Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1503998
12 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2023 It's been 45 years and I still believe in the pro- cess with TQM. Eventually, we eliminated the final step of "inspect" by focusing on quality tests. Oper- ators would say, "I don't think this process is working right but I don't have any tools to mea- sure it." So, we invented quality tests that oper- ators could perform on the PCBs as they built them; if the test failed, they shut down the pro- cess and got the engineer, because something wasn't working right. It's interesting how few tests are developed for operators to determine the quality of a process. As we eliminated final inspection and focused on the first pass yield electrical test, we moved everybody to the front of our process. We had to inspect all the artwork coming in because there were so many problems with the DFM portion of the printed circuit board design. Johnson: is certainly sounds like it could be a contemporary problem as well. Holden: Forty years aer we first embraced TQM, nothing has changed in terms of the need for continuous improvement and mea- sures of performance. We certainly have the Japanese companies continuing to live it. Dan Feinberg: When TQM was implemented top-down, it worked. When I was a vice presi- dent, the president of our company mandated TQM, and it worked. If he hadn't made it a top- down initiative, we'd have heard a few lectures and it would have gone away in a few weeks. Barry Matties: To your point, Dan, if we go back to the fathers of quality—Deming and Juran and the like—they shared that under- standing. If Deming wasn't meeting with the top leadership, he wouldn't even spend his time in your organization because manage- ment was a result of leadership. You can have management by objective (MBO) or you can have total quality man- agement, continuous improvement. But the words are empty if your actions don't match. You can write down all the policies that you want in a handbook of policies. But policies are really defined by the actions of leadership or the people around you. If we always do it this way, regardless of what written policy says, then that's the accepted unwritten policy. at's the struggle with bringing in these management systems. ey turn into fads because it sounds good; it's the flavor of the day. To make it work, we need to change our habits. If our habits still have us doing the old stuff, and if leadership isn't committed, then employees don't buy in, and it never trans- forms. Now, back to your earlier question: How do we make TQM contemporary? We have so- ware that will collect data like we've never had before. Back in the day, you had to walk through the factory, and you had to ask each person to get that data. ere's still some of that because you still need that communication, but data collection and statistics have never been easier. When we go back to Deming's 14 points of leadership transformation, management and leadership are two different things. Leadership Happy Holden