Cultivating a Culture of Craftsmanship within Quality Systems

Tradespeople bring expertise, innovation, high quality, and leadership to product development. If we're lucky enough to be able to work with them, they're an invaluable part of the engineering team.

What about when we're working without them? How can we create a culture of craftsmanship in a company that uses a quality system?

In this episode, we talk about the crafts' and trades' relationship with quality systems, and steps toward creating a culture of craftsmanship.

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ABOUT DIANNA
Dianna Deeney is a quality advocate for product development with over 25 years of experience in manufacturing. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, which helps organizations and people improve engineering design.

Transcript

Cultivating a Culture of Craftsmanship

Speaker 1 0:00

If you're an engineer working in manufacturing industry, have you had the pleasure of working with a tradesperson a machinist, fabrication specialist, tool and die maker? These people are trained and studied in this trade and are very innovative, resourceful and valuable members of a design team? I have, and I really enjoy working with that crew and I grew up with one. My dad is a tool and die maker and inventor, and someone posted on a professional society board that they really appreciate working with the trades people also. In fact, they used to work in an industry, in a business that was just filled with craftspeople. In fact, they used to work in an industry in a business that was just filled with craftspeople. And now they've taken on a new job in manufacturing industry in an assembly type of scenario where there aren't any craftspeople but instead a quality system. He felt that the craftspeople produced better quality products, they were more innovative and they were actually leaders in their company. And he was asking what can I do to cultivate a culture of craftsmanship in my new company? Well, I don't think that craftsmanship is in contrast to a quality system. You can use a quality system toward that end, but with a focus on people. Let me share more about it after this brief introduction.

Speaker 1 1:22

Hello and welcome to Quality During Design, the place to use quality thinking to create products others love for less. I'm your host, Diana Deeney. I'm a senior level quality professional and engineer with over 20 years of experience in manufacturing and design. I consult with businesses and coach individuals in how to apply quality during design to their processes. Listen in and then join us. Visit qualityduringdesigncom. We're talking about craftsmanship and craftspeople and how to foster that kind of mindset within manufacturing industry.

Speaker 1 2:01

I feel like, if you are lucky, you're able to work with tradespeople and craftsmen during the engineering process. They can help produce prototypes, they can help design, make design decisions, help think through trade-offs and material decisions. They're just a really resourceful and important part of engineering development. To get to that level of craftsmanship, there are many hours that they spend learning the trade. It's a structured ascension to graduate, especially to a master or a journeyman, tool and die maker, for example. Even though they have flexibility in design and can make innovative decisions, they are still working within the rules of the trade.

Speaker 1 2:48

If you want this type of fit or finish, you must process the steel in this way or use this grade of steel, and so on. If you don't follow these rules, the quality of whatever you're building will be substandard. They also conform to standard definitions of quality, which includes how to measure it. The first example that comes to mind is threads. There are standards to machining threads and there are standards in how you measure the threads to make sure that they are going to fit. So people that practice craftsmanship have rules and standards that they work within. Their work can be measured against those standards. They also have processes that are defined in order to get a certain result, and this is transferable, independent of where they work or what company they work for. In that sense, craftsmanship is not in contrast to a quality system. A quality system helps to define the roles of how things are made, how things will be measured to get a certain result. Now about cultivating a certain level or viewpoint of craftsmanship within your company, within your manufacturing industry.

Speaker 1 4:02

I want to go back to a popular television show. This Old House is aired in 1979, the first episode, and it featured Norm Abram, host Bob Vila and a plumber, Ron Trethewey. It aired out of Boston on the public broadcasting station and it was almost an instant hit. It is still on the air making episodes and is still a show that I like to tune into once in a while. This old house focuses on skilled craftspeople working on older homes to restore them. When it first aired, the craftspeople at the time were really concerned about showing homeowners all the trade secrets and showing people how things were done, because they felt like their trade would be less valued by the homeowner, when in fact it almost had an opposite effect, Because they showed the homeowner the kind of care, attention and detail and decision-making that went into restoring these own homes by the craftspeople. The craftspeople gained more credibility, more respect and appreciation for the craftsman community and over the years that it's been airing it also helped to inspire people to enter the crafts field. In some of today's episodes they feature some of those up and coming craftsmen in the show. They are working, putting in the hours and studying to get their master's level certification for craftsmen Back to our manufacturing industry the craftsmen and journeyman tool and die makers that we may be working with.

