How goods is your pit crew?
We have a new game at home, it’s the F1 game for the PS4. I live in a male-dominated household where my boys have picked up on my husband’s love of F1 and are equally addicted. We’ve had to apply a ban of F1 talk around the dinner table, because, though I enjoy the races, I’m not quite as ‘in’ to the analysis and technology as they all are. I mean really – do we need to discuss the maximum speed of the Eau Rouge bend at Spa, over dinner?
What I have picked up, however, is the importance of the pit crew in an F1 team. You might have the best driver in the world, and a great car, however, the quality of the pit crew processes can make or break a race.
This year (2019) the German Grand Prix saw both extremes. Firstly, the Red Bull team completed a pit stop for Max Verstappen in a world-record-breaking 1.88 seconds
Later, race leader Lewis Hamilton went from front of the field to the back of the field after a shocking 50.39-second pit stop.
Granted, Max’s pit stop was a straight forward tyre change, whilst Lewis had crashed so needed a new front wing. In what was an unscheduled stop however, even the basics like changing the tyres took way too long.
It is a lesson that companies would do well to remember. The most important quality KPIs have nothing do with the goods that you sell. That’s right, measuring quality in respect of the goods that you sell is important, and is only half of the story.
You can have great products and still have a quality problem. If you can’t ship the right product, at the right time, to the right place, it doesn’t matter how good your product might be, the customer is not going to be pleased.
In a world where company buyers are expecting levels of customer service akin to what they experience when buying personal goods from the Internet, the right product in the right place at the right time, is no longer enough to ensure your success, and sadly many companies are still failing to get that right.
I recently made a purchase of some training bibs on behalf of the hockey club for which I’m treasurer. They were needed for a selection day we were running, and we needed 60 of them, numbered and in different coloured sets. Imagine my surprise when I opened the package to discover that I’d been sent 4 packs of netball bibs instead. 7 bibs in each pack didn't even make half the quantity I needed, and instead of numbers on them, the bibs were printed with netball positions.
When the right bibs did arrive, the quality of the product was fine. However, by then the supplier had re-picked the order, re-shipped the order with a priority delivery and arranged collection of the incorrect order. 3 quality failures on a single order.
How are you capturing your quality metrics?