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Document created: 1 September 2008
Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2008
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Lt Col Graham W. Rinehart, USAF, Retired*
I read with interest Randall Schwalbe’s critique of my article “How the Air Force Embraced ‘Partial Quality’ (and Avoiding Similar Mistakes in New Endeavors)” (Winter 2006). His critique, “Lean Is No Flavor of the Month” (Fall 2007), is well thought out but somewhat misses the point.
First, I agree with his assertion that “design defines quality” (p. 16), but I would add that design does not determine quality: execution of the design determines the quality of the final product or service. A well-designed widget that is poorly made could still be considered low quality—think of a socket wrench that won’t ratchet or that bends under a modicum of force—and a poorly designed widget that is well made could be considered high quality if it gets the job done. (Perhaps its quality level would be considered “high enough.”)
Mr. Schwalbe makes the statement about design and quality as a means of saying that the “fundamental flaw” of my article is that I confuse “quality with process improvement” (p. 16). That my article deals with the way the Air Force implemented quality-improvement ideas in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and attempts to show that the ideas themselves were sound but the execution was flawed, does not seem to come through: my execution, apparently, was itself flawed.
Schwalbe spends a large portion of his critique defending the tenets of Lean techniques, which have been proven effective and do not need his defense. In fact his defense is sometimes hard to follow. He tries to differentiate Lean from Six Sigma and then states that “Lean involves reducing process variability” (emphasis in original, p. 16)—something that the statistical process-control techniques of Six Sigma do.
In disagreeing with a comparison I make between past quality-improvement implementation and what had been proposed more recently, Schwalbe makes another surprising statement that “TQM [Total Quality Management] has very little relevance in the service sector” (p. 16). I have tried to point out in my writings that the TQM name is unimportant to the issue of quality and in fact may have contributed to the frontline military’s rejection of the improvement ethos; rather, quality-improvement principles under whatever name have always been relevant to the service sector even if that sector was slow to accept them.
Schwalbe’s umbrage that the “ignominy” of TQM “drags Lean into the depths of ridicule” (p. 16) is understandable, but his attempt to differentiate the two—in effect claiming they are worlds apart—does not withstand close scrutiny. At one point, he quotes something I quoted as if I had written it myself, an indication that he may have confused my meaning. He writes that “the array of inaccurate or misleading statements in the name of Lean is one of the primary reasons that people disdain it” and then seems to prove his own point with the cute statement that, contrary to his earlier assertions, “Lean is the total absence of ‘irrashional’ policies and regulations” (p. 17).
One area in which it becomes clear that Schwalbe has missed the point of my article is his reference to the Toyota Production System. First, the phenomenon in which “production analysts of major firms study, analyze, fret over, and mimic Toyota’s system but continuously come up short” (p. 17) was actually predicted by statistical consultant Dr. W. Edwards Deming years ago. Deming would say that these major firms tried to copy what they did not understand, which is a recipe for failure. Second, and more salient to this discussion, the commercial success of Toyota, Ford, Motorola, and so forth, is not the best argument for convincing the military that these new tools and techniques are germane to its mission. Obviously I did not make that point clear enough in my original article, so let me reiterate that, in order for members of the rank and file to see Lean or any other improvement effort as vital to their service’s continued success, these efforts must be adapted to the core military mission as much as (if not more than) they are adapted to ancillary functions.
Statistical techniques designed to ensure that repetitive processes produce uniform results; continuous quality-improvement efforts that seek to improve “form, fit, and function” and customer satisfaction; and Lean initiatives that eliminate non-value-added effort and other waste are all highly effective, time-proven ways to make organizations better. But all too often they do not touch the military mission, and therefore they do not reach the military mind.
Cary, North Carolina
*The author is a writer and editor living in North Carolina.
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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