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54 MoldMaking Technology —— AUGUST 2016 KEEPING UP WITH By Lewis Yasenchak Most people find it difficult to translate quality into in real dollars and cents. However, they do realize that a lack of quality can cost millions of dollars in rework, scrap, recall or even liability lawsuits. ISO 9001:2015 helps improve a company's financials by helping it determine how much quality costs. Eight quality-management prin- ciples that form the basis of the standard are: customer focus, leadership, involve- ment of people, process approach, systems approach to management, contin- ual improvement, factual approach to decision-mak- ing and mutually beneficial supplier relationships. These help to articulate the importance of making quality an integral part of a manufacturer's daily operations. It is necessary that moldmakers' and molders' organiza- tional elements be aligned, or else different parts of an opera- tion will head in different directions. Fundamentally speaking, these organiza- tional elements include processes, sourcing approach, infrastructure and people. Processes come first, because the overall purpose of operations is to deliver a service or prod- uct to customers, and this requires the right process- es. Without understanding the processes we want, it's hard to choose suppliers, build infrastructure or select people that consistently deliver. The highest level of a process is its value stream. A company needs to know its value streams as they are today, what it wants them to look like in the future and the gaps that need to be filled. Hence, for each department, the company needs a value stream map: a tool that analyzes and develops how a It is recommended that moldmakers and molders first collect data on specific value streams in order to reduce waste, and then develop the infrastructure and means to measure this data on an ongoing basis. The Value of Value Stream Mapping product or service is developed from its beginning through to the customer. Measure Current Processes Value stream clarity equals competencies in measurement. Simply put, without measurement, companies are in the dark. The first step after mapping your current processes is to measure them. These measures must address effectiveness (the extent the company is meeting customer needs to a defined level of qual- ity), efficiency (how much it is costing the company to do so) and sustainability (the extent to which the company is burning out its people or infrastructure). No assessment is complete without at least a point-in-time assessment of performance, followed by continuous and real-time assessment. If a company knows its current processes and quantified performance, its future process- es will be clear as well, as will the targets for performance. The next step is for the company to decide which processes it will perform itself and which ones it will outsource. These decisions will drive an assessment of what a particular company can do better than anyone else at a given level of cost or what gives it a unique competitive advantage. Clarity of operational strategy is achieved once a company knows its future processes, measurable targets and processes to be performed in-house. Then the company has a platform on which to make decisions about people and systems.