If you ever get a chance to watch an aircraft being built, take it. Walking through the aircraft hangar at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, CA, facility, you will see two unmanned aircraft, each with a 130-foot wingspan, parked behind yellow tape. The scale of the aircraft and the desert setting make it feel like a movie set.

Easy ain’t easy. Sounds like something said by cultural catchphrase artist and legendary baseball player Yogi Berra, but it sums up a conversation I had at a recent tradeshow in Atlanta.

Undoubtedly, you have heard—perhaps spoke—the first two statements. You are in the business of process improvement, after all. You want to be sure you have an effective quality management system (QMS). 

If you subscribe to Quality, it seems safe to assume that quality is a priority for you. But even when it is a priority, achieving high levels of quality is an ongoing challenge that requires effort from every member of the organization every day.

NASA. Volkswagen. BP. It’s not hard to find examples of quality gone awry. The consequences of the Challenger disaster, VW’s Dieselgate, and the Deepwater Horizon were tragic and far-reaching. While these are some of the most well-known incidents, stories of quality failures are numerous and almost constant.

The issue of implementing a lasting, meaningful quality transition is so important that I wanted to continue this discussion from last month.