“When I Go Slow, I Go Fast”

Japanese carpenters have this saying. 

American carpenters have a similar saying, “Measure twice, cut once.”  What do these two quotes have to do with a blog about regulatory compliance?  Everything!

One of the complaints we hear in our consulting work is that all the paperwork required to comply with FDA regulations causes delays in execution of day-to-day business.  When we install quality systems, the accountants only see costs driving upwards.

Explanations that good quality systems actually lower costs usually fall on deaf ears.  When you tell someone that the costs of off spec batches extend way beyond scrap and rework costs; when you explain that those costs don’t appear on any cost reports, costs like

• Time on the phone arranging for replacement raw materials
• Time spent calming down irate customers when their shipment is delayed
• Sales costs to get new customers
• Warehouse space to house Just-in-Case inventory because your production process is not reliable

       when you say these things, you often hear only sighs.

Sometimes a statement of the facts doesn’t move people to action like a simple story.  The following story has the advantage of being both relevant and factual. 

I was visiting a colleague’s department one day and I saw that he had some drywall work being done.  I struggle doing drywall at home.  So I was interested to see some professionals at work.

Actually it’s not the drywall itself that aggravates me.  It’s the drywall mudding; that white pasty stuff that you use to fill the seam.  I always leave a ridge when I’m filling the seam.  Then I have to sand it.  Then refill the gaps and sand again. 

I don’t care how much plastic I put up, the dust goes everywhere.  I’m not allowed to install drywall in my house any more.

I watched as the drywallers set up.  It was clear that they weren’t from around here.  They spoke French.  I asked my friend how this crew could be the low bidders when the nearest French speakers were hundreds of miles away.

“It’s true,” he said.  “They’re amazing.” 

I wondered who they were related to in Purchasing.  I turned back to the drywallers and what I saw did, in fact, amaze me.

One of them was mudding a seam that ran the length of a rather high ceiling in a hallway.  He had his trowel in one hand and his hod of drywall mud in the other.  He was standing on a wheeled platform, lined up along the seam.

With an economical movement, he dipped his trowel into the mud in his hod.  Eyeing the amount of mud, he raised the trowel over his head and, as if moving in syrup, erased a four foot segment of the seam.  The seam disappeared.  No, it never existed.  It winked out of this universe.  Maybe it re-appeared in some alternate reality.  I don’t know.  All I know is that it was gone from the ceiling.

The mudded seam would never have to be sanded; or re-mudded.  Nor would the dust have to be vacuumed up from the back of a shelf months later, or plastic hung, or taken down. 

Next he rocked his hips left and flipped them right, thereby moving himself and the platform exactly four feet down the hall, aligning himself perfectly with the adjacent four feet of exposed seam.  Then he repeated whole process, again in slow motion.

But his output was far from being slow.  In fact, he moved quite rapidly down the hall.  Almost before I could close my jaw he had completed the job.

Now I understood why this crew of drywallers had gotten the contract.  Everything they did was in slow motion, yet they were fast. 

This crew of drywallers had discovered the essence of every good business process.  They had stripped every unnecessary complication out of their movements.  This allowed them to control and repeat their business process.

I’m sure that their skill had not developed over night.  It was a result that had only been perfected after years of focused effort, correcting every error they made and making sure it never happened again.

The quality systems required of FDA regulated industries force a slow, measured approach.  Whether companies use these proven best practices to speed up their business processes, or get bogged down in a sea of paperwork is a choice that is up to them.  See this applied to Process Validation.

If regulatory paperwork is getting you down, remember the Japanese carpenters.