UK Excellence Award 2011

Developed by Dr. Edward de Bono in the early 1980's, The Six Thinking Hats represent the six categories of thought that usually occur when discussing any issue or problem and provide a simple structure around which you can generate and organize thoughts during the course of a discussion to ensure all possibilities are covered.

By clarifying individual thoughts and/or facilitating group discussion, they help ensure an agreement or conclusion is reached on a sound basis, having evaluated all possible options or solutions.

Use the hats to restrict thinking to the particular mode described whilst that hat is being "worn". You can do this as an individual, to facilitate your own thinking around a particular issue or problem, or use the hats in a group discussion, where either the same colour hat can be worn by everyone at the same time, for a pre-agreed period of time, moving through the colours in turn or alternatively different colour hats can be given to different individuals in the group, who then must act only in that mode.

Blue Hat process

Use to ensure everyone understands the task and the process they are about to follow. It is in this hat that participants decide whether they all wear the same hat at the same time, or different ones, and decide the order in which to use the hats and how much time to allocate to each hat. Timekeepers and other roles are appointed within this hat.

White Hat facts & figures

Present what is known to be factual. There can be no debate in this hat.

Red Hat feelings

Give gut reaction to the issue without having to explain or justify.

Black Hat caution or

judgement

Point out logical risks or why a suggestion is impractical or does not fit with the facts, process or policy etc.

Yellow Hat positive thoughts

Point out what will work, what benefits will be offered. Look forward to the results of some proposed action or look back at the value of what has already happened.

Green Hat creativity

Generate ideas and alternatives, offer proposals and suggest something new.

Some rules of the game

Do not switch between hats until the allotted time is used or the purpose of the session will be defeated. Move through the hats in the agreed order for the allocated time until all have been used.

Start and end with a blue hat so that you can agree what you are going to do and what happens next.

The black hat should

usually follow the yellow hat as a negative thought can destroy a positive one.

Expert Interview

Are there some aspects of your organization that you would like to improve, but you are not exactly sure how you need to go about doing this? Or do you need to introduce nationally and/ or internationally recognized standards in some parts of your organization - e.g. people management, environmental standards, health and safety - and you are not sure which standard is most appropriate?

Perhaps you would like some expert help and advice to identify what exactly it is that you need?

Our Expert Interview tool is designed to give you just that.

By following this link and answering a few very simple questions, our Expert Interview will guide you to the right solution.

Online Excellence Calculator

Would you like to see how your organization might perform if assessed against the EFQM Excellence Model?

There are many types of self-assessment available to organizations wishing to benefit from this widely used excellence framework.

Experience just one of them by following this link and completing a ten minute, matrix based, assessment of the level of excellence of your organization.

Think about it!!

Answer

The letter "v"

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Newsletter - September 2011

_________________________________

Greetings!

I hope you have had a pleasant summer and that if you have taken the traditional holiday over this period that it was a relaxing and enjoyable one. The summer months are the time the UK Excellence awards process gets into full swing in preparation for the presentation of the awards to the winners at the annual ceremony, which this year is on the 13th October at the InterContinental Hotel, London, Park Lane. See below for more details and list of this year's finalists.

As usual, during the process some of Ley Hill Solutions' people have been leading assessment teams on behalf of the Britsh Quality Foundation (BQF), who manage the Awards process and host the annual ceremony. Lead assessors have the responsibility of building an effective team, usually from a group of people they have never met before, planning and managing the assessment process itself and then ensuring that the site visit and eventual feedback is honest, representative and above all useful to the applicant.

Although we know how competent our people are, it is always very heartening, as we did this year, to get strong positive feedback on the quality of the lead assessors we provided and the value they added to the process, not only from the BQF, but also from the Award applicants.

Also this month we have the tenth in our Quality Guru series, Philip B Crosby, best known for his concepts of "Quality is Free" and "Zero Defects", as well as articles on the success of our first ISO 14001 Lead Auditor course and our plans for future courses and on the new Energy Management Standard ISO 50001:2011.

British Quality Foundation (BQF)

UK Excellence Awards Finalists

The UK Excellence Award finalists for 2011 are: -

Bishop Burton College
Northern Rail
Siemens Industry Automation and Drive Technologies
Skanska Civil Engineering
St Anne's Primary School, Northern Ireland
University of Chester, Student Support & Guidance and Careers & Employability

There will also be Achievement Awards for categories such as Leadership and Customer Satisfaction, which we mentioned in our April Newsletter, as well as the Lean Six Sigma Awards and BQF Gold Medal for Excellence. For more details about these and the complete list of finalists, see the BQF website.

We wish to congratulate all these organisations and wish them luck in the final stages of the award. The winners will be announced during the UK Excellence Award Ceremony on Thursday 13 October, at the InterContinental Hotel, Park Lane in the presence of HRH The Princess Royal.

Ley Hill Solutions will, as usual be hosting a table at the Awards and our next newsletter will have news and photographs of this event, as well as a full list of the winners.

Our ISO 14001 Lead Auditor Training is a success

In July, as part of our effort to expand our services in line with the needs and requirements of our customers, we ran for the first time an ISO 14001 Lead Auditor course, with a view to offering further training packages if this proved successful.

We ran the co SGS logo urse in partnership with SGS, who are very experienced in this field and provided the tutor for the course.

We are happy to report that this was indeed a successful venture for us, both in terms of its popularity with customers (the course was in fact oversubscribed and we could have sold more places than we had available) and in terms of its quality and usefulness, according to customer feedback. In particular, most course members felt their level of knowledge in this area had substantially increased in relation to what it was before they attended the course and again, in most cases this was directly relevant to their jobs.

