What becomes a problem because floor is dirty?

I once worked with quality person to prepare customer's audit. He said:

"This time our customer will visit two of our suppliers, I need to tell them to make the floors clean of their plants. Maybe should hire housekeepers by the time customer will come..."

I was curious why he said 'hire housekeepers', because I thought that normally plant workers would like to keep workplace clean.
But the quality person knew floors of both suppliers are dirty, and workers there were not willing to clean the place by themselves. That's why he said hire housekeepers by customer visit.

Well, hiring housekeepers would be a temporary solusion, but not permanent one.

I think better way is workers at manufacturing plant are willng to clean the floor.
Maybe managing people should think to encourage workers so that they will love their workplaces.

You want to learn Toyota quality system?

During I was in Delphi, many engineers gave me similar questions.

How can I understand Toyota quality system?

Toyota motor company is one of the world largest automakers. Toyota became important customer for US auto suppliers. Therefore, it is also important to understand Toyota's quality system for them.
Many engineers were told to read books and understand Toyota quality system by managing people. But once they began to study Toyota quality system, they face problems.

As far as I have experienced, American people think very logically compared to Japanese people. Maybe if they study something from Japanese companies, they would feel confused because of lack of logics.

Once they start to learn quality system of Toyota,they find a lot of amazing practices and great results. But since there are few logics, American engineers have a lot of questions, and they will feel uncomfortable since they could not get answerd to their qestions.

I recommended them to study Deming first, before studying Toyota.
Maybe you will find logics from Deming's books, then after that, you can see practices from Toyota.

Mr.William Edwards Deming was American consultant, and has huge influence to Japanese especially to manufacturing companies.
Because Deming was American jentleman, it would be easier to understand for American engineers. And, after they study Deming, it would be easier to understand Toyota because many of Toyota's quality managements are practices of Deming. And I think they will find many answers from Deming's books to the questions appeared when studying Toyota's quality system.

40 months @ Delphi

For 40 months, from 2003 April to 2006 August, I was a liaison engineer at Delphi.

I had various experiences during the time, found and thought about cultural differences between Japan and US automotive industries, quality issues, and customer relationships. I will write those thins as far as I remember in this label.

Spring is coming

It still is cooler than usual, though.

Equinoctial week

Blueberry from Oregon

Must be good for eyes.

It is becoming messy

Unexpectedly, there are many applications to download. I may need to sort out my iPhone.