Measurement Matters

Patrick Ragan, Brooks Carder

Description

Many organizations still operate with an all-too-familiar polarization between managers and employees. The work of employees is checked, measured, audited, and rechecked. Incentive programs, quotas, and evaluations are doggedly adhered to. And often, as a result, resources are wasted, morale plummets, and defects actually increase. Why exactly does this system continue to run amok? What is an effective alternative? By installing an effective assessment process that successfully measures employee performance without impeding production, the organization can become more efficient and employee satisfaction increases.
Measurement Matters builds on the principles of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, as well as the life experiences of both authors, to create a unique, proven approach to effecting positive change in organizations and individuals. This book is full of entertaining, eye-opening examples we can all relate to that combine human psychology with hard data to prove there is a better way. By implementing positive change, and properly measuring and assessing the progress, an organization and its employees can grow and prosper. PRAISE FOR Measurement Matters "Measurement Matters by Carder and Ragan is a book that should be read by practitioners interested in understanding and improving the underlying factors that affect the safety, health and environmental performance of firms." Isadore (Irv) Rosenthal, Senior Fellow Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center Nominated by President Clinton, and confirmed by the Senate, to a five-year position as a member of the National Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board in 1998.

Sujets

• Business
• Qualité, hygiène, sécurité, environnement
• Sciences formelles
• Mathématiques appliquées
• Mathématiques appliquées
• Techniques
• Automatisation et Contrôle
• Contrôle des processus
• Automatisation
• Automate
• Sciences et techniques
• Metrology
• Measurement
• Mathematics
• MSA

Informations

• Publié par: ASQ Quality Press
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780873895682
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Measurement Matters

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Measurement Matters

How Effective Assessment Drives Business and Safety Performance

Brooks Carder and Patrick Ragan

ASQ Quality Press Milwaukee, Wisconsin

American Society for Quality, Quality Press, Milwaukee 53203 ©2005 by ASQ All rights reserved. Published 2004 Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carder, Brooks, 1942- Measurement matters : how effective assessment drives business and safety performance / by Brooks Carder and Patrick Ragan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87389-634-3 (hard : alk. paper) 1. Industrial management--Statistical methods. 2. Industrial safety--Statistical methods. 3. Deming, W. Edwards (William Edwards), 1900- I. Ragan, Patrick, 1954- II. Title.

HD30.215.C365 2004 363.11’02--dc22

ISBN 0-87389-634-3

2004015354

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: William A. Tony Acquisitions Editor: Annemieke Hytinen Project Editor: Paul O’Mara Production Administrator: Randall Benson Special Marketing Representative: David Luth

ASQ Mission: The American Society for Quality advances individual, organizational, and community excellence worldwide through learning, quality improvement, and knowledge exchange.

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Printed on acid-free paper

Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii

Chapter 1 The Fundamental Principles of Dr. Deming’s Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The14PointsforManagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Applyingthe14Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Chapter 2 Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge . . . . Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 TheoryofKnowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 TheoryofSystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 ScienceandManagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Chapter3. . . . . . . . . SomePrinciplesofMeasurement . 51 ThePlan-Do-Study-ActCycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 TheScienceofMeasurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Chapter467Incident-BasedMeasures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 ProperUseofAccidentStatistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Chapter599IncidentInvestigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

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Table of Contents

Chapter6. . . . . . . .SystematicObservationofBehavior . Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

115

Chapter7Audits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 StandardizedAuditingMethods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 EffectiveUseofAudits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 SomeConclusionsAboutAudits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Chapter8 TheSafetySurvey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 WhattheEmployeesToldUs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 NamingtheFactors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 EstablishingtheSurveyasaRegularMeasure . . . . . . . . . 157 ExpandingtheScopeoftheSurvey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Chapter9 TakingActionBasedontheSurvey . . . . . . . . . . 159 ActionattheCorporateLevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 BarrierstoImprovement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 TheRelationsDiagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 ExecutiveActionSteps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 WhatWasActuallyImplemented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 UseoftheSurveyatthePlantLevel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 PlantStaffViewtheSurveyasaUsefulTool . . . . . . . . . . 170 EffectoftheSurveyonCompanyPerformance . . . . . . . . . 171 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Chapter10 Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 PowerandLeadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 QuestionsthatMeasureLeadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 LeadershipintheArmedForces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Taking Action to Improve your Capacity for Leadership . . . . LeadershipInventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 KeyPoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