All 10 course members, including one of our own people, successfully completed both parts of the assessment element of the course, which includes both continuous assessment and a two hour written exam at the end. This is no mean testament to both the quality of the tuition and the commitment of course members, since the range and standard of assessment has to meet the rigorous standards of IRCA, by whom the course was certified. IRCA - The International Register of Certificated Auditors - is the world's original and largest international certification body for auditors of management systems, certifying more than 14,750 auditors in over 150 countries worldwide. As well as certifying auditors, they approve training organizations and certify their auditor training courses in order to promote and maintain the high quality of such training and its fitness for purpose.

Following on from this success we intend to run more courses in future. We already have another !SO 14001 Lead Auditor course scheduled for March next year, using the same tutor and venue and are right now working up the full details of that. We are also considering the possibility of offering training in the new Energy Management Standard, ISO 50001:2011 (see article below). Please let us know if this is something you might be interested in.

We will keep you posted as to more details in future newsletters.

The new Energy Management Standard ISO 50001:2011

Although British Standard EN 16001 has been around for a while, the International Standards Organization released their own Energy Management Standard earlier this year on 15 June - ISO 50001:2011. They say it establishes a framework to manage energy for industrial plants; commercial, institutional, or governmental facilities; or entire organizations. Targeting broad applicability across national economic sectors, they estimate that the standard could influence up to 60 percent of the world's energy use. No mean claim!

So what is ISO 15001:2011?

ISO 15001:2011 -

specifies requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving an energy management system, whose purpose is to enable an organization to follow a systematic approach in achieving continual improvement of energy performance, including energy efficiency, energy use and consumption.
specifies requirements applicable to energy use and consumption, including measurement, documentation and reporting, design and procurement practices for equipment, systems, processes and personnel that contribute to energy performance.
applies to all variables affecting energy performance that can be monitored and influenced by the organization. ISO 50001:2011 does not prescribe specific performance criteria with respect to energy.
has been designed to be used independently, but it can be aligned or integrated with other management systems.
is applicable to any organization wishing to ensure that it conforms to its stated energy policy and wishing to demonstrate this to others, such conformity being confirmed either by means of self-evaluation and self-declaration of conformity, or by certification of the energy management system by an external organization.

For more details and/or to obtain a copy of the standard, see The International Standards Organization's website.

Quality Guru Series

10. Philip B Crosby

Philip Bayard ("Phil") Crosby, born in 1926 in Wheeling, West Virginia, was a businessman and author who received word-wide recognition for his concepts of "Quality is Free" and "Zero Defects". He initially trained as a podiatrist, like his father, but soon discovered this was not his field and instead went into manufacturing industry where he became a quality engineer. In 1957 he was offered a job as a senior quality engineer with the Martin Marietta Company in Orlando, who produced, amongst other things, the Pershing Missiles. He stayed eight years at Martin Marietta, during which time he developed his "Zero Defects" concepts, also writing articles for various journals and beginning a speaking career. As the quality control manager of the Pershing missile program, Phil Crosby was credited with a 25 percent reduction in the overall rejection rate and a 30 percent reduction in scrap costs.

In 1965 ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph) hired him as vice president in charge of corporate quality. During his fourteen years there he worked with many of the world's largest industrial and service companies, finding that his pragmatic management philosophy worked in a wide variety of situations. In 1979 he branched out on his own, publishing his first business book, Quality Is Free and setting up the management consulting company Philip Crosby Associates, Inc. with its headquarters in Winter Park, Florida and a global clientele.

Quality Is Free gained instant recognition because it addressed the crisis in North American quality. During the late 1970s and into the 1980s, North American manufacturers were losing market share to Japanese products largely due to the superior quality of the Japanese goods. Phil Crosby's response to the quality crisis was the principle of "doing it right first time" (DIRFT) i.e. "zero defects". His belief was that an organization that established a quality programme would see savings returns that would more than pay off the cost of implementing and running the programme, hence "quality is free".

He defined quality in simple and absolute terms, so anyone could quickly establish whether or not quality existed anywhere in the workplace. His approach soon developed wide appeal internationally and across a range of businesses, from multinational corporations to small, family-owned businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

He remained in Winter Park until his death in August 2001, aged 75 and Philip Crosby Associates is still successful today, although now based in Boston.

His quality improvement process is based on his four absolutes of quality:

Thedefinition of quality is conformance to requirements (requirements meaning both the product specifications and the customer's requirements)
The system of quality is prevention
The performance standard is zero defect
The measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance

His fourteen steps to quality improvement are:

Management is committed to a formalised quality policy
Form a management level quality improvement team (QIT) with responsibility for quality
improvement process planning and administration
Determine where current and potential quality problems lie
Evaluate the cost of quality and explain its use as a management tool to measure waste
Raise quality awareness and personal concern for quality amongst all employees
Take corrective actions, using established formal systems to remove the root causes of problems
Establish a zero defects committee and programme
Train all employees in quality improvement
Hold a Zero Defects Day to broadcast the change and as a management recommitment and
employee commitment
Encourage individuals and groups to set improvement goals
Encourage employees to communicate to management any obstacles they face in attaining their
improvement goals
Give formal recognition to all participants
Establish quality councils for quality management information sharing
Do it all over again - form a new quality improvement team

ley hill solutions aims to be one of Europe's most innovative consultancy organisations specialising in the tools and methods to improve the way your business works and performs. We use internationally recognised standards and frameworks such as ISO9001 and the EFQM Excellence Model to develop solutions that are right for your business.

Please contact us at ley hill solutions if we can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Graham Hull
ley hill solutions limited

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