Paradigms of Variation: Misunderstanding Quality (Part 7)

In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz explore the intersection of variation and quality through awareness of the "Paradigms of Variation.” In a progression from acceptability to desirability, Bill created this 4-part model to offer economic insights for differentiating “Zero Defect” quality from “Loss Function" quality," with the aim of avoiding confusion between precision and accuracy when desirability is the choice.   Learn how to decide which paradigm your quality management system fits into!

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. This is episode 7, The Paradigms of Variation. Bill, take it away.

0:00:30.3 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew, and welcome to our listeners, as well as viewers, if you have access to the viewing version. Yeah, so I went back and listened to Episode 6. I'm going out bike riding 2-3 hours a day, so I listened to the podcast, listened to other things, stop and write down. Let me go write that down. And, so, we're going to pick up today on some major themes. And, what I keep coming back to is, is I think the difference between acceptability and desirability is the difference between how most companies operate and how a company inspired by Dr. Deming would operate.

0:01:29.3 BB: And, I just think of, if there was no difference between the two, then... Well, lemme even back up. I mentioned last time we were talking about why my wife and I buy Toyotas. And, yes, we've had one terrible buy, which I continue to talk about. [laughter] And, it's fun because it's just a reminder that even a company like Toyota can deliver a really lousy product, which we were unfortunate to have purchased. And, we're not the only ones that, and they've rebounded and they've apologized, they've had issues. There's no doubt about that. They have issues, but they have notably been inspired by Dr. Deming.

0:02:30.6 BB: The one thing I brought up last time was relative on this thinking of acceptability, desirability, where acceptability is looking at things and saying it's a quality system of good and bad. It's acceptable, which is good and unacceptable is not good. And, that's how most organizations view quality. Again, the focus of this series is Misunderstanding Quality. Our previous series was broadly looking at implications for Dr. Deming's ideas. And, here our focus is quality. And, so what I'm trying to get across here is quality management, traditional quality management.

0:03:17.4 BB: In most organizations, in all organizations I've ever interacted with is acceptability basis, good parts and bad parts. It's a measurement system of it meets requirements, we ship it, if it meets requirements, we buy it. And, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I don't think a system focused on acceptability can explain... To me, it does not explain the incredible reliability I have personally experienced in Toyota products.

0:03:46.9 BB: Now, I'm working with a graduate student and I wanna pursue that as a research topic in the spring, 'cause for all I know, the reliability of components in all cars has improved. I don't know if it's, I only by Toyota, 'cause so this woman I've met recently and I'm mentoring her and we're working on a research project. And, I thought recently, I'd like... And, I'm not sure how to do this, but I just know, I think I've mentioned I worked at my father's gas station back in the '70s and I remember replacing water pumps and alternators and all this stuff. This was before Japanese cars were everywhere. There were Japanese cars, but not like you see today.

0:04:33.3 BB: And, so I'm just used to all those components being routinely replaced. And, all I know is I don't routinely replace anything but the battery and the tires and change the oil. I think that's about it. Everything else is pretty good. But, I do think the differentiation between Toyota and most other companies is their appreciation of desirability and how to manage desirability. And, that's why I keep coming back to this as a theme for these sessions. And, what I think is a differentiation between a Deming view of quality and all other views of quality. What I tried to say last time is I just give you indications of a focus on acceptability. It's a quality system which looks at things that are good or things that are bad. It's, last time we talked about category thinking. It's black and white thinking. If the parts are good, then the mindset, if they're good, then they fit.

0:05:38.4 BB: Well, with a focus on continuum thinking, then you have the understanding that there's variation in good. And, that leads to variation in fit and variation in performance. And, that's a sense of things are relatively good, not absolutely good, whereas black and white category thinking is acceptability. They're all good. And, if they're all good, then they should all fit. I was, when I was at Rocketdyne, met, and the one thing I wanted to point out is... Again, as I said in the past, so much of what I'm sharing with the audience and people I've met through these podcasts or people I'm mentoring, helping them bring these ideas to their respective organizations or their consultants, whatever it is.

0:06:29.0 BB: And, so I like to provide examples in here for things for them to go off and try. You at the end of each podcast encourage them to reach out to me, a number of them have, and from that I've learned a great deal. And, so one guy was... A guy I was working with at Rocketdyne, he was at a site that did final assembly of rocket engine components. And, so one thing I'd say is the people who... And for those listening, if you wanna find people in your organization that would really value the difference between an acceptability focus and a desirability focus, find the people that do assembly, find the people that put things together. 'Cause the ones that machine the holes, they think all the holes are good. People that make the tubes, all the tubes are good. But, find the people that are trying to put the tubes into the holes. Those are the people I loved working with because they were the ones that felt the difference every day.

0:07:31.1 BB: And, so I was in a workshop for a week or so. And there's two people ahead of me. They came from this final assembly operation of Rocketdyne. And, during a break, I was trying to clarify some of the things I had said and I used, I shared with them an example of how when we focused on not the tubes by themselves or the holes by themselves, that we focused on how well the tubes go into the holes, which has a lot to do with the clearance between them and the idea that nobody owns the clearance. One person owns one part, one owns another. And, what we realized is if we focused on the relationship, what a big difference it made. So I'm explaining it to him and he turns to me and he says, he's like, "Oh, my God," he says, "I've got hundreds of turbine blades and a bunch of turbine wheels and the blades slide into the wheel." And he says, "I can't get the blades onto the wheel."

0:08:31.0 BB: And I said, "But they're all good." He says, "They're all good." But he said, "Well, what you're now explaining to me is why they don't go together. Why I have this headache." So I said, "Well, do you know where the blades come from?" He says, "yeah". And I said, "Do you know where the wheels come from?" He says, "yeah". I said, "Well, why don't you call them up and talk to them?" He says, "There's no reason for a phone call 'cause all they're going to say is, "Why are you calling me? They're all good." So, he just walked away with his head exploding 'cause he's got all these things.

0:09:05.8 BB: And, so I use that for our listeners is if you want to find people that would really resonate with the difference between acceptable and desirable, talk to the people that have to put things together. There you will find... And, so my strategy was, get them smart. Now they have to be patient with the people upstream 'cause the people upstream are not deliberately doing what they're doing to them. So, what you don't want to do is have them get... You want their consciousness to go up but you now wanna use them to talk to the component people. Now you've got a conversation. Otherwise, the component people say, "Why are you talking to me? Everything I do is good."

0:09:51.6 BB: So, I just want to talk at this point, just to reinforce that I think there's something going on with Toyota that is very intentional about managing desirability when it makes sense using acceptability. So, it's a choice. And, so indications of a focus on desirability is when you look at options that are acceptable and you say, "Of all these apples, I want this one. It's the ripest. Of all these donuts, I want this one. It's got the most sprinkles. Of all these parking spots, I want this one. It's a little bit wider than the other. I want this surgeon. I want this professor for this course."

0:10:33.8 BB: All right. So, what we're saying "is of all the choices, I want this one". So, some new ideas I want to get into tonight are the Paradigms of Variation A, B, C, D, and E. Paradigm A we looked at in the past. That's just acceptability. Does it meet requirements or not? The quality focus is achieving zero defects. And tonight I want to get into B and C. The next time we'll look at D and E. In explaining these ideas recently to someone who listened to one of our previous podcasts and were focusing on, he started asking about decision making. And that got me thinking about, of course, I took years ago decision making with Kepner