Quality at the Top

Harris Semiconductor's Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, plant

demonstrates how quality from the top

permeates the entire organization.

Organizational leadership, and especially change management, is like riding a horse. A rider cannot get a horse to jump a fence by simply pointing the horse at it and going along for the ride. The horse can sense the rider's confidence, determination and commitment, or lack of them. "Throw your heart over the fence, and the horse will follow." Otherwise, the horse will go around the obstacle, pull up short or even throw the rider. This is a common fate of business leaders who expect quality programs to work without management commitment.

How can business leaders show commitment, determination and confidence? ISO 9000 tells us we must "say what we do, and do what we say." Gen. George S. Patton would have added, "Say what you mean, and mean what you say." Harris Semiconductor's plant in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, shows how a management team put this principle into practice.

Change requires ongoing effort

The Harris Mountaintop plant underwent a major turnaround in the 1990s. The dramatic changes in the plant's organization and culture have progressed for five-and-a-half years, and they are continuing. There are two major observations here: "five-and-a-half years" and "continuing."

First, there is no instant quality program that will produce miraculous results in a month or two. Stephen R. Covey's "Law of the Farm" is a better model. A business organization, like a farm, is a natural system, and there are no shortcuts in natural systems. We must plow and plant in the spring and tend the crops during the summer, before we can harvest in the fall. Management must provide patient, consistent support for quality programs to make them work.

Second, change and improvement are not one-time events. QS-9000 calls for continuous improvement activities. The Japanese word kaizen means continuing improvement, and it applies to both people and organizations.

Persistence is a critical element for success in organizational change. Uncertainty about roles and missions marked the first year of Mountaintop's transformation. The management team had to guide, direct and drive the changes.

A preliminary effort to set up self-directed work teams caused resentment and role uncertainty because the plant did not institute the teams sitewide. Employees who were not on the teams resented the special attention the participants apparently received. The management team realized it had to take an all-or-nothing approach, and this succeeded.

We must not let setbacks discourage us from moving forward. After five years, however, there is no chance of going back or losing the gains. The organizational culture has internalized the changes, and they are secure.

Structure sends a clear message

The Mountaintop plant introduced self-directed work teams in 1991. The plant also eliminated two management layers: superintendent and foreman. The removal of these positions showed the workers that the management team meant what it said. "We're going to flatten the organizations and give autonomy to the front-line workers." Harris' corporate management team agreed with these changes.

The plant reassigned the former superintendents and foremen to other jobs. The management team had to dismiss a few, however, because they would not accept the changes. They wanted to keep telling the workers what to do.

Insistence on buy-in is unambiguous evidence of the leader's commitment to the change process. Gen. Patton used this leadership style when he took command of First Armored Corps. He insisted that everyone, including himself, run a daily mile with full military packs. Anyone who refused to do this or to accept Patton's leadership style had to transfer out of the organization.

We can reduce such resistance, however, by helping managers adapt to their new roles. Many companies focus on training front-line workers while ignoring managers. This is also a problem with other quality techniques and programs. Managers do not learn enough about the techniques they hope to deploy into the work force. The Mountaintop plant trains everybody in critical tools, such as synchronous flow manufacturing.

The plant also applied W. Edward Deming's advice to break down organizational barriers. It assigned the technicians who formerly worked for the engineering department to the teams. Machine attendants and maintenance workers also became integral parts of the manufacturing teams. The plant encourages engineers and managers to attend and participate in team meetings.

In 1996, the plant reorganized its steering committee to include front-line workers, machine attendants and technicians. While the management team retains overall responsibility, the steering committee guides the plant's culture and develops new initiatives.

Figure 1 shows the plant's organizational priorities. The plant operating goals are the central focus because survival and profitability depend on satisfying our customers. The diagram recognizes the self-directed teams' central role in achieving these goals.

Gen. Patton said that soldiers, not officers, win wars. The officers provide leadership, guidance and direction, but the front-line soldiers achieve the results. It works the same way in business competition.

Get rid of unnecessary perquisites

Tom Peters urges managers to do away with reserved parking places and executive washrooms and dining rooms. The Mountaintop plant did this and went a step further. In late 1995, the plant lost its best parking lot to a construction project. Some people had to park across the street, in a lot that belonged to another factory. Site management decided that managers and salaried employees would park in the less desirable lot. The hourly workers would park in the lot that was closer to the plant. This is another example of commitment to principles.

Performance measurements

Performance measurements and rewards also display the management team's real priorities. We cannot tell workers "quality first" and then rate them only on how many pieces they ship. We cannot institute just-in-time or synchronous flow manufacturing when performance measurements urge everyone to ship as many parts as they can. Such measurements tie up cash in big piles of useless inventory. Mountaintop changed its performance measurements to reflect the changes in direction and culture. The plant stopped rating departments and shifts on how much product they shipped.

