“First Time Right” is the only way where “Testing” is a taboo

During my schooling, I had to leave home early at around 630 am. Both breakfast and lunch was to be ready by then. My mother woke up very early to make this happen and I hardly remember her tasting either of them before serving or packing. Nor do I remember anywhere in those years, breakfast or lunch going wrong. Probably many of you have similar experiences where “First Time Right” is the only and natural process and “Testing” is not a part of workflow.

During festivals at home when delicacies are prepared, tasting before offering to God (even in the garb of 'testing') is prohibited. It technically becomes a 'leftover' if tasted and hence unsuitable for offering. Tougher traditions demand that even the fragrance should not be savored till offering. “First Time Right” is the only way where testing is a taboo.

In the economics of manufacturing or services, every task has a cost and definitely “testing”, more so if it is “Destructive testing” as done in manufacturing. Quality leaders like Philip Crosby and Armand V. Feigenbaum have elaborated on various Costs of Quality:

• Prevention Cost: Cost/ Effort spent in Training, Planning etc.
• Appraisal Cost: Cost/ Effort spent in Review, Testing
• Failure cost – further divided into 2 parts.
• Cost of Internal Failure i.e. Cost/ effort spent to rework on defects found during internal review and testing 
• Cost of External Failure i.e. cost of defects found by client. Cost of External Failure has tangible parts like defects found in User Acceptance Testing, Production and related rework effort. But much larger are the hidden costs of External Failure viz. Impact on brand, perception, Future business, trust etc. (can be shown by an ice-berg diagram).

“First Time Right” is the theoretical best i.e. just manufacture and ship. No review, no testing and, most importantly, no defects found by the client as well. Is that a possibility?

Let's go back to the living examples of “First Time Right” cited in the beginning of this article for a positive RCA - An exercise done to identify “what went well” so as to replicate it in other places:

Ø  Highly Standardized (practiced, perfected) Process: Practice makes man perfect. Practice comes along with “Repeatability” which is also the foundation of Statistical Process Control (SPC). The statistical limits become more reliable if “Volume of data” is high, which is also a function of its repeatability. "Practice" is referred to as “Abhyaasa” in traditional literature and shares common ground with "reliability" of SPC Limits

Ø  Second one is a subtler, personal element - mind, focus, concentration of the “doer” while performing the process. This is referred to as “Vairagya” i.e. elimination of unnecessary wanderings of the mind.  

The above two – Abhyaasa and Vairagya - map to the tangible and subtler aspects of performing an action and also map to doing something in "Letter" and "Spirit". These are precisely the two strategies prescribed by Bhagavadgita and Patanjali Yoga Sutra to achieve Yoga and Control of mind.

Coming back to the work environment, if “Abhyasa” and “Vairagya” sound too heavy or out of place to adopt as management philosophy, one can read and understand in-depth and adopt 14 Quality Principles of Edward Deming specifically,

• Build Quality In – You Can’t Inspect it In
• Drive out fear
• Remove Barriers that Prevent Teams From Feeling Proud of Their Work

Destination is the same.  "First Time Right" and optimized “Cost of Quality”!

Patanjali Yoga Sutra - abhyasa-vairagya-abhyam tan-nirodhah अभ्यासवैराग्याअभ्यां तन्निरोधः (1.12)

Bhagavadgita - the mind is indeed very difficult to restrain. But by practice and detachment, it can be controlled . अभ्यासेन तु कौन्तेय वैराग्येण च गृह्यते (6.35)