In manufacturing facilities many employees view the quality personnel as cops. “Their whole job is to come out and beat us up when processes don’t produce quality products,” they complain. “We can’t help it. Why are they always on our backs?”

There’s some truth to that mindset. If a process is running properly and designed correctly, quality product is produced 95 percent of the time. For 5 percent of the time, there’s a chance of producing nonconforming, suspect, or bad parts due to natural variation in the process or manufacturing equipment. Therefore, it’s the operator’s responsibility to take charge of the process and help ensure that only good products reach the customer.

Let’s define that a bit. Who is our customer? Believe it or not, everyone is our customer. If you make a product that moves to another employee in your facility, that person is your customer. No matter how many steps there are in the process before product goes out the door and on the truck, the employees involved in those steps are your customers. Ensuring your customers are happy is your primary job.

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