The Big Why: Russian Automotive example

I stumbled upon this funny pic. yesterday in Gary P. Cox's blog (he has many more of those). 

A funny story came to my mind, which, I guess, explains the whole Big Why question quite well. Interestingly enough, the story comes from Russian Automotive industry (yeah, formally it exists, although it has been dead for over 20 years now), while everybody is discussing American Big Three bailouts. Well, learning from worst cases works in a lot of cases, doesn't it? 

The story itself was told by a friend of mine who is working as an IT Consultant for a big machinery manufacturer: they produce assemblies for agriculture and construction machines industry mainly. One day the company got a perfect deal for supplying spare parts to a famous brand foreign Automotive company, who had built an assembly line in Russia and was planning to localize a part of production through Russian suppliers.

Well, being quite familiar with local specialities, the client insisted on installation of Quality Control system at the end of the line. They brought in those fancy lasers, which were checking the dimensions of the product in order to reject all defects. The count of "good" and defected items was interfaced to their ERP system for later use in order to update daily assembly line schedules.

Several weeks later the storyteller happened to be passing by the conveyor belt at the point of the Quality Control installation. He was extremely surprised to see a group of people doing strange movements and running constantly forth and back... Well, apparently factory management set a special team, whose only task was to cheat the lasers: the guys had a set of 100% confirming to standard products with which they were constantly replacing items on the conveyor belt and switching them back after the dimensions control.

Of course, wondering why he is getting such low quality product, the customer started sending Quality Control teams to the site... But local "smart" management found solution for this problem as well: a daily batch of final good quality items was always stored in a hidden place along the conveyor. As soon as customer representatives were entering the premises a special operator started replacing items on the belt with this nicely prepared inventory... The Automotive company representatives had to scratch their heads and agree with what they saw: 100% confirming products at the end of the line. 

Several months later a decision was made to introduce higher level of inspection: apply RFID tags to all items and therefore not only count but also individually identify what is passing through the dimensions control point.

Apparently, the western management hoped that the Russian manufacturer confronted with such a level of control would have to find new ways of quality improvement. You know what happened? The factory just hired 10 more guys and gave them hot steam pistols to switch RFID tags forth and back, forth and back and continued cheating their high potential purchaser.

What is the lesson in here?

I guess, it's petty clear.

No matter how obvious best practices and philosophies are. No matter what tools and techniques you are bringing in. No matter how many consultants you hire. Your results will always be unsatisfactory unless your management stops searching only short-term benefits and starts taking real responsibility.