Assembly of a Toy Perhaps one example of a best practice that we can all relate to is that joyful (feel free to substitute “stressful”) experience of assembling a toy or bicycle for your kid’s birthday, Christmas or Hanukkah. (Could this be where our kids actually overheard and ultimately learned those four-letter words? It seems like only yesterday when those lovely Christmas carols helped to drown out that cursing!) Remember how the instructions boldly proclaimed that this toy was “so easy to assemble, even a 5-year old can do it?” I can’t be sure, but these may be the same people who told us that the check is in the mail and the other five or six most famous lies. Sorry, editorial and decency standards preclude us from listing them here, but you know what they are! Is it any wonder so many retailers offer assembly services for consumer products? Is what remains of your sanity worth that extra $XX to have the store assemble that toy or bike? Such services have no doubt saved countless lives — and marriages too! So, where did this familiar story begin? Obviously, when the manufacturer designed the toy or bi- cycle, they wanted to minimize transportation expense and labor by shipping the product unassembled. As I learned from my years in the logistics industry, this is also known as KD or “knocked down.” The engineering staff creates an assembly process and develops a set of instructions for the consumer or end user. Typically, such assembly/installation instructions are intended for the DIY (do-it-yourself) consumer but can also apply to professionals. Certainly, they knew, or should have known, that if their product proved to be too difficult or time-consuming to assemble, the result would be lots of un- happy campers, returns and bad reviews. In today’s internet world, bad news travels faster than juicy high-school rumors. Too many bad reviews can create a negative reputation, which ultimately translates into the kiss of death for a product. These same assembly principles also apply to product installation. Why Are There Problems With Assembly and/or Installation? I can tell you, from many years of personal experience in a wide variety of manufacturing environments, that engineers are not the right people to develop a set of final assembly or installation instructions. Preliminary? Yes. Final? No. Why? Because people with mechanical engineering degrees are not your average bear when it comes to mechanical aptitude. Un- derstandably, they tend to become too intimately familiar with their products aſter working on them for years. Finally, more oſten than not, they typically simulate assembly or installation in an artificial, controlled lab-type environment. Whereas, in WWW.ALOA.ORG the real world, assembly and/or installation must oſten be done on our knees in a place with inadequate lighting while we are crouched down in awkward pretzel positions. OK, let’s also ad- mit that a few engineers may be sadists. Hint: “When all else fails, read the instructions.” Yes, I suppose you could recruit a 5-year old. Clearly, you think outside the box! Emergency Evacuation Plans Try to imagine the chaos that would ensue if students never had fire drills. In case of emergency, there are many different ways students and teachers could exit a school. Although perhaps not the best example, we can all appreciate the benefits of developing what was believed to be the best way to orchestrate an orderly emergency school exit plan. If we pause to think about it at a fundamental level, such a plan was essentially a best practice in the broad sense. So here, again, the basic elements of best prac- tices abound. Next, let’s consider some business applications. ISO 9000 In a past life, I worked with a well-established manufacturing company in the United Kingdom. At that time, the European Union’s business community had embraced what was known as ISO 9000. In case you’re not familiar with this: It was essen- tially a set of quality standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization. To achieve the necessary certification by third parties, companies were required to es- tablish, document and then apply virtually all of their internal processes. As you can imagine, this certification required a Her- culean effort. Failure was not an option, because a lack of this certification placed the company at a competitive disadvantage. Indeed, lack of certification effectively rendered companies un- qualified (literally) to be suppliers or subcontractors to many firms, especially larger ones. More than one million companies achieved ISO certification. However, in more recent decades, many companies have abandoned the ISO club because of the expense and, for some, a feeling of overkill through extreme bureaucracy. Why I am I mentioning this? Because, if we boil down the essence of an ISO 9000 certification (and future iterations), it includes what is essentially a set of best practices on steroids. Determine and document your procedures and processes, ap- ply them consistently and when they fail, refine and/or replace them. Yes, this is a gross over-simplification, but the point is that the “best practices” concept has been around in military and business for a very long time, albeit under different labels. You may remember when Total Quality Management (TQM) was all the rage. Many of the largest companies in the world MARCH 2021 KEYNOTES 23
