Solving a Customer’s Problem G8D

When the customer is not happy immediate action must be taken to make the customer feel they are being heard and that there problem will be resolved. Ultimately, the problem must be resolved to the customers satisfaction in a reasonable time.

To best understand the problem solving process let’s define three terms.

Corrective action: Any action taken as a response to an issue seen by the customer.
Preventive action: Any action taken before the issue becomes evident to the customer. This action must be taken before the product reaches the customer. If the product reaches the customer, even if the customer does not recognize the problem, it is a corrective action.
Continual improvement: Any action taken to improve the effectiveness or efficiency of a process when there is no issue that would require a Preventive or Corrective action. That is to say, there is no issue that would ever be seen by the customer.

An interesting point of continual improvement is that there is no real issue. Yet, if implemented correctly any continual improvement actions would benefit both the customer and business by improving the ability of the business to provide higher quality product at better cost structure for the customer.

Theoretically, corrective and preventive actions are aimed at immediate problem solving. They are not aimed at better business practices, just solving the customer’s problems. They therefor, are not expected to improve the overall quality and cost structure.

The military had a process flow developed during WWII called Military Standard 1520 ‘Corrective Action and Disposition System for Nonconforming Material’ for problem solving. This standard was good but not complete. Ford Motor Company developed an 8D process that was eventually changed to the current standard, Global 8D.

The steps in the Global 8D process are:

D0) Prepare for Global 8D Process
D1) Establish a Team
D2) Describe the problem
D3) Develop Interim Containment
D4) Define and verify Root Cause and Escape Point for Root Cause and Escape Point
D5)Choose and Verify Permanent Corrective Actions
D6) Implement and validate Permanent Corrective Actions
D7) Prevent re-occurrence
D8) Recognize Team and Individual contributions

Unfortunately, the Global 8D as defined above is not complete. A couple of key concepts are missing or not completely developed. A more complete process flow is given below.

• Training to properly implement the Corrective action process.
• D0) Prepare for Global 8D Process
• Discover problems if not already defined by a customer issue.
• Risk analysis, for preventive and continual improvement actions only.
• D1) Establish a Team
• D2) Describe the problem
• D3) Develop Interim Containment
• D4) Define and verify: Root Cause and Escape Point for Root Cause and Escape Point
• D5)Choose and Verify Permanent Corrective Actions
• D6) Implement and validate Permanent Corrective Actions
• D7) Prevent re-occurrence
• Standardize the Permanent Corrective and Preventive actions
• D8) Recognize Team and Individual contributions
• Review progress at each step in the process as often as required to make sure progress is being made.
• Management review of the entire process when D8 is complete to determine if there can be any improvements made to the Global 8D process as implemented in the business.

Now that a complete problem solving process flow has been developed you should be warned. Almost all companies (actually I have not found a business that does complete the process. I am just hedging my comments.)  fail to finish the process even when they say they have. What is always missed are steps  D6 through D7 and the reviews by the team/management. The most important steps are completely ignored as insignificant or not really required.

Now that you know the process steps you must start to understand how to implement each step for maximum gain.