The Lean Startup – Part 3 ( More on quality)

In this post I will talk more about lean production and TQM (Total quality Management.)
The topics will also touch production management.

The following quote from W Edward Deming stuck to me:

Customer is the most important part in production.

If we were to look at business as an ecosystem ( a thought I will go back to in up coming posts) we will see that the customer functions both as producer and end user through cycles.

just like earth, the most important thing to make the ecosystem work is an balance that starts with the  input of value/energy or the producers. In the same way that earth has production in the form of plankton and other producers mining and raw energy is also another source of energy. The problem today is that we see diminishing returns by over usage of all types of production. But through technology we are making a transition back to nature, atleast some of us, and it seems to be the same in business.

More on quality:

Allowing sloppy work in the business system leads to variation in process yields.

A Process is a sequence of interdependent  procedures in which the value is altered towards an end. Basically the process is making input to output.

6 Sigma, a tool used in Production management and TQM shows result in an illustrative way:

The closer to the middle, the better.

6 Sigma

By measuring where the result ends up one can:

• Measure how consistent result is.
• Better see and follow up on bad results.
• One could also draw a line between results in order to see where they land in time(?).

If you have a set of classes to these results, you can track them based on which class they belong to. For instance, all the products produced in March have a better result than the products in september. Questions that arise from this is why? And in that case, what can we do about it?

One should also make use of another tool called Root Cause Analysis.
The vital question there is: Is this really the root problem or symptom?

I will go further into quality analysis and especially Root Cause Analysis.

Remember that learning is the key for success according to Author Eric Ries.
The milestones of the business is therefore learning milestones, events in which we have learned something vital about out customers.

MVP(Minimum Viable Product)  should test the value and growth hypothesis and wether or not there is interest in the product.

Ries says:

Worse than a failure is a failure which was executed with perfection.

If not trying a product we could potentially reach optimal failure.

Our MVP should answer questions about value and growth;
Value: Parameters ( What should we look for to understand the products value?)
Growth : How will it grow? ( What should we look for to understand how the product grows).

I will come back to Value and growth later in the blog.