Hoopla – Another Quality Story

As I said in a previous post, I am spending the majority of my time in China right now.

As part of his preparation for attending a corporate class, one of my kaizen specialists was reviewing some of the training materials. From the other side of the cubicle wall he asks “What is ‘hoopla?” Although his English is very good, he is Chinese, and “hoopla” just isn’t a word that they teach in the universities.

Now I know for sure he is not the first non-native English speaker to read that material, and I also strongly suspect many before him did not know what “hoopla” means. But the others just made a guess from the context and kept reading.

Derrick, though, applied the first two steps of jidoka – he Detected a problem – something wasn’t right, didn’t meet the standard, or seemed to be in the way. Then he Stopped the process, and called for assistance. Instead of guessing what to do, the Team Member pulled the andon (got his Team Leader’s attention) and pointed out the problem.

The standard in this case is that the person reading the material can understand it, or at least understand the words that are not specifically being explained by the material. In this case, that didn’t happen. “Hoopla” was not understood, so the andon was pulled.

The third step is Fix or correct the problem, restore the standard (without compromising safety or customer quality in any way) and re-start the process. I explained what “hoopla” means, and Derrick could keep reading.

The fourth step is Investigate the Root Cause, Apply a Countermeasure. I sent an email to our training developer and mentioned what has now become “the hoopla incident.” The ensuing discussion among the training developers has resulted in a set of standards and guidelines for writing materials. Among other things, it calls out the need to avoid idioms and slang that might not be understood by non-native speakers. It also addresses other issues which will both make the materials easier for non-native speakers to read and make it easier for translators working to port the material to German, French, Spanish or… Mandarin.

W e should have some hoopla! The process worked – all because someone called out something he didn’t understand instead of just dealing with it on his own.

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.

The Essence of Jidoka

SME: The Essence of Jidoka – dead link

You can download it here.

This link is to an article I wrote for the SME online “Lean Directions” site back in 2002. I am including it on this site for the sake of completeness. I noticed that the Wikipedia article on the same subject is largely derived from this, which I simply consider flattery.