A Quality Story

On a cloudy morning a few years ago I started my truck, turned on the headlights and noticed one of them was not working. While changing a headlight isn’t that big a deal, I needed a state safety inspection anyway, and I really didn’t want to mess around under the hood.

So I called the auto repair and tire place up the road, and arranged to come in.

When I got there, I explained that the right headlight was out. Since I knew from experience that the left one would probably fail in a few weeks, I said “Go ahead and change the left one too, and I need the state safety inspection.”

Unfortunately they only had one headlight in stock, so they couldn’t change both, I said OK and got a soda to wait.

A while later, everything was good-to-go, I drove back to work and went home that evening. The next day was sunny.

The following day, however, was cloudy again. I turned on the headlights in the garage, and the right headlight was still out. Hmmm. I took a quick look and noticed that the LEFT headlight was new. They had changed the wrong one.

When I got back to work, I called the shop, explained the issue, and they said come over and they would make it right. (Meaning they would replace the RIGHT headlight at no charge.) After handing the keys back in, the mechanic who did the work came out and tried to convince me that he had simply followed the instructions, and it wasn’t his fault.

OK — let’s break down this situation from the perspective of quality and delivery.

Starting from the end of the story, why did the mechanic feel obligated to try to convince me that I had responsibility for a mistake that the owner had already agreed to correct? What could possibly be gained by trying to make the customer feel wrong here?

Now let’s go back to the beginning.
Customer reports a headlight is out. What is the very first thing you would do? How would you confirm the problem?

Turn on the headlights and check. This takes about 10 seconds. If there was a confusing communication about the problem, this is the time to discover it.

Once the repair has been completed, how would you confirm that it worked?
Turn on the headlights and check. This would verify that the results were as intended. (What does the customer need here? Two headlights that work.)

The other item that was on the instruction was a state safety inspection. Now I am not an expert on the New York State safety inspection, but I am willing to bet at least a can of soda that it includes the headlights. So as part of that inspection, the mechanic should turn on the headlights and check.

Even if the problem had gone undetected up to this point, it should have been caught here. Obviously the “inspection” was just a paperwork drill in this case.

Of course, as the customer, I also failed to turn on the headlights and check when I picked up the vehicle. Silly me.

What is the point of all of this?

The first step of solving any problem is to understand or verify the current condition and compare it with your expectations or standard. (More about standards and expectations later.)

Once a countermeasure had been developed and put into place, the situation must be re-checked to ensure that the countermeasure worked as intended and the process or system is back to the standard condition.

Any process has some kind of intended result. In this case, the headlight repair process should result in two headlights that work. Yet the results were not verified, and the incorrect product was delivered to the customer.

So what did all of this cost?

It cost me my time.
It cost the repair place

• Double the mechanic time.
• A headlight +the time to go get one during business hours (because they had not replaced the one they installed on the left two days earlier).
• Good will. (Later, when they failed to tighten the filter after an oil change, I stopped doing business there altogether. One mistake I was willing to overlook, but I was starting to see a trend developing. I also later had some extensive maintenance and repairs done on the truck, but I didn’t have them done there because I could not trust them to change a headlight or change the oil.)

By the way, I still have the truck. It is coming up on 200,000 miles and runs great.