Yesterday, our QA manager came to my office in a hurry, said, “The QA team is short on people, we need to hire one more person.”
It turned out the issue stemmed from the large tanks we purchased: the warehouse team lacks professional knowledge in inspecting these tanks, which has led to frequent disputes with suppliers lately. Now the warehouse team wants to hand over the tank inspection work to the QA department. But the QA team is already swamped with their own tasks. When the QA manager tried to coordinate with other departments for help, everyone said they didn’t have time either.
That’s why he came to me asking to hire someone.
I told him I couldn’t agree.
Right now, the economy is so tough, we can’t rush to hire just for tank inspections. Plus, each shipment only has a few dozen tanks, and inspections take just 30 minutes.
But the QA manager said he’d already tried every solution and every person he could think of, but still cannot have the problem solved properly.
So I invited the relevant executives and colleagues to my office for a chat (over tea) to work out a solution together.
At first, every department said their teams were already swamped with work and had no extra time to help.
I also made my stance clear, I wouldn’t agree to hiring more people. There’s no need to add staff just for inspecting tanks, and even if there seemed to be a need, we had to find a way around it.
Once everyone realized hiring wasn’t an option, we shifted focus to figuring out how to do the tank inspections well without adding new people.
Most of the disputes over the tanks happened because the warehouse would approve the tanks as “qualified,” but later the team that loads them would find defects. So we came up with a better solution, let a QA inspector and a tank-loading colleague handle the inspections together.
This arrangement makes more sense. The tanks get inspected right when they arrive, if defects are found, we can ask the driver to take them back on the spot. It just avoids all the back-and-forth disputations. Plus, the loading team already checks the tanks when they load them anyway, we’re just moving the inspection time earlier, so it doesn’t add any extra work for the loading team.
We sat down, talked it through, and solved the problem.
I’ve always said: “Quality isn’t trivial.” That doesn’t mean we have to avoid problems entirely, when you run a factory, problems are bound to happen. But when we find one, even a tiny one, we can’t let it slide.
Yesterday, I told the QA manager: “You shouldn’t be swamped with work all day, spending your most time on unimportant, disorganized wo. That’s not sustainable, it means there’s a problem with your quality management approach. As the head of the QA department, you need to carve out time to step back. Only then can you think from the company’s broader perspective, refine the quality management structure and build a solid quality assurance system.
Your time should go to two key things: analyzing the root causes of quality incidents, and continuously improving the management system.
When quality issues happen, there are basically two main reasons: objective factors, or management failures.
Most of the time, we can’t do much about objective factors. But if the problem lies in management, we have to find the root cause. Is it a flaw in the process? An unreasonable workflow? Or something else? Then, based on that cause, we need to make both temporary fixes and long-term, permanent solutions.
I’ve always thought: It’s okay to have problems, we just need to solve them. Even if we can’t fix them right away, that’s fine too, we can work on them gradually.
What I fear most is when my team members spot a problem, can’t solve it themselves, but don’t speak up about it.
In fact, I really welcome and even look forward to my employees telling me about the issues the company is facing—and my customers pointing out where our products need improvement.
Because the process of solving problems is also how we grow and make progress.
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