Issue link: https://industrialengineer.epubxp.com/i/920036
18 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine E Closing the complaint department By Kevin McManus performance Early on in my industrial engineering career, I knew no different. I had come to accept rework, complaint, red tag and repair departments as being part of stan- dard organizational structure. After all, each of my employ- ers seemed to have at least one group charged with fixing the problems that others seemed to cause. Even the formal customer service groups, whose titles conveyed an intent and desire to help, actually spent the bulk of their time try- ing to fix customer problems as opposed to providing superior service. As years shaped my percep- tions about what represents "best practice" organizational struc- ture, I came to see these groups as being necessary in most cases, but essentially nonvalue-added in terms of value stream contri- bution. Simply put, daily prob- lem resolution efforts added cost to the product or service provided instead of reducing it and did little to increase sales. Often, efforts to help resolve customer concerns made things worse – the cus- tomer was even more dissatisfied after the attempted service "recovery." No one seemed to question the need for, or lack of value provided by, these departments. Their existence seemed to be taken for granted. People talked about reducing problem frequency and magnitude, but no one thought of elim- inating the need for these departments. The prevailing attitude was, "Problems are a part of doing business. Someone has to help fix them." What year have you targeted for clos- ing your complaint, rework and repair departments? If you can't bring yourself to envision a world where such problems don't occur daily, try to project the day when you will begin to significantly re- duce the percentage of time and money devoted to fixing things that weren't done right in the first place. What would it take to work yourself out of a job? How effectively are you balancing and optimizing "in the stream" versus "stream support costs"? Without sustained organizational and/or economic growth, effective problem-solvers should be expected to work themselves out of a job at some point. Truly designing in quality and setting superior service goals ahead of planned obsolescence should improve processes over time and minimize the need for problem-solving departments. If corrective actions work as intended as we become more effective at detecting and solving problems, our budgeted re- pair amounts should decrease. Processes are going to fail. Equipment is going to break down. Defects are go- ing to reach and affect the customer. Service recovery will continue to exist as an organizational need to some de- gree years into the future. The real ques- tion is one of percentages. How often, and to what magnitude, should we "al- low" such process problems to occur? Can we get to know our processes well enough to predict when and how they should fail versus becoming masters at reacting to problems? I've been in the business world long enough to see multiple positions I once held replaced by better technologies and systems design. Just as robots have replaced many types of manufactur- ing jobs, improved work systems have resulted in a reduced need for "problem-fixing" departments in those organizations that have ef- fectively focused on, and made, such changes. In some cases, such transitions were planned. In most cases, the shift was customer- driven and osmotic in nature. Technology alone is going to help us drive down the potential for daily er- rors, so more change of this nature can be expected. That said, it remains to be seen if we will eventually begin design- ing out the need for problem-fixing groups and service recovery processes. When do you plan to close the com- plaint department? Kevi cMa us is a performa ce improve- me t coach based i ai ier, Orego , a d a 35-year member of IISE. He has writte workbooks about perso al a d team effective- ess. McMa us is a lum i exami er for the Malcolm Baldrige Natio al Quality Award. Reach him at kevi @greatsystems.com. If corrective actions work … our budgeted repair amounts should decrease.