Page 173 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

7.2 Zero Defects – Fixing mistakes
How do you fix a problem or mistake? Or handle a recurring problem? What we could do is fix the problem at hand, there and then. It may be that you’ve sent out a wrong product. So, what do you do? You send out the right product. This is expensive – it takes up your administration time, adds to your freight costs, and ends up in dissatisfaction from your customers. Then the next week, the same thing happens, and again the week after that. You’ve fixed the problem without fixing the problem. I need to repeat this as it is so common to ‘fix the problem without fixing the
problem’.
A way around this is something called Zero Defects. Zero Defects is all
about capturing these mistakes as they happen. Rather than just fixing the immediate problem, you should record these issues or mistakes. But instead of treating it like a witch hunt, you sit down and talk constructively about the reason (or reasons) the problem is happening. Analyse how it can be done better and what is causing the problem in the first place. It is looking at the system and procedure currently in place and how can it be improved to stop the problem from happening again. Instead of ‘fixing the problem’, you need to solve it to prevent it from happening long term.
We had a problem with wrong roof flashing often being sent out, and we always just sent a replacement. Then we had the expense, burnt energy, time waste and inconvenience. We sat down and discussed it as a team. More training was needed. We then carried out random checks more often to check that the right product had been picked. Yes, it was a cost, but it was a small cost in comparison to the ‘fix the