Interview With The Creator of Mr. Pareto Head

ASQ sat down with the creator of the Mr. Pareto Head comic strip to hear how he finds humor in quality and how Mr. Pareto Head came to be.

Q: What’s your background in quality?

A: I am Electronics Engineer at Rockwell Automation. First introduced to quality as a Component Engineer through failure and root cause analysis. Also starting learning about trending and Pareto analysis during this time (mid 1980s). Little did I know that Pareto would have more meaning in years to come? A deeper interest in quality took root so I became certified by ASQ in Quality Auditing, Quality Engineering, and Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence. I Also pursued Lean Six Sigma training and certification outside ASQ through an employer.

Q: How did you start doing Pareto Head comics? What gave you the idea?

A: Before I worked in engineering function, I spent a few years in the production environment repairing electronic circuit boards. There were typically 15-20 other technicians who worked in our department. We were all about the same age, just out of school. We worked hard but had a lot of laughs. I would sketch comics of the various people in the department and humorous situations that happened all the time. Years later, I noticed that there we also similar funny situations and personalities in a more “professional” engineering environment. So I adapted one of my characters, a stick figure called P-Nut Head to something more closely related to where I was working at the time.  I tried to think of a quality term to combine with P-Nut head; Outlier Head, Defect Head, Audit Head, Pareto Head. Pareto Head sounded like potato head.  There was a charming and endearing toy from my youth called Mr. Potato Head that was pretty well-known. I re-drew the character and started making some comics.

Q: Is it challenging to find humor in quality?

A: It is not challenging to find humor in the quality field. You just have to know where to draw the line.  Defective product sent to the customer is anything but funny.   So I am very careful on how I approach that.  I created a “make-believe” company called Milky Way Industries (Deming used to say “Off to the Milky Way”   when demonstrating funnel experiment).  They are the worlds #1 manufacturer of red beads.  Well, in Deming’s red bead experiment, the red beads resemble defects. So, I can make a joke that this imaginary company is trying to produce Red Beads.

Q: What’s the role of humor in the quality field?

A: People in quality are typically dealing with problems every hour of every day. Whether we are trying to prevent issues through planning or auditing, or we are in reaction mode when problems occur, quality professionals can often be linked to unpopular things and it can wear on you a bit. Humor in this field, like any other field, will keep things loose.

Q: How do you get your ideas for comic strips?

A: Most ideas come from two sources. One is related to all the various quality terms that can be turned into humor.  For example a “Run Chart”. I made a comic where Mr. Pareto Head had a particular chart that showed bad news, so he slipped it under the boss’s door and ran away. Now he knew why they called it a Run Chart. Most ideas probably come from interactions and meetings. When I hear something funny that shows promise, I will jot it down and revisit at a later date. I have quite a list of potential ideas. Some of the funny topics do not translate into a three frame comic strip very well.  So I can’t use everything. Every month I work with Associate Editor Mark Edmund on providing a comic. A fair amount of the first drafts are pretty good as-is. Some take a bit of tweaking. Mark and I, with additional help and approval from Editor Seiche Sanders, will come up with the final product. I will add, that after 16 years of doing this each month, it can be a challenge to try and come up with something new and not repeat myself.   The staff at ASQ (current and years’ past) have been very supportive.

Q: What has been the best part of creating the Mr. Pareto Head cartoon strip ?

A: There have been several side benefits to doing the comic strip that I did not realize when I started. I get occasional request from ASQ members to use a particular comic in their training material or newsletter to make a point. Also, I have had the opportunity to speak (Meet Mr. Pareto Head) at several ASQ sections near where I live. Elyria, Toledo, Cleveland, Akron/Canton, Erie, Ashtabula, Columbus. My favorite was probably the event at Pittsburgh ASQ. It was at a Brewery/Restaurant. I’m not sure what it was, but everyone seemed to be laughing a bit more and enjoying themselves at this particular event. I must say, for someone who has no artistic skills (stick figures only) it is quite satisfying that I can be doing this for so long and still be hearing positive feedback. It makes it all worth doing for another few years.

from A View from the Q http://asq.org/blog/2016/11/interview-with-the-creator-of-mr-pareto-head/

The Challenge for Sheet Metal Fabricators when Using the “Best-Case” Scenario for Planning

Joe has done an amazing job taking over a company that was in trouble and getting it solidly back on track. His laser focus on product quality and customer service has helped him triple his customer base and increase his revenue tenfold. He has outgrown his manufacturing space – twice in the few years that Joe has been a customer of ETM Manufacturing. As you might expect, Joe has had his challenges.

