Tuesday, July 18

Systems Thinking

The concept of Systems Thinking came out of the quality movement that hit the USA in the early 1980's.  An NBC white paper entitled "If Japan Can Why Can't We?" aired and our manufacturing industry especially the automotive and electronics industry went crazy...  as they were losing market share to the Japanese. 

Dr. Edwards W. Deming was at the heart of the issue because at the end of WWII he was sent to Japan to help them rebuild their war devastated economy.  What he taught them has later become known as quality management and the soul of quality management is systems thinking.

Everything that is done from building a widget to planning for a Thanksgiving Dinner can be seen as a system.  Each system incorporates VARIATION and in order to improve the system, the variation must be eliminated or reduced.

Variation in the system can come from common causes and from special causes.  The trick is to understand which is which because the actions that one takes are substantially different.

In special cause variation, the issue must be identified and eliminated right then and there...  but, in common cause variation, the system MUST BE CHANGED.  It is this changing the system that causes so many managers problems because they were trained that if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Variation from common causes comes from the following:
  1. People
  2. Methods
  3. Raw Materials
  4. Machines
  5. Environment (Temperature as well as attitudes)
Some companies have added money to this list but I would submit that money is inherent in all five areas.

Once the variation in these five areas has been identified, it is removed or eliminated one by one.

The variation in people is obvious but the variation is not so obvious as people simply do things differently.  Everyone must be doing it the same way.  Raw materials is a bigger because how does one exercise control over a supplier or a vendor?  Still, it must be done.  Older machines have greater variation that new machines and part of that variation comes from the different techniques in repairing them.  Finally, temperature can fluctuate and that fluctuation can cause machines and raw materials to respond differently.

All variation can be tracked on control charts and those control charts can help the worker identify whether it is common or special.


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