Building a Quality Culture: Using Cross-functional Teams

This is one of aseries of blog postsdigging deeper into the seven keys to building a quality culture, which builds on Nicole Parker'sintroduction blog. In this article, we will discuss the sixth of these seven keys; Cross-functional Teams.

Wikipedia defines a Cross-functional Team (CFT) as "a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal". CFTs can be great tools to help companies become more innovative, improve initial design, solve quality problems and eliminate defects.

By combining the perspectives, experiences and expertise of a diverse roster, CFTs are able to more effectively and efficiently make decisions. This is truly a case where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But we can't simply combine diverse talents and expect results. The composition, communication, and processes used by teams are critical to the effectiveness and value of the team's output. It is important that the composition and practices of a team quickly progress throughTuckman's stages of group developmentwhich are forming, storming, norming and performing. They need to be experts in their functional areas, but they also need to have the skills to work well with others on the team. Tuckman's stages of group development are summarized as follows.

Forming- This is where the project is chartered and the objectives, expectations and measurements of success are constituted. Functional stakeholders are defined and team members are selected. A team leader is selected and team members behave politely as they try to understand their role on the team and formulate their approach.

Storming- This is a phase where differences in philosophy, approaches and opinions can cause conflict. This is the most challenging phase, and the facilitator needs the right skills to encourage participation, feedback and the drive for conflict resolution. They must also build trust that the team is in a "safe space" for candid and dignified dialog so that norms can begin to form.

Norming - This is the cohesive phase where the team is getting into a groove and has learned to trust and work with each other. Everyone is engaged, focused and invested in the team's success. The team leader is monitoring the team's energy and facilitating the sharing of relevant knowledge from each of the functional experts so that the team sees the full theater of their work.

Performing - The team is now running at peak effectiveness and trust is at its highest. Team members are empathetic, consider the needs of the team over their own and perform consistently. Team leaders now focus on coordination and recognizing accomplishments.

Now that we have laid some groundwork for CFTs, there is an elephant in the room that is seldom acknowledged. In my experience, many companies either underutilize CFTs or use them ineffectively. This is a very significant deterrent to a company's quality, customer satisfaction and profitability.

Some companies believe their greatest thinkers should focus on thinking for themselves rather than having them work with people that may have other functional expertise to increase the speed and completeness of thoughts. I have seen companies using a single design engineer to think through a design FMEA with no consideration for manufacturing, purchasing, packaging, etc. I have also witnessed similar situations where a company is faced with significantcorrective action. There is likely a treasure trove of experience in the company that is not being utilized.

Rather than having their brightest, relevant experts working together to prevent problems or the recurrence of problems, they have those experts work alone thinking they are solving a root cause when they are really justtreating a symptom, leading to the proverbial question, "Why are our problems still repeating?". Having CFTs work on a problem and solve it once and for all will free them to work on the next biggest problems, which will lead to improved margins and most importantly, happier customers willing to purchase again.

Many companies have ineffective CFTs.Harvard Business Reviewfound that 75% of CFTs are dysfunctional, failing in at least three of five criteria:

1. Meeting a planned budget
2. Staying on schedule
3. Adhering to specifications
4. Meeting customer expectations
5. Maintaining alignment with the company's corporate goals

They found a strong correlation in CFT failure rates when managed by other CFTs; meaning they were managed by a group of upper management with no single executive accountable for them. They discovered that CFTs were much more successful when managed by a single high-level executive "champion". Those managed by a single executive had an astonishing 76% success rate. Governance of CFTs matters! The rules of governance can be summed up as follows:

1. Have an end-to-end accountable leader
2. Have clearly established goals, resources and deadlines
3. The project's success is the main objective
4. Projects should be constantly re-evaluated as conditions change

The next logical question is, "Where should we focus the efforts of our CFTs as they relate to quality?" There are many valid applications, but the areas noted below are where I would start.

The team assembled for NPI projects make a big difference in the outcome of the project. This is the opportunity todesign quality into a product; it is prevention. Having representatives from each of the functional stakeholders such as sales, purchasing, design, manufacturing, support, and warranty is important to ensure all perspectives are brought forward early on and can be considered. A CFT can reduce the risks of an NPI project and impact the timing and success.

Whenever risk management activities are being thought through, CFTs can be very effective because of the number of different perspectives of the team. This leads to much more thorough risk assessments. They may be environmental, health and safety or other general risks.

There are other specific risk analyses done in manufacturing through FMEA. During the product design phase, a CFT focusing on the Design FMEA is a critical preventive step to get the design right the first time tominimize the cost of quality. The objectives of the design (e.g. design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for service, etc.) will determine the composition of the CFT members. Key experts for product design could include sales to represent the customer and their requirements, purchasing, design engineers, production, packaging, logistics and warranty. The goal is to make sure product design risks are identified and mitigated.

Similarly, during the process design phase, a CFT focusing on Process FMEA will have the goal of accounting for process design risks and their mitigation. Key experts for process design include not only process and manufacturing engineers, but also the shop floor workers executing these processes. They often know best what could go wrong and how to avoid those situations.

Corrective actions are generally created when there is a significant issue causing risk to the organization. Due to this significance, CFTs should be formed to identify and refine a problem statement, use root cause tools to get to the heart of the cause, and then formulate corrective actions to eliminate, where possible, or dramatically reduce the likelihood of a reoccurrence. In this case, the CFT should include a facilitator with good root cause experience. This is critical! That way experts from any functional area that may have ideas to a root cause can contribute to the corrective actions when possible.

There are two situations where individuals with cross-functional expertise can help make audits more effective:

• Broad-scope audits- When the scope of an audit is broad, a group of auditors with expertise in certain disciplines (e.g. finance, engineering, safety, etc.) can more effectively audit those areas ultimately leading to effective improvements.
• Layered Process Audits (LPAs)- It is certainly arguable that LPAs are conducted by a CFT. Nonetheless, they are cross-functional in the sense that the individuals conducting the different layers of the audit generally represent differing perspectives or functional areas. This can lead to a more comprehensive review of the organization leading to more improvements.

Continuous improvement(CI) projects are a perfect fit for CFTs. While there are many tools to use for continuous improvement (e.g. Kaizen, Plan Do Check Act (PDCA), Define Measure Analyze Improve Control (DMAIC), etc.), the team that utilizes those tools are as important as the tools themselves. It starts with a reflective exercise with the team identifying what they could have done better in a process they would likely need to repeat in the future. In that first step, the different perspectives of the team members alone will identify great improvement ideas. Once those ideas are identified, the team can prioritize them and begincontinuous improvement using a preferred tool. They can then utilize those perspectives throughout the CI process.

Innovationoften comes from a simple observation that no one else had or failed to act on. One of the advantages of a CFT is the power of many minds thinking and observing together, allowing each thought to build on another. CFTs are not the panacea for innovation, but they can certainly increase the likelihood of innovation.

By combining the concept ofextreme ownership, which I discussed in my prior blog, with the use of cross-functional teams, we have two of the pillars on the path to a culture of quality. In the meantime, we encourage you to download and share our "7 Keys to Building a Quality Culture" infographic below.

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