Recently, we accepted an order from Joe and production has been delayed waiting for tooling and artwork release. Despite the delay caused at his end, Joe’s customer still expects ETM to deliver his order on time because he now finds himself up against a shipping deadline that could put his reputation on the line.

As sheet metal fabrication suppliers, we are often caught between Joe’s struggle to deliver to his customers, and our struggle of delivering to him despite not having received everything we needed on time from him. What can Joe do to make sure we get the parts to him as fast as possible so that he can get that shipment to his customers within reasonable time?

Here are a few options he can choose from:

Option 1 – Inform the Customer that the Shipment will Be Late

While delivering bad news is never easy, informing the customer up-front provides the customer with more time to plan for the delay. With this option, parts are not rushed, inspection is not rushed and quality parts will be shipped. Expediting costs such as overtime will also be avoided. There’s only one but a rather colossal downside to choosing this option: Joe’s reputation of providing great customer service might suffer considerable damage.

Option 2 – Spend ‘Whatever It Takes’ to Ship On-Time

This option involves throwing money at the problem, which covers unlimited overtime and offers to expedite. While this may sound good in theory, to my surprise, very few employees want to work a lot of overtime. Maybe this is a part of their family values or could be a direct result of millennial priorities affecting work. In some cases, employees that are already working overtime, reach their maximum working capacity. The same is true for expedite fees. Many companies are happy to help when they are not busy, but afraid to promise to expedite because they may not be able to pull it off. How would you feel not receiving your order on time despite paying a higher price for faster delivery?

Option 3 – Call In Your “Favors”

Sometimes this involves a simple phone call to a senior manager to remind him or her of the long-term relationship you’ve shared with them and what this means to the relationship. Sometimes it is the promise of additional business (i.e., if we ship this on-time, there is all this other business we can win). Sometimes an emotional plea could do the trick. We are all familiar with these tactics, maybe used them ourselves, but we also know that they can only be effective if used infrequently because there’s only so many times Joe can pull out a wild card!

Option 4 – Manage Your Suppliers

In some cases, customers ask us for our best possible timeline and we stretch to give that to them. This is typically followed up with a request to update the schedule daily (or even multiple times a day). We are all aware that micromanaging demotivates our employees, and the same is true for custom sheet metal fabricators. It feels like we are being “punished” when asked for daily updates because they interrupt our momentum in producing parts, when we are essentially busting our butt recovering from a time delay we didn’t cause. This discourages us, as suppliers, from providing Joe a best-case scenario, just to avoid the daily update “beatings.”

In working with your suppliers, haven’t you all been in Joe’s position at some point or the other? Delays happen, they could be inevitable at times, and you may not even be directly responsible for them. But, ultimately what matters is – were you able to successfully deliver the order to your customers, albeit a little late?

In Joe’s case, he has done a reasonable job of using all of these options in a way that works best for him, his customer, and his supplier. He has already reached out to his customer to let them know there was a week’s delay but he is constantly working to reduce that delay. He has offered to pay expedite fees for delays that his company has caused. He has called in favors with his anodizer to help expedite something that would normally take us longer to achieve. And, he is helping us make decisions as and when they occur so that there is very little time delay in production. His courses of action clearly explain why he has been growing so successfully.

ETM Manufacturing is dedicated to helping our customers remain competitive by providing products, services, and support for companies who want more from their supply chain management consultants.

Want to learn more about fostering supply chain trust? Download our free eBook on Improving Trust in Your Supply Chain.

from ETM Manufacturing http://etmmfg.com/3780

Bell Labs Designing a New Phone System Using Idealized Design

I remember hearing this same story when Russ Ackoff spoke at the Hunter Conference on Quality (which was named in honor of my father) in Madison, Wisconsin.

If you haven’t heard this story you are in for a treat. And if you haven’t heard Russell Ackoff before you get to enjoy a great storyteller.

"Tape" of Ackoff’s Bell Lab Lecture at the US Navy.

If you would limit yourself to paying attention to 5 thinkers to advance your understanding of managing organizations Ackoff should be one of them. Of course, many managers don’t even try to learn from 5 leading management thinkers to do their jobs better over their career. So for many people just learning from Ackoff, Deming, Scholtes etc. they would be far ahead of the path they are now for their career. Of course you are not limited to learning from 5 people so you can learn from more if you want to be a better manager and leader.

I probably remember much from maybe 5 talks from the more than 5 years I attended the Hunter Conference (and they were the best conferences I have attended – this might explain why the last conference I attended was maybe 7 years ago). This was one of them. And I realized that Ackoff was someone I could learn a great deal from and it caused me to learn a great deal from Russ Ackoff over the next decade.

