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Mission Statement Faux Pas
As an organization seeks excellence, one of the elements early on is the challenge of making a mission statement. These are those “feel-good” statements meant to inspire customers and staff alike and to identify the core goals of the organization.
Frequently, however, these statements become very “lofty” and unnecessarily complicated. They make promises and use seemingly inspirational language, but a common mistake is to say something like “XYZ’s core function is to meet or exceed our customer’s requirements.” This might sound great, but any ISO auditor will immediately pickup on the “exceeds” part and will ask you to demonstrate how exactly you would “exceed” your customer’s requirements…
I would imagine it’s possible to exceed some requirements. For instance, if your customer is buying 1lb bags of flour, you could simply give them 1.1 lb bags of flour, and maybe in some applications that would be a good thing. Yet, what if the customer didn’t want extra weight or volume for some reason? What exceeds some customers expectations could limit others’.
Plus, how do you quantify this? Well, within Epicor, we measure these sorts of things all the time, using features ranging from survey results to reason code analysis to real time reporting of defects to a robust corrective action process and more. All of these measures contribute to the building blocks of quantifying, through reporting, whether your organization is truly meeting its mission statement. Remember: making the mission statement relevant to the organization and their customers is critical, and it becomes a core ingredient of true manufacturing excellence.
If your organization needs help with these topics, our team of manufacturing and quality experts have years of experience doing these very things, and they can show you how Epicor can quantify your results. Please contact us below for more information.