11.3 Controlling the Process: The Big Picture

Maintaining control of an autonomous vehicle is very much like riding a bicycle. Do you let go of the handlebars while you’re riding? Of course not! You keep both of your hands on the handlebars, your feet pedaling rhythmically, and you keep your eyes on the road ahead.

In other words, you started a process and you are in full control over all the necessary steps to keep this process going as you originally intended when you first got on your bicycle and started pedaling. If you were to let your hands go and stop controlling the direction of your bicycle, in the short run you may be fine; you may even be fine for a little bit more time if the road is smooth and straight.

In the long run, there are inevitable bumps on the road: slopes, curves, other bicyclists or pedestrians, a street crossing. Not having control of your bicycle will inevitably lead to you falling off, very much like how even the most advanced level 3 autonomous vehicles can crash without driver control.

Controlling a business’s production and service delivery process is very much like riding a bicycle and driving a car on “autopilot.” After all, no business ever sets the lofty goal of, “We are going to serve our customers by providing barely adequate products and services.” Just sample the mission statements of these well-known companies:

The mission statements of these companies collectively illustrate one thing: Once you have designed a great product or service, you get your customers in the door, you must ensure that each customer walks out the door feeling delighted, every time. After all, you have already made hefty investment to get the process started. Not having adequate controls in place to ensure that your products and services are being delivered as intended is like letting go of the handles on your bicycle after you started pedaling: you will fall. In other words, all your upfront investment in terms of time, money, and efforts will go to waste.

So just what does it look like when businesses do stumble? Well, it could be a simple case of not executing a process as originally intended. It could also be something more complex. Moreover, you certainly don’t want to wait for a problem to escalate and become a major problem that could become an existential threat to your business’s overall survival! You need to anticipate these problems and address them as soon as they surface. Consider the following examples of when a business fails to control its process:

1. Graco is one of the most popular brands of car seats. It has an extensive line of products ranging from infant car seats (Snugride) to all-in-one convertibles (4Ever). Its product designs have won industry accolades as well as being widely lauded by parents. Yet, for all the design awards Graco had received, it did not detect a manufacturing defect in its production process that made it so difficult for first responders to get a child out of a Graco car seat in the event of an accident that children were getting injured from being stuck. As a result, Graco had to settle a class-action lawsuit for over $10 million in damages in 2015 as well as initiating a highly costly recall of over 4 million car seats it had sold.

2. General Electric is a venerable name in home appliances. It designs and manufactures a comprehensive line of home appliances and remains a ubiquitous name in all American families. In 2013, a group of customers filed a class action lawsuit against General Electric alleging that its microwaves under the Profile and Monogram brands had glass prone to spontaneously shattering or breaking after being in use two to three years. In addition to legal expenses, General Electric finally settled in 2020, agreeing to pay up to $20 million in claims.

As illustrated by these two cases above, it is clear that neither Graco nor General Electric intentionally designed their products to be defective. However, both companies were not adequately controlling their respective production processes. As a result, manufacturing defects made their way into the hands of consumers. Not only does this do the opposite of delighting customers, it also resulted in high legal costs, high settlement costs, significant damage to brand equity, and potential loss of customers, permanently. So how can companies gain control over their production processes to minimize defect once production starts? They fall largely into two camps:

1. Monitoring the process. The Toyota Production System had revolutionized auto manufacturing because of its emphasis on controlling the production process. Every single movement of the worker, every material being delivered to the assembly line, must be purposeful and of high quality. Imposing control over the process of producing goods and services allows businesses to ensure that quality is built-in. Armed with the TPS approach to controlling the production process and ensure quality, Japanese automakers gained a sterling reputation for vehicle quality and dependency to gain a commanding share of the U.S. automobile market.

2. Monitoring the outcome. In addition to controlling the production process, it is equally important to monitor the outcome. After all, no process is infallible. The noble goal of 0% defect remains elusive to all companies. As mentioned in earlier topics, there is inherent variability within any process. As a business, it is equally important for you to monitor the outcome of your process. Are your products and services truly delighting your customers and producing repeat customers?

Being able to control your process and understand your outcome is a universal need for all businesses. Let’s say, your restaurant hired a new chef. The new chef may not have been adequately trained. As a result, the steaks being served to customers are not being cooked to their right levels of doneness as requested by the customer. A restaurant manager can probably see that there has been a rise in customer complaints. How she responds to this rise in customer complaints can set the restaurant down toward two different trajectories: return to sales growth or steady decline. In turn, how you respond largely depends on if you have a control plan.