Quality Defects - #PicsOrItDidntHappen
“Every picture tells a story. But sometimes it’s hard to know what story is actually being told.” – Anastasia Hollings
Maybe you’re an expert on all of the products that your organization produces. Maybe you understand what every component does, what it looks like, and what could possibly go wrong with it. But if you’re like the rest of us, there are so many products, components, and possible non-conformances that just having a description of the non-conformance is not enough. This is where pictures come in!
You’ve all likely heard this in the past: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This quotation, along with the quotation I put at the beginning of this article, are both true. A picture does tell a story and can often times provide more information than many words. However, as the beginning quotation states, it may be hard to know what story the picture is telling without the accompanying words.
I would argue that we need both things.
A picture accompanied by a description is much more powerful than either alone.
We’ve really taken this idea to heart internally. Over the past 2 years, we’ve equipped our inspectors with tablets and audit templates. All of our audit findings or non-conformance records are accompanied with pictures. These pictures can also be annotated and are submitted along with a description of the non-conformance. Not only has this really elevated our ability to better document problems when they are found, it allows everyone involved to be on the same page early on. Whether you are someone who knows the product well or someone who has never visually seen the part, you get a picture and description of the non-conformance. It’s also a great kick-start into the corrective action process as it helps define the problem.
So, as the title of this article states, I challenge you to incorporate pictures into your quality defects reporting. Make them a requirement but make sure that you make taking the pictures and getting them to the appropriate people easy for those taking them. #PicsOrItDidntHappen