This week I will keep my promise of introducing Data Collection, the most misunderstood quality tool….the hatchery for COPQ.
Context
How often has your boss instructed you: Go get the data.
You toil for 10 days and return with the data you believe what your boss wanted.
The boss is enraged: This is not the data I wanted!
Your mind runs: What question were you seeking an answer to, boss?
Can you trace the COPQ?
Data and Information
Quality Improvement is an information-intensive activity. We need clear, useful information about problems and their causes in order to make improvements.
In many cases, the absence of relevant information is the major reason why problems go unsolved. For long periods of time. Adding to the COPQ.
Most organizations have tons of data and facts about their operations. However, when quality improvement teams start working on a project, they often find that the information they need does not exist.
Let me explain the difference between data and information:
Quality improvement teams seek answers to questions:
In other words they are seeking information.
But, while good information is always based on data (facts), simply collecting some data does not ensure useful information.
How do we generate useful information?
Information generation begins and ends with questions. To generate information, we need to:
Key Skill
Learning to “ask the right questions” is the key skill for effective data collection.
Accurate and precise data collected through an elaborately designed statistical sampling plan is of no use if it does not clearly address a question that someone needs an answer to.
Insight
The planning for data collection process works backwords through the model in the figure.
Next
In my next edu-blog, on Wednesday 14 October, I will introduce Pareto Analysis. This is an effective quality tool for ensuring economy of effort.
