The Unexamined Life Results In Low Quality

Another seminar on managing non-conforming materials in the medical device industry got me thinking about the root of the real problem concerning quality.

I have worked in engineering for nearly 3 decades and I have seen the same behavior many times as a result of new paradigms and procedures. Initially after the introduction of the new process culture, things improve. However, as time passes the improvement degrades and eventually the same level or lower quality results. And when I refer to quality I mean that the resulting product meets the intended goals.

I have a hypothesis concerning this phenomena. When people learn they go through the phases: conscious incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence. Upon introducing the new material people are put into the conscious incompetence phase. They have to think about what they're doing and learn the new material. As time passes, they become more familiar with the new stuff but still have to think about it to do it. This is the conscious competence phase. However, in the final stage people can perform the new dance in their sleep and often do. Basically thinking virtually ceases and the reasons for the procedures are forgotten and quality begins to decline and the rates of defects increases.

The problem is that the workers have fallen asleep on the job. I have observed this many times in new business paradigms, quality improvement processes, new products, etc... any time that there is a change that "wakes-up" the employees.

Perhaps a solution would be to have an automated system that measures some facet of the product and varies the procedures periodically to keep the workers awake. The automated system would do a statistical analysis of product variations and ideally select the process modifications to optimize the process.

I have an image of a robot controlled by this system running around on tank like tracks with a swinging appendage on the front that terminates in a big combat boot. The robot would run around and stimulate the workers at the "seat-of-the-problem"...

Just a thought.