Speaker 1 5:47

They understand the why behind decisions that are made or the why behind some of the standards, and they know it well enough to be able to adjust it and modify it in order to be innovative. Even though they're following standards, they're not blindly following standards. They understand the mechanics and the why behind all of the things that they do, and that can sometimes be the difference that we need to address if we want to help cultivate a culture of craftsmanship within our company. It's understanding the why behind the how and what we're doing. Trades, people follow standards. Quality systems provide standards for us to follow in order to produce products that are of the quality that our business and our company wants, including our customers. So we want to give people opportunities to understand and work toward understanding why. How do we do this? How do we explain why we do certain things the way that we do them?

Speaker 1 6:55

The first thing is to focus on the decisions that people are making that affect the design and quality of whatever we're producing. There are processes and systems that we've designed that are sort of locked down, but there are plenty of other opportunities where people are making decisions that affect the quality of our products. Find those points where people are making decisions. It's not that you need to eliminate those points of decisions. I'm not promoting that. I am promoting that you identify where those are being made so that you can move on to the next step, which is getting common understanding of why we do what we do. That's one of the first things that we can get clear about.

Speaker 1 7:40

Part of craftsmanship is being able to make good decisions, because you understand how it affects the product and its quality, including knowing its quality measures or how we're going to measure it. So if I were new in your manufacturing area and you gave me a piece of paper with instructions and set me up a machine and told me do it this way, I'm probably just going to do it that way and I'm not going to question it I would probably just do my job. I wouldn't come up with new and innovative ideas about it because I don't know exactly what would affect the other thing. And if I did come up with some ideas, I probably wouldn't be likely to share it with you. I would just be going through the motions. If something seems dumb and no one is checking, I may not worry that much about it, because I don't understand how what I'm doing affects the quality of the product that's being produced.

Speaker 1 8:39

Instead, if we want to cultivate that culture of craftsmanship within our company, we need to help share understanding of how people's work affects the quality of the other things. And how are we measuring that quality? There may be areas where you've identified what's important and these are the parameters that we adjust within these windows in order to get this output. But are you measuring it? Are you keeping track of it? Are you relating those measurements to those decisions? There may be a gap within your manufacturing industry or within your manufacturing line that you need to address. So, first is to find and focus on the areas where people are making decisions that affect the quality of what you're producing. Then get a common understanding with everyone about why they're doing what they're doing and how it's going to be measured. Another step to cultivate a culture of craftsmanship is, if your current processes don't have any useful workmanship standards, then work with the operators or work with your co-workers to create them. It'll not only be an exercise toward craftsmanship and ownership, it'll also serve as a guide and a training aid.

Speaker 1 9:56

The last idea I'll share about cultivating a culture of craftsmanship is to think about your company's place within the broader industry. Is there a technique or a mindset that your company takes within your industry that's unique, so much so that it's part of what your customers expect from you? How does that relate to any of the industry standards that are followed, and how does that affect the quality of the product that you're making? Your definition, your company's definition of quality may go beyond the minimum requirements that are listed in a standard, so you will want to ensure that your best practices and your company's quality systems support this. Getting clarity about what makes your product and your company unique within the industry also helps give you more information in order to be innovative and creative and start to cultivate some craftsmanship type thinking in your company.

Speaker 1 10:54

So what's today's insight to action? Use a quality system as a baseline for standards of craftsmanship for your company and the people that work there. Your quality system and company identity can be a strong foundation for a culture of craftsmanship. With that, then, you look for opportunities to connect the dots between how things are done and then why it's important. That will help give the people in your company some latitude and understanding in order to be innovative, produce better quality products and be leaders. If these kind of topics appeal to you, please visit qualityduringdesigncom and sign up for the monthly digest. This has been a production of Dini Enterprises. Thanks for listening.