Related: Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs (2006) – Corporations Are Not Led By Those Seeking to Maximize Shareholder Value, Russ Ackoff – Transformation and Redesign at the White House Communications Agency – Russell L. Ackoff: 1919 -2009 – Dr. Russell Ackoff Webcast on Systems Thinking – Designing a New Organization (2005)

from Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2016/10/19/bell-labs-designing-a-new-phone-system-using-idealized-design/

Why Seeing a Sheet Metal Specialist Matters

Getting a good solution to patellofemoral syndrome is as hard for custom sheet metal fabrication!

My youngest daughter has the fortune of having inherited many of her mother’s lovely traits, but the misfortune of having been diagnosed with patellofemoral syndrome (PFS), which results is some sharp knee pain when she is running or climbing steps. This can be very tough for a future varsity cheerleader. The first doctor told her to take it easy—that it would get better. The second doctor prescribed a 12-week regimen of physical therapy—that didn’t work. Finally, we got a referral to Dr. Vorderer, a specialist with Children’s Hospital at Waltham. The answer: orthopedic inserts, but unfortunately, it took six months to get that answer. And we know we aren’t alone! I see this scenario play out repeatedly in our sheet metal fabrication business as well. It’s a different kind of pain, but can hurt your business just the same.

Stuck in a Painful Rut?

Some simple questions can help diagnose if you have a problem with your sheet metal fabricator.

• Have you had repeated problems with a sheet metal part from the same supplier?
• Have you stayed with your sheet metal fabricator through repeated problems and incidents?
• Have you kept count and documented how many times you had a problem?
• Has that sheet metal part been giving you pain for six months or more?
• Have you considered seeking a sheet metal specialist?
• Are you confused when trying to establish what kind of sheet metal specialist you need?

Seeking a Specialist

If you’ve struggled with the answers to any of the questions above—you might consider a second opinion … from a custom sheet metal fabricator. Biased, yes, but with good reason! Custom sheet metal fabrication is what we do and we are often the go-to solution for people who have the pain points described above.

At ETM Manufacturing, we inherit our fair share of “problems” with customers bringing us their problem parts from other suppliers. When this happens, here is how we help our customers:

1. We tell you up front if this is a problem part and whether we think we can make it.
2. If we can’t make it, we’ll let you know if it can be made and who specializes in how to make it.
3. If you are open, we’ll also suggest design changes to improve its manufacturability.

Investing in Future Wellbeing

We’ll also dig deeper to see what resources our customers may (or may not) have at their fingertips to help assess relevant capabilities and options based on their needs. There are several times when we’ve visited a customer’s engineering department to educate their team on roll forming or tube bending (we do neither) so they can save money and ramp to production. Why? Of course, we want our customers to be successful, and if our customers are successful, we believe more business will come to us as well. Think about my daughter: if her original doctor had set her up in orthopedic inserts, it would have saved her five months of pain and she would have stayed with this doctor for the rest of her life. Unlike her original doctor, we want our customers for life.

ETM Manufacturing is dedicated to helping our customers remain competitive by providing products, services, and support for companies who want more from their supply chain management consultants. Whether or not you have a problem, we’d be happy to discuss your sheet metal fabrication needs with you. Contact us and we can help keep your pain prognosis at bay.

from ETM Manufacturing http://etmmfg.com/3770

Tech Tip: How to get a rounded edge on a sheet metal part

Hi Everyone! This is Clint, your Sheet Metal Fabrication Technical Manager.  We had an interesting sheet metal RFQ come in that I wanted to share with you.

Have you ever had an application where you needed a sheet metal part with a curled edge? Sometimes customers want that rounded edge for extra thick edges, sometimes they want that thick edge to interlock with another part, and sometimes they want to use that opening in the rounded edge.  In the sheet metal world, we call that rounded edge a “hem” and they come in 2 basic styles – a “closed hem” and an “open hem”.

Us sheet metal fabricators can make this kind of sheet metal feature pretty easily. We take a flat piece of metal and form it into an angle, then come down again on the angle to close it on top of the flat piece.  If we want a closed hem, we come right down on top of the flat piece.  If we want an open hem, then we come down on top of a spacer (an extra piece of metal the thickness you want the opening), then we slide out the spacer.

The tricky bit for any sheet metal fabricator is when you want the sheet metal we’re forming to be thick. Generally any sheet metal over 1/8” thick could have micro-cracking on the outside of the rounded edge (aka the outside of the hem).  Steel parts generally have less issues with micro-cracking than aluminum.

