Ground Level Quality (GLQ)

 Ground Level Quality (GLQ)

                                        (  Photo Credit: Photo by Pratik Gupta & Unsplash )

What is Ground Level Quality ?

The term is related to  pseudo conception among workers/operators/shop floor supervisor and any person doing mostly their work on actual shop floor rather than in an isolated or remote office. The term is something misleading and it exists because of lack of proper training or improper  implementation of quality management system. When Ground Level Quality exists, it means that the organisation management has failed to implement the management system and has not reached to the ground level product inspection difficulties or misconception.

When does Ground Level Quality originate ?

For micro to small industries :- In case if Director / Owner /M.D fails to study in details  ground level worker mentality or do not provide necessary training to them. In such type of industry though one or two persons work as a production head, the owner has daily contacts/conversations with ground level persons frequently. Naturally ,owner wants all workers/operators should work properly .

But  he/she underestimates importance of training. He/she tries to get output from ground level structure without addition of essential inputs like thoroughly subject oriented meetings, identification of training needs, training itself, training evaluation, assuring organisational culture and so on..  In many small scale organisations owner/M.D wants all above things but middle persons or operators do not help him/her to get things done because of mere misconception.

The ground level quality differs from what organisation expects in terms of quality.

This can be well explained by following example.

A Shaft of Dia. 30 mm goes under two operations firstly machining od to certain diameter on cnc machine followed by a step threading on thread rolling machine. After job finishes both the operation , control plan says to check first od by placing it in a fixture. After OD is ok ,  check step thread by thread plug gauge. This is straight forward sequence defined by Q.M.S through control plan. So operator starts with that sequence initially. But after going same job again and again daily, sometimes he starts checking firstly thread and than od. OK. Just change in sequence. No matter of concern. Ground level quality role starts here. Operator assumes both sequence are ok. He do not fix any sequence. sometimes he checks OD , sometimes first Threading. Now consider a situation. Customer vehicle waits in the premises of company. There is urgency . The operator has a pressure to finish jobs in time. While checking , he starts jobs checking one by one. In a hurry , he misses OD checking of one job and he just checks threading. As job sequence is not fixed, his mind assumes both checking is done. He puts unchecked job in a lot of ok job....Oh... No!  No one notices it. The day ends on feeling 'completion of jobs in time'. The next day....that operator fails to explain how he did not notice it...This happened just because of Ground level quality. No one.. no supervisor, no quality person not even owner/MD tried to change Ground Level Quality...  

Not that only micro or small scale industries fail pray to ground level quality issue , but many big organisation has to face this hurdle before quality management system came into force.

In large scale companies or organisation, l have seen permanent workers / operators assuming quality concept different than what organisation expects. 

So finally at what situation there will be no GLQ ?

In short words, when every person working in organisation (Right from Director / MD to operator )talks in same language about quality of product / Processes.

The role of Q.A or Q.C Person is to find out such differences and try to make GLQ zero..He /She has to train the operators/Shop floor persons.. try to find out what operator / shop floor person speaks about his/her quality related concepts.. understand it.. convey management / MD/Owner to give permission for training by showing correct collected information. 

Do you faced such type of GLQ in you career ? If yes, please share your experience with us.