The reward system also promoted the new culture. Rewards include recognition, and the self-directed teams have many opportunities for recognition. The teams give semiannual presentations to the plant's steering committee, and they have even spoken with the semiconductor sector's president. The recognition system also promoted a plantwide scrap-reduction campaign. Every successful project earned its team an entry in a plantwide lottery, so teams with more projects had better chances to win. The four winning teams sent representatives to the sector's other plants in Findlay, Ohio; Palm Bay, Florida; Dundalk, Ireland; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Mountaintop's latest labor contract included the hourly workers in the plant's variable pay plan. Production workers now receive the same performance-related bonus that salaried workers get. This reward system is a concrete declaration that everybody is part of the same organization.

We must not let setbacks discourage us from

moving forward. After five years, however, there is no

chance of going back or losing the gains. The organizational

culture has internalized the changes, and they are secure.

Show confidence

Leaders also show commitment by showing confidence in their people. Mountaintop's Customer Contact Teams give front-line workers immense responsibility, while applying Tom Peters' advice to make the company open to customers. The Customer Contact Teams consist primarily of front-line manufacturing workers, whose function is to visit workers on the customer's factory floor. The people who make Harris' parts meet face to face with the people who use them. This gives Harris' front-line workers a key role in customer relations, while shortening the communication path between the people who make the parts and the people who use them. These teams have developed innovative solutions to problems and have even delivered customized improvements for individual customers.

The Mountaintop plant shares financial and operating data with the teams. A monthly all-employee communication meeting shows how the plant is doing against its financial goals. The presentation also shows customer satisfaction indexes and on-time shipment data. Teams use financial data to quantify their scrap-reduction projects and other quality improvement activities.

The plant even gave front-line workers a role in achieving ISO 9000 registration. To prepare for ISO 9000 and QS-9000, the plant had to revise its quality manual. It chose to delegate this task to cross-functional teams. This action sent a message throughout the plant: "Quality is everyone's job, not only the quality department's." Anyone can put up a banner or slogan that says this. Only a management team with commitment, however, will ask a large cross-section of the plant's personnel to rewrite the quality manual.

The ISO 9000 effort also required the plant to rewrite some operating instructions and write new ones. The front-line workers have to use the instructions, and they know the job better than anyone else. The plant therefore encouraged the production workers to write their own instructions, with technical supervision by the responsible engineers.

Give a toolbox, not a tool

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." If we introduce a quality program, people may assume they should use it no matter what. Even if, and perhaps especially if, the management team shows commitment to the program, its dogmatic application can be a liability.

Overall equipment effectiveness is an example. An OEE program would try to improve efficiencies for every workstation in the plant. This seems like an admirable goal, but it is less effective than focusing on the constraint, or bottleneck, operation. No multistep manufacturing process can work faster than its slowest operation. To get more capacity, we must improve efficiency at the constraint. If we try to improve efficiencies at every workstation, we will achieve marginal improvements everywhere but excellence nowhere. While Mountaintop uses preventive maintenance at all operations to avoid downtime, it focuses improvement efforts on its constraint operations.

Some organizations view statistical process control as a magical quality assurance tool. They put SPC charts on every process and at every workstation. No one can keep track of all of the charts, so people stop paying attention to them.

This is a classic example of the organization serving the system (or tool), instead of the system serving the organization. The chart ceases to be a quality improvement tool and becomes an object of ritualistic worship to which the organization sacrifices time and resources. Harris Semiconductor places SPC charts only at critical processes: operations that can have major effects on quality, yield or reliability.

Harris Semiconductor uses the quality tool set concept. As shown in Figure 1, Mountaintop equips its self-directed teams with a toolbox that contains many quality improvement techniques. Teams learn about Pareto charts, cause-and-effect diagrams, control charts, preventive maintenance and other quality tools. They select and use the tools that apply to their particular situations.

The following summary of actions shows Mountaintop's commitment to its quality initiatives. They are easily applicable to other manufacturing industries and service industries.

Mountaintop changed its organizational structure, removed supervisory layers and got rid of excess job descriptions.

The leaders gave up perquisites like reserved parking spaces and special dining areas. This broke down the "us/them" distinction between hourly workers, salaried workers and managers.

Performance measurements and rewards supported the new culture.

The management team delegated critical responsibilities to front-line workers. These include customer relations and process documentation. Mountaintop relies on a tool kit, not dogmatic application of specific quality tools.

About the author

William A. Levinson is a staff engineer at Harris Semiconductor's plant in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. He is author of The Way of Strategy (ASQC Quality Press, 1994) and co-author with Frank Tumbelty of SPC Essentials and Productivity Improvement: A Manufacturing Approach (ASQC Quality Press, 1997).