Albeit earnest and incessant persuasion of the higher management for upgrading quality of the product and service to meet the mounting expectations of the customers and to have edge over rival companies’ product and service, strife between quality & production wings is encountered time to time, specially this is obvious between the team led by supervising engineer of one department and their counterparts belonging to other department. Concept predominates among production supervisors are that the measures and actions such as inspections and tests as per applicable codes & specifications conducted by quality control wing to check flaws and to maintain standard of the products impede desired productivity. The production staffs perceive the duty of quality control personnel as interference which cause shortfall of the production. This sort of shortsighted, prejudice, mistaken perception of the production team translates into their action and consequently quality deteriorates. On the other hand, quality control inspectors misuse their authority to make much fuss over minor issue that could have been resolved amicably. They also lack integrity and apply different yardstick in different times arbitrarily for measuring identical items in same condition. They perceive that it is their own personal discretion, not applicable code and specification, which would determine the acceptability of an item and because of their this kind of attitude productivity suffers.
I had an opportunity to work as execution as well as quality control engineer by leading a team single-handedly responsible for both quality and productivity for a particular job during the period of construction of Chilime Hydro Electric Project, a hydel-power project in high Himalayan terrain of Nepal. Earlier I had worked as project execution engineer in other projects but I did not confine myself merely in that arena. Whenever I had got opportunity managing time from my task I did involve myself in learning quality aspecsts of the job with a great enthusiasm as I had been very keen to carry out a job being responsible for productivity as well as accountable for quality entirely.
In Chilime, I convinced my management that no separate team is required for quality and execution, one sole team would be entrusted both the responsibilities and each member of the team would take care of quality as well as look after productivity and I would be able to handle the both responsibilities as team leader and could accomplish the job as per project schedule maintaining intended quality of the job. Initially client made objection and they insisted for independent execution team. Management assured them that if necessity arises, team would be deployed.
I made micro planning of the each activity involved in production and related measures for quality. I trained members of the team regarding quality aspect of the job who had not been exposed previously in this field and about productivity to those who had not experience in production. I made them aware of all aspects of the jobs by encouraging them to read applicable codes, specifications, and procedures and through pep talks. I knew it was not going to be easy task and great motivation, determination and honesty would be required to accomplish both the jobs simultaneously.
At beginning stage of production I had to face few inhibitions to achieve highest class of quality because some of the members could not cope up with the quality features of the job to the required level. Gradually this sort of problem diminished through our persistent endeavor as all team members realized the importance of quality while chasing productivity. Thus we were able to complete the job well within the time frame maintaining best grade of quality by coalescence of quality & productivity.
