John Holsen
DBA Thermcoat.com
Letter From The President
Dear Sir or Madam:
When I was measuring processes as an SPC coordinator, I couldn't help but notice that
the processes I was measuring did not have normal distributions, as is often assumed and taught.
I have shown that variation in engineering processes is sensitive to noise, like a signal. This requires
better math, and involves ideas like pseudo time, but it is the efficient way to actually improve
quality. You see, inspecting things does not make them better or even report how bad they really are.
It just props up as evidence a position or prior existing opinion. It belongs under engineering methods.
Let’s take Qs-9000 for example.
Let me go on record that this is NOT a standard, but an agreement
by the US auto industry to agree to disagree with the ISO-9000
standard. Just read it, and see there
is
nothing about any compliance to any standards of quality. This is another example of the difficult
task
that I face finding a company that is not hostile to educated quality
management principles and procedures.
Probably nowhere is there another person even remotely like myself, who began with an interest in
Management and wanted to do more by overcoming the out of date quality control ideas that have been
holding America hostage to the post war shop math boom. Who knows, maybe you can refer me to somebody
who will take time to examine approaches to reinvent great quality systems, as opposed to unreliable ones I
have always found and continue to find wherever I visit because they assume inspection or large corporation
culture is the solution to superior quality in service and manufacture. The lack of moral components in legal and
advertisement does not help, nor does the concept of depreciation in financial statements. These combine to
facilitate unscrupulous firms that sell for more than a product or service is worth – the opposite of a catholic
quality approach. I used to tell the inspector when I was SPC coordinator at a pricey machine shop, that they
were always helping the set-up man or trying to please the part designer, but they never did anything to help
the production worker. It seems like they don’t even
bother.
For
me, there has always been a big difference between an answer to the need and a
solution to the problems.
Supply
and demand is not the real business model, it is need and demand. Supply
lags these by years.
The
academic community I first encountered was full of wishful thinking and simple
minded economics.
I
am a genius when it comes to seeing through non-functionality. This is the
greatest gift I have to offer any
employer
who I choose to serve WITH, Not UNDER. Quality provides protection for me and
all others.
Many
people find quality where they want to instead of where it really is. It’s not
ALL about the some other
decision
maker’s math decisions. That is remote viewing, myth made good, not Quality.
The devil is in details!
I
recently read in an article about the A-D-36 virus “The notion of obesity as an
infectious disease is
unconventional,
Atkinson said, but he added, "Fifteen years ago if you said ulcers were
due to bacteria,
people
would have said you were nuts," and yet that's now known to be the case. “
Well,
as a research technician in 1979 to 1980 (Kendall Research) they did call me
nuts, but allowed
my
experiments in treating ulcers with antibiotics to take place through the
firm’s toxicologist.
That
was more like 24 years ago. The patients were just as cured then, although I
only had one and
got
no recognition for my work. Instead I
got fired because the engineers were afraid of cutting edge
work
that bucks the trend so to speak.
Math and technology improves and become less expensive, the needs for old
organizational principles change.
The
army and air force need more professionals, but their internal system was
designed to field a large army.
Likewise
in Quality Assurance, steps to avoid professionalism like calling statistical
process control ‘SPC’
or
calling an engineer who implements safeguards into products through processes a
‘Quality Engineer’ have
become
out of date and open ended. That is,
they apply to nearly everyone on an everyday basis. The result:
we promote and hire the wrong individuals, and
trained and experienced professionals like myself cannot
find
any work at all, and for years at a time. The internet does not solve outdated
organizational methods.
Politically,
leaders must understand knowledge is more important than national image. In
business, we must
use
little science as the new way to do this, replacing ‘big science.’ Knowledge is
often a bad thing in the
Quality
as a business. It makes a statement that the person who has it and is out
of date is somehow ‘good’
or
inside of the ‘right’ philosophy. There are changes in quality methods and
economics. I can implement
them
and manage them. I can make Quality a profession and not a business.
One of the great insights of my life is that the value of our work in this
world is not for us to judge. If we
neglect
to offer up our working fruits, then the world will not have them. The choices
are really ours to make
about
what we want to do with our work, but we must
get on with living and learn to ignore the radical
competition
and swim through the sharks. I am ready to lead others. I made my own choices.
But Quality
is
not all romance I found, it is conflict too.
An example of my work in Quality follows here:
For a given number of anti-chaotic rational factors R and a
given
number of functional factors we will call F,
the average quality protection level is the geometric mean.
((r_1*f_1)* (r_2*f_2…..))^{1/(R+F)}. You see Quality = Functionality * Rationality
Is longevity at a single job or
organization as important as service and satisfaction ethics and
habits that come with the kind of
resume that shows across the board multi product experience all tied
together under the umbrella of quality?
Is a BSME an excuse to exclaim you have found
some quality because you chose to look
only in that place, or for that credential?
Now you have met someone who chose the
practical and general path.
The fact that my career exists
as a fair cross section of applying general principles of Quality Assurance
marks a change that has been
fought for and hard won. This change is one glimmer of hope
for those like myself who have so much
that needs changing and who face the danger of trying
to argue against the outgoing tide for
positive changes.
Sincerely,.
John R. Holsen