For you sheet metal engineers, these micro-cracks occur because the inside of the hem is under compression and the outside is under tension. Once the bending force exceeds the yield strength of the material (necessary to bend any sheet metal), you’ll get these micro-cracks.  The part works fine, but if you look close enough, you’ll notice them.  Plate the part and you’ll notice it more.

All sheet metal comes with a grain from the processing mill, so we can reduce any micro-cracks if we form the hem opposite of the grain. Yes, you could probably reduce the micro-cracks if you heated the tool or the sheet metal (yes, we have been asked that!), but please don’t ask.  Controlling heat for consistency is difficult and could be dangerous.  A better way for a sheet metal fabricator to reduce micro-cracking is to make the hem incrementally, by using multiple hits on the press brake tool (a.k.a. “bumping”) to gradually form the radius.

Going into production with a design feature like this? There is help!  This feature is common enough that the punch press tooling companies have special tooling that can form these hems in the punch press.  So much faster and so much more consistent than doing this in the brake!  There are some exceptions – this really only works for thicknesses 0.062” or less and your part geometry needs to allow space for this tooling to work. As always, give me a call and we can help you through it.  My number is 978-486-9050.

from ETM Manufacturing http://etmmfg.com/3755

October Roundtable

Every month, ASQ selects a quality-themed topic or question for Influential Voices bloggers to discuss as part of a round table. The October  topic is: How can employers leverage quality to invite innovation?

Some companies choose to use monetary rewards to motivate their employees. Other companies rely on using open and collaborative environments. Some focus on idea sharing between colleagues. What is the most effective technique?

If you’re interested in taking part in future roundtables, please contact social@asq.org.

David Grossman ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, CSP, is one of America’s foremost authorities on communication and leadership, and a sought-after speaker and advisor to Fortune 500 leaders. A three-time author, David is CEO of The Grossman Group an award-winning Chicago-based strategic leadership development and internal communication consultancy. He blogs at leadercommunicator.

Jimena Calfa Argentina native Jimena Calfa is a Quality Manager and ASQ Senior member who is truly involved in raising the value of quality and focusing on continuous process improvement. She blogs at OnQuality.info.

Chris Moustakas President, Chief Executive Officer. Chris entered the enterprise software industry right after graduation. He helped design and build mission-critical applications in industries as varied as Insurance, Banking, Healthcare, and Utilities. Today, Chris is passionate about helping organizations of any size become more agile and improve their operations by adopting the Devonway platform approach to their digital needs.

Luigi F. Sille is the Quality Manager of the Curaçao Red Cross Blood Bank Foundation. Luigi is from Curaçao, a small island in the Caribbean.He is now a senior member of the ASQ, and one of the foremost quality professionals on the island. He achieved the ASQ CMQ/OE, CQA, CQPA, and CQIA certifications. He is very passionate about quality, and promoting quality. This is done through his Blog, sharequality.wordpress.com.

David Grossman

Leaders need to lead and invite innovation through their actions. Fostering innovation starts with a corporate culture that values and recognizes diversity and inclusion in its broadest definition. These aren’t words on a vision poster but a core organizational value that’s seen and reinforced in the actions of every single leader.

It’s difficult to innovate without a wide range of perspectives that are welcomed and embraced. A myriad of viewpoints need to be sought out regularly and valued. Employees need to feel empowered. It’s important that leaders create an atmosphere that inspires employees to be creative thinkers and contribute their ideas to solving business problems and creating the future together.

This also means giving people the right resources to set them up for success and being there – as the leader – to encourage continued collaboration and productive conflict that comes from a wonderful diversity of thoughts and ideas. Only out of looking at varied choices can smart and strategic innovations be created.

Jimena Calfa

There are out there a lot of techniques and strategies that can address innovation, but the foundation to cultivate innovation is to “create and promote a collaborative and respectful environment where employees have the space and feel the freedom to innovate, in a regular basis”.

What has to be in that innovative environment?

• Motivated top Managers to innovate and that can encourage employees to get out of their comfort zone and reaching for new ideas.
• Time and Resources to innovate.
• Innovation is inherently risky, so employees must have the freedom of failure and taking risk. Managers should promote that FAILURE is not a negative but a must-happen positive learning experiences from where innovative ideas can be born.
• As much as disparate groups as possible to boost the brainstorming of ideas.
• Time to celebrate and reward employees for being innovative, no matter the results.
• The most important part for employees: they have to feel the sensation of ownership to the idea. People do a better job when they believe in what they do is adding value to the company and they are being recognized for that.

People have a lot of great ideas. If you give them the space to think out of the box, you will be surprise of the results. Nobel Prize Winner Dr Albert Szent-Gyorgyi said

”Innovation is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.”

