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Document created: 1 September 2007
Air & Space
Power Journal - Fall 2007
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Randall Schwalbe*
Lt Col Graham Rinehart’s article “How the Air Force Embraced ‘Partial Quality’ (and Avoiding Similar Mistakes in New Endeavors)” (Winter 2006) is poignant and timely on two levels: (1) he tells the truth, and (2) he exposes the reason the Air Force has trouble accepting these gee-whiz, flavor-of-the-month improvement programs. As a manufacturing operations analyst with Boeing’s Satellite Development Center, I have given all this rhetoric considerable thought and found that Colonel Rinehart’s argument has a fundamental flaw: he confuses quality with process improvement. Yes, the latter begets the former, but design defines quality. Lean techniques produce quality products and services faster and cheaper. One can define both product and service in terms of quality (how good the service is for the price). Lean is interested only in the cost of quality (i.e., the amount of skill, material, and time required to provide the service or make the product—to create value, not determine it).
Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma deal with managing the resultant quality of a product and reducing product variability. Lean involves reducing process variability. Think about it: Six Sigma is a program named after the quality capability of a process that yields a success rate of 99.9997 percent. In other words, out of one million opportunities for error, only three actually occur. Lean is only indirectly concerned with quality output. It focuses primarily on the elimination of waste and the flow of value within a process (not necessarily a project).
I disagree with the following statement by Colonel Rinehart: “The proclamation that ‘the continuous process improvements of AFSO [Air Force Smart Operations] 21 will be the new culture of our Air Force’ could just as easily have been made for the era of Total Quality Management” (34). On the one hand, TQM has very little relevance in the service sector, so its ignominy drags Lean into the depths of ridicule because of the confusion between the two terms. On the other, Lean is hugely relevant in the service sector as well as in manufacturing. Keep in mind that manufacturing consumes resources and materials to produce something, but services merely consume. Thus, Lean training and applications take on different approaches for manufacturing versus service, but, all in all, given a process and a customer, one can apply Lean.
Colonel Rinehart makes another provocative comment when he says, “But not everyone has forgotten TQM. As one retiring chief master sergeant recently put it, ‘I’ve been zero defected, total quality managed, micromanaged, one-minute managed, synergized, had my paradigms shifted, had my paradigms broken, and been told to decrease my habits to seven’” (35). Notice that he never mentions Lean in this derisive statement. The only real paradigm shift needed is the true commitment by executive management to get Lean, which is merely a commonsense way of eliminating waste from processes. For everyone else, the paradigm shift consists of working and living in a Lean environment, surrounded by pervasive Lean thinking and a pursuit of process perfection.
Whenever I read articles or books about Lean, certain key phrases indicate whether or not the author has thoroughly considered the principles or is merely parroting other works. For example, suppose someone suffers from a severe rash in three areas of his or her body. This person’s mission in life is to “maximize value and minimize waste in [all] operations [(processes)]” (34). Therefore, to maximize the quality of life, he or she selects two of the three major rash areas and applies therapeutic ointment, thus attempting to minimize waste but not eliminate it. This may sound like picayune wordsmithing, but the array of inaccurate or misleading statements in the name of Lean is one of the primary reasons that people disdain it. Moreover, would our chief master sergeant mind living with the reduced rash? Those who tolerate unreasonable regulations do precisely that. Lean is the total absence of “irrashional” policies and regulations.
“The Four Pillars of Partial Quality” section of Colonel Rinehart’s article seems a bit bizarre. I became exhausted just reading through what amounts to simply another unwitting testimony that focusing on manufacturing-centric quality in a service environment merely encourages inane behavior and produces more fodder for Lean critics. Does not using a wrench to drive a nail invite criticism?
Finally, Colonel Rinehart demonstrates how success blinded US companies to the need to stay globally competitive. It is taking almost forever (over 50 years and counting) for executive managers of most important companies to wake up and seriously smell the competition. Consider the Toyota Production System in terms of how it makes changes (the scientific method that is just as important as the change itself) and how management and the workforce cooperate within a company. Production analysts of major firms study, analyze, fret over, and mimic Toyota’s system but continuously come up short. Many blame this gap on our cultural differences. To a degree this is true; however, each individual—particularly those in power—can make daily choices that will collectively close that gap. In the meantime, Toyota has just displaced Chrysler as one of the Big Three automakers (in terms of US sales) and is gunning for Ford this year.
Hopefully, with the guidance and spirit of AFSO21, we will all learn how to avoid repeating the mistakes that have plagued previous improvement initiatives. However, have we truly explained what Lean is and how it applies to the service sector? As a case in point, if a series of tasks or planned activities produces a unique, deliverable item by a predetermined deadline, we call the event a project. As mentioned before, Lean does not have a direct impact on a project. However, if a task within a project is process-centric, then Lean can have a direct impact on that task. This matters because, all too often, managers plan projects (to get something done) and try to infuse Lean at the same time. Lean has virtually no effect on projects as a whole, so recklessly thrusting it on a project simply gives birth to more naysayers. Conversely, if managers focus Lean on a particular task that behaves like a process, then it will have a direct impact. Of course, if a management team is setting up a production line or service operation, then Lean plays a significant role in establishing the strategy to get the most value for the least amount of resource consumption.
Most importantly, we must avoid confusing these three business strategies: quality programs, project-management techniques, and Lean initiatives. Rather, we should concentrate on applying simple Lean principles on bona fide processes and maintain a balanced focus on functionality and producibility (making things easier to build) during the design effort. Doing so will produce a dramatic drop in the cost to get quality or more quality for the price. So step back, take a deep breath, and persuade Air Force “management” to agree to listen to recommendations from the rank and file about adjusting policies and directives in order to eliminate unnecessary activities.
El Segundo, California
*The author is a manufacturing operations analyst with Lean Enterprise, Boeing Satellite Systems, El Segundo, California.
Notes
1. Air Force Print News, “AF’s Former Top Military Lawyer to Retire in Reduced Rank,” 10 January 2005, Air Force Link, http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123009569 (accessed 8 March 2007).
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University
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