What went well yesterday? I ask at the start of every morning’s briefing. Sometimes I get an answer and when I do it is always a pleasure to think that someone is proud of their contribution to the completion of a job even if I don’t always agree that the job has gone well. This weekend I look back at some of the photos from the preceding days and I feel pride that they illustrate production that was finally concluded, or finished for the first time, and therefore milestones in our growth, but also frustration at the underlying shortcomings.

Whilst the completed jobs mean that we are still on track to achieve our sales and profit budget, which in these pandemic days is no mean feat, the underlying service and quality issues are a huge concern. Why are we still making the same mistakes? Why do we seem to be incapable of learning?

I refer to the quality issues raised in last week’s blog and to a customer’s rejection of one of the batches of a powder blend that represented a significant new product volume with serious future tonnage. We fixed this problem quickly and today the whole lot is waiting for despatch. Only a week late but hardly an inspirational experience from the customer’s point of view. Furthermore, our investigation to date has not explained why the defect occurred, only that a number of procedural shortcomings and unrecorded processing steps leave doubts about the fundamental competence of the people concerned, undermining trust at all levels. Whereas I can and will use the opportunity of apologising to our customer to accentuate the positives, we have gained analytical and processing experience with this formulation after all, I can’t admit that our people have still not learned to follow our fundamental weighing procedures properly.

In a similar example, relating to the leak testing of the induction heat sealed bottles highlighted last week, I find that the operator concerned this week appeared to be happy to discard 5% of the bottles that he regarded as damaged but did not consider bringing this and the lot number of the items to management attention in order to stimulate some remedial action!

Do we employ fish? Or is our training so ambiguous or ephemeral that the generic nature of this issue and the importance of reporting all details of defective supplies is unrecognised? Or is the explanation linked to the motivation of people? Do they consider that their job is limited to filling or cartoning the bottles and that the additional tasks of sealing, checking the seal and stimulating corrective action in the event of failure to be someone else’s problem? Perhaps the review of line performance on the day in question is not something that they are involved in or engaged with? “Best to keep stumm and dodge the bullet”.

If we can’t learn to review what we  have done so as to avoid making the same mistakes next time we are doomed!

Perhaps Boris’s advisors will learn, after a period of review, that if everyone hates you it is wise not not to give them cause to get you sacked. Otherwise known as the adage “people who live in glass houses should not throw stones”.