Chris Moustakas

Quality can invite innovation with two simple yet powerful techniques:

• Empowering employees to participate.
• Recognizing them when they do.

When Quality tools are accessible to the entire organization – especially the ground floor where waste is seen firsthand – it becomes a part of the culture. And when workers see that their ideas are listened to and recognized, innovation flourishes – especially when the success of their ideas are validated with real, objective measurements, which proves that Quality has value and encourages people to trust the process.

Luigi F. Sille:

Nowadays the competition is very tough, and organizations have to do a lot to stay in the game. So companies/organizations must go the extra mile. They must think and do something more, something extra: something customers have not anticipated.

Employers can benefit a lot by creating an innovation culture in their organization. Creating a culture for innovation in your organization means that the top of the organization must:

• Listen (and be willing) to identify opportunities, ideas: Sometimes the greatest ideas don’t come from experts
• Take the creativity step (thinking of new ideas: brainstorming)
• Generating new ideas
• Leaders and managers must give their visible support.

Tangible and intangible rewards motivate each employee differently, and not the same way each time. The most effective technique. There is NONE. The most effective way to motivate employees is a combination of Tangible and Intangible rewards.

My personal opinion:

• Just the feeling of an employee being important to the organization, and have an input in the development and improvement in the quality of the product and or service will make miracles.
• Employees want to be respected as human beings.

An empowered employee is maybe more motivated to perform better, than just rewarding him or her with money.

from A View from the Q http://asq.org/blog/2016/10/october-roundtable/

What are your sheet metal fabricators doing with their profits?

Last weekend my family and I had the pleasure of walking in the rain to support the Vernon Cancer Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital.  My wife works there and I have heard so much about all the great work they do to help patients recover or treat their cancer.  Every year, the hospital hosts an event, Hope Walks, as a fundraiser for the Cancer Center and it is a great way for patients and caregivers to support something so dear to all of us.  Sunday’s keynote speaker, Melody Tortosa, originally help fund the Cancer Center and has recently been a patient at the Center.  This year alone, we raised over $225,000!  As the owner of a Boston sheet metal fabricator, I couldn’t help wonder “What do they do with all that money?”

We’ve all heard about the expense of American medical treatment, so I was really thinking, “Aren’t they charging more than enough to cover their expenses?” I learned on my walk that, “No”, they really aren’t able to cover their expenses.  The why was very interesting to me.  It turns out that Medicaid/Medicare reimburses a fixed amount for a certain diagnosis.  Supplemental health insurance covers more but maybe not all of the expenses for a diagnosis.  Beyond numbers, every visitor to the Vernon Center Center is human – with different pain thresholds, different reactions to their treatment and different effects on other illnesses the visitor might have.  The fixed amount may be more than enough for the visitor with a high pain threshold and no complications, but less than enough for the visitor with a low pain threshold and many complications.  What do you do in that case?  What if YOU were that case?

For the Vernon Cancer Center, they use the Hope Walks funds to provide non-covered services for the visitor that needs more support than the fixed reimbursement amount allows. Examples include a Patient Navigator to help the visitor understand where and when to go for help, assistance for parents that are faced with a cancer diagnosis in their children, as well as tons of psychological, physical, social and educational support for folks struggling with a potential life taking illness.  Who knew that wasn’t covered?

In sheet metal fabrication, believe it or not we are faced with the same thing. The appearance of clean looking engineering drawings and standard costs give us all the impression that our standard pricing and lead time will be good enough for every part.  The truth of it is that some parts are more difficult than others to make (i.e., some parts require grain direction a certain way, but that is never called out on the drawing) and some parts have more complicated supply chain paths than others (i.e., parts that require a special anodizing process and then laser etching with another supplier).  As a sheet metal buyer with hundreds if not thousands of parts being sourced, how do you know which part is going to cause your heartburn and which one will end your career?  You don’t; you need someone who has the extra resources to get you out of jam even though no one expected any problems on that part.

At ETM Manufacturing, we have our own version of Hope Walks – it’s called our annual profit. Every day we give that profit back to our customers who got in a jam because none of us knew there would be an issue.  At the end of the year, if there is any left over, we buy equipment to help our customers grow, we reward our employees so they stay to help our customers, or we pay down our debt so we can be around for a long time to help our customers.  No golf club memberships, no second home at the Cape, no amazing vacations, no filet mignon dinners and caviar wishes.  All of it goes back to you, one way or another.

So, what are your sheet metal fabricators doing with their profits?

from ETM Manufacturing http://etmmfg.com/3746