repetitively beat operators... we built questions into the database around those too. One by one, the problems dissolved.

And as the problems dissolved, production went up. Quality and safety issues went down. Morale went up. Everything improved.

This is what happens when you make standards known, discuss them, and reinforce them every day.

This accountability and training infrastructure was always the missing piece. Once we got this tool running, we could implement anything. Our standards were consistently understood and followed. We had a team who knew and was committed to doing it right. We had leaders who were freed up to help solve real problems instead of constantly firefighting.

Most organizations never build that level of consistency. 

I'd love to hear about similar changes you've seen and lead in industry.

---

This project eventually became the foundation for everything we do at 180 OPEX.

If you're interested in how we turned this idea into a repeatable operational system, take a look at our approach.

See Our Approach