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Preface

e believe few, if any, significant efforts in business are completed W by just one person. This book grows from that belief. It is truly the intertwined effort and experience of both of us that contributes to this book. Our histories, training, and ideas came together to create what we hope you find is both a scientific and practical discussion of how to measure, understand, and improve some very complex processes in business and in life. We add life here because of a comment from one of our editors, Marlene Bergeron:

I actually have taken what we have learned and have been able to apply it to my personal life. One area this really helps is during arguments and misunderstandings. I can stick to the “root cause” of the disagreement, so to speak. Instead of falling into old baggage discussions, . . . I can stay focused on the facts and avoid coming to the wrong conclusions. You might even say it is something similar to a personal-type version of the causal tree.

I bring this up, because this is how powerful a tool the book can be. Not only can people learn how to create a better workplace, they can use the same techniques in their personal lives.

We owe a debt of gratitude to many people for contributing their ideas and challenging our ideas. They helped us clarify our ideas and make them more meaningful. Of course our greatest debt is to the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who was an inspiration to both of us. He strongly encouraged Brooks to write about quality from the perspective of a social scientist.

vii

viii

Preface

Marilyn Monda, a mathematical statistician and Six Sigma Master Black Belt, has worked with us off and on for many years and provided a technical review of several chapters. Marlene Bergeron provided invaluable editing of the entire work. We have used the vehicle of measuring and improving safety to expli- cate our ideas. Safety management, or accident prevention, is a complex, difficult-to-measure process. We have spent a lot of time and effort work- ing on this. We believe the knowledge and tools provided in this book can be applied to many other complex systems in business. At the time of this writing, the two of us have been learning and work- ing together for over 12 years. Our relationship began through the lens of measurement. Pat had assembled a team of managers and executives to measure and improve safety performance. Because the company had many small plants, the team understood that incident rates would be a poor mea- sure. The committee hired Brooks to present a seminar on safety measure- ment. This seminar led to a pilot project and eventually to many years of our working together to improve the safety-management process. Although our individual careers have taken many turns since then, our relationship and our colleagueship have endured. The two of us have followed very different career paths. Brooks was trained as an experimental psychologist. His 40-year career includes acad- emia, consulting, and overall management of a small (120 employees) busi- ness. Pat was trained as a safety engineer and later obtained an MBA. His 25-year career has been one of service in the front lines of corporate safety management. We believe that our life experiences are complimentary and have made us much more productive as a team. At the same time, this has created some awkwardness in writing the book. Many of the experiences that we bring to this are individual ones. This has caused us to sometimes use the first person singular, and we have not found a way around some clumsiness in style. We hope the reader will forgive us. This book is a presentation of what we have learned in our work. We believe that the lessons are significant and can help managers do better, no only in safety but in every aspect of management and leadership. Our collab- oration began with a focus on measurement, and that is carried throughout this book. We have learned over the years that what we measure and how we measure it drives our actions, for better or worse. It is often said, “What gets measured gets done.” Unfortunately, the truth of this often creates serious problems. Many people are measuring the wrong things and, based on their measurements, taking the wrong actions. If we measure the right thing in the right way, we gain insight and leverage for positive, lasting change. If we measure the wrong things or measure in the wrong way, only luck will help

Preface

ix

us. More likely we will waste time and resources. In safety, these measure- ment mistakes leave people at risk. Much of what is measured in business, especially in safety, is governed by conventional wisdom. In many cases, there are absolutely no data to sup- port the conventional wisdom, and often the evidence that does exist indicates that the conventional wisdom is wrong. We hope this book will improve on the conventional wisdom and help readers avoid misdirected decisions driven by flawed measures. One of the many things we learned from Dr. Deming was that there is no knowledge without theory. The purpose of our book is to help others make better decisions because they have good measures based on sound theory of effective measurement. Rather than trying to lay out a set of pro- cedures or practices that can used to improve safety, we hope to provide the theoretical knowledge that will enable the reader to understand and address the underlying causes of management-system problems. The stories we tell are illustrations and are not intended as recipes for the reader to follow. The reader must consider the application of the theory to each particular situa- tion. The book discusses a number of measurement processes that are employed in safety, and uses the theory of measurement to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and appropriate application of each. We hope that some of what we write will become the new conventional wisdom. We also look forward to the inevitable improvement of knowledge in this field that will revealourlimitations and advance everyone to that next level of understanding and capability.

Brooks Carder Pat Ragan March 2004