Over the past 20 years, I have seen many companies initiate projects to improve existing processes. In all cases, some kind of formal or informal process already existed. Companies and their leaders embarked on process improvement efforts in hopes of eliminating process waste and increasing overall process efficiency.

Improving process efficiency and eliminating waste are generally included in the process quality improvement section. At first, quality improvement was focused on inspections, but then the focus shifted to quality management as found in the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement that peaked in the 1980s. and the early 1990s. W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Kaoru Ishikawa, Genichi Taguchi, Shigeo Shingo, Phil Crosby, and others contributed to the body of TQM knowledge that led TQM to become a huge fad.

When I started my career in the 1980s, some companies were implementing quality improvement projects based on the concepts presented by Phil Crosby in his bestselling book, Quality is free. At the time I was working in a mainframe computer manufacturing plant and they were all trained in Phil Crosby’s “zero defects” methodology. Phil Crosby’s contributions to process management focused on four principles:

1. Compliance with requirements.
2. Defect prevention instead of quality inspection and correction.
3. The quality standard on a zero defect basis.
4. Quality measured in terms of cost to the organization: the price of default (PONC).

This methodology taught me the importance of defining clear and concise requirements in advance and then measuring all deviations from those requirements (i.e. non-conformance). A deviation from the requirement was a defect. From there, it was relatively straightforward to determine the cost of non-compliance, leading to quantifiable objectives to reduce overall non-compliance. Consequently, the overall goal was to have zero defects. Crosby’s work was admirable; Even today, many valuable lessons can be drawn from their methodologies.

In the mid-1990s, we switched to quality process methodologies such as ISO 9000 and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) that is used to measure software quality. From there, companies began to focus on Six Sigma, which, among other things, cleverly repackaged the statistical process control techniques developed in the early 1900s and made these powerful tools available to many more people within the organization. .

All of these quality process techniques are very powerful and, if implemented well, tend to provide the return on investment they seek; however, in almost all situations where process and quality improvements have been implemented, they no longer exist today. Some of the process improvements became obsolete as the organization continued to grow, but most of them were simply ignored or rarely monitored after the fad passed.

Today, I see companies starting a process improvement initiative (eg TQM, ISO, CMM, Six Sigma, etc.) only to let the initiative die after a few months to a year or two. What is more alarming is that in my experience, it seems that in some cases the intention was not really to implement the process initiative fully anyway. I observed that many managers were simply following the steps of implementing robust processes. Once the initiative’s first phase of the process is completed, management tends to lose focus and enthusiasm for the initiative. How often have you heard organizations say, “We are in the middle of implementing XYZ Process Improvement” years after the initiative began? Rather than implementing robust process improvements, some companies prefer to practice process subterfuge and convey a facade of process rigor, when rigor doesn’t really exist.

I don’t think organizations and leaders are intentionally trying to mislead their employees, customers, and shareholders. Many times they really want to implement the process improvements, but find themselves “too busy being busy” and ultimately simply don’t have enough time to complete the process improvements. In other cases, the organization finds that its already tight budget does not allow process improvement initiatives to continue. Unfortunately, in these cases, the administration tends to reduce the budget to implement or improve the processes, which gives the impression that the process initiative is still well under way; however, an initiative with insufficient funds and staff tends to never be successful. Thus, the façade or process improvement subterfuge literally goes on and on.