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Build Better Handbook: Table of Contents
  •   

    Start Here

    • Introduction to the Build Better Handbook

    • Manufacturing Term Glossary

  •   

    Getting Culture Right

    • Jeff Lutz: Team Culture Drives Product Performance

    • Scrappy Ways to Execute Like Apple

    • Building a Culture of Quality

      • Building the World's Most Reliable Products: Insights from Medical and Defense Leaders
      • Fear Management
  •   

    NPI: A How To Guide for Engineers & Their Leaders

    • Leading from the Front

      • Building the Team
      • Quality is Set in Development & Maintained in Production
      • 3 Lessons from Tesla’s Former NPI Leader
      • Reject Fake NPI Schedules to Ship on Time
      • Leadership Guidance for Failure to Meet Exit Criteria
    • Screws & Glue: Getting Stuff Done

      • Choosing the best CAD software for product design
      • Screws vs Glues in Design, Assembly, & Repair
      • Best Practices for Glue in Electronics
      • A Practical Guide to Magnets
      • Inspection 101: Measurements
      • A Primer on Color Matching
      • OK2Fly Checklists
      • Developing Your Reliability Test Suite
      • Guide to DOEs (Design of Experiments)
      • Ten Chinese phrases for your next build
    • NPI Processes & Workflows

      • EVT, DVT, PVT Stage Gate Definitions
      • Hardware Schedules are Driven by Iteration
      • The Shedletsky Test: 12 Requirements for NPI Programs
  •   

    Production: A Primer for Operations, Quality, & Their Leaders

    • Leading for Scale

      • Greg Reichow’s Manufacturing Process Performance Quadrants
      • 8D Problem Solving: Sam Bowen Describes the Power of Stopping
      • Oracle Supply Chain Leader Mitigates Risk with Better Relationships
      • Brendan Green on Working with Manufacturers
    • Ship It!

      • Serialization for Electronics Manufacturing
      • Tactics to Derisk Ramp
      • E-Commerce Ratings Make Product Quality a Competitive Edge
    • Production Processes & Workflows

  •   

    Thinking Ahead: How to Evaluate New Technologies

    • Saw through the Buzzwords

      • Automation Tipping Points
      • CTO of ASUS: Systems Integrators for Manufacturing Automation Don't Scale
    • Opportunity Analysis and Realizing Value

    • Building a Buying Committee

    • How to Buy Software (for Those Who Don't Usually)

  1. Build Better Handbook
  2. Getting Culture Right
  3. Building a Culture of Quality

Building a Culture of Quality

Estimated reading time: · link copy link

An electronics manufacturing line in a clean room, taken on the L16

Manufacturing teams come in different cultural flavors:

  • Execution-oriented where the timeline is king
  • Cost-oriented where cheap (efficient?) is the name of the game
  • Quality-oriented where getting it "right" matters most

In reality, most teams are a mix of these -- but there are some outliers where the cultural emphasis comes through.

I've had the distinct pleasure of getting to know some quality-oriented teams in my career. They operate differently. They believe that the thing that matters most is delivering a solid and reliable customer experience -- and that if they wow their customers, they will earn their patronage forever. They can often demand a premium because of the brand value they spent decades investing in. I've noticed they tend to be privately owned, with founders who worked in the business for decades (or still do), and that the engineering and operations teams at these companies are some of the nicest I've personally met. The founder's principles are often invoked in meetings or in the hallway -- they line up old products in small museums in their office lobbies or hallways and speak reverently about them.

While it may not be possible to build in exactly the same way as Bose, Lutron, or others, I think there's a lot to learn from companies that have made the strategic decision that the best outcomes come from an extreme focus on quality. This section will highlight learnings from leaders and teams taking quality-first stance.

 

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