BLOGGING:MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

 love writing. It is a hobby for me. I fell in love with pen and paper a long time ago. In fact I am so passionate about writing that I almost find it hard to comprehend anything I read if I don’t write something as I read. I used to have a boss who complained I wrote too many memos to him. He nicknamed me ‘Mr. Put It In Writing’. I wore the name like a badge. I just couldn’t stop writing. I was discussing with my Professor when I heard the word ‘blog’ for the first time. She was teaching me something in Food Microbiology which she said she read from a blog. I asked her what that was and she told me. I kinda liked it. 

Without waiting to learn the intricacies of blogging, I launched my first blog. I registered a blog on www.blogger.com but just after a month I ran out of steam. I can’t remember if I ever managed to make an single post on that blog. I had the enthusiasm and passion to blog but I didn’t have the skills I needed to blog with. I just didn’t know the rudiments of blogging. Blogging is a skill and like every other skill must be learned with patience. My first blog was a Fail (First attempt In Learning). I really learnt a lot in that first attempt. 

Sometime in 2013 I launched a news blog where I managed to make about 194 posts. Huraaaaaaay! Well, this was huge but not inspiring especially if I tell you how I got content. I used a method popularly called COPY AND PASTE. You can laugh. I am laughing too. I went to news sites, copied all sorts of things and pasted on my blog. Initially I was happy but as time passed I felt unfulfilled. I knew my blog content was not original. I knew that for me to be called a blogger I couldn’t rely on the lazy approach of copy and paste. To be called a blogger I knew I had to actually write. Because of this, I ran out of steam a second time. I failed again. This time it was a SAIL (Second Attempt In Learning) for me. 

Honestly, I wasn’t happy. I had failed. I had sailed. I knew I had to do something otherwise I wouldn’t ever be called a blogger. At this point I had to sit down to count the wares in my basket having failed twice in a venture. I didn’t W to become a failed serial blogger so it was time to study the reasons I failed twice and then draw a fresh strategy. I could not be doing things the same way and expecting different results. It wasn’t easy ọ. It was herculean for me especially because I had no one to mentor me. Most of the blogs I visited were guilty of copy and paste. I was disappointed but I didn’t give up. The student was ready and willing to learn but there was no teacher. Right? Wrong! Whenever the student is willing and ready the teacher must appear except the student is looking for the teacher in the wrong place. Change of perspective turns a stumbling block to a stepping stone. 

My teacher was with me all along but I was applying it wrongly. I was using this teacher to do copy and paste instead of asking it to teach me how to blog. She was tight in front of me but I couldn’t recognize her. You know this teacher too. Her name is Google. She taught me that to run a blog successfully I must do the following:

1. Create/Find a NICHE

For the purpose of this blog post I will define a NICHE as any position of opportunity for which one is well-suited, such as a particular market in business or a particular topic or a particular location. To find a NICHE for a blog you need to discover what you are truly good at. What you do as a job may not be what you are truly good at. Aside from have the writing skills, you also need to know what to write and write it continuously. I ran out of steam twice not because I didn’t know how to write but because I didn’t have  a NICHE and so I didn’t know what to write about. To go further, you can choose something unique as a niche. I have chosen a niche that is very technical and difficult to write about but it’s very unique and not very popular

2. Develop CONTENT

Blogging requires discipline. Before you launch a blog you must determine how often you want to post articles and stick to it. I have decided to post content on my third blog once every week. Before you launch a blog, after you have found a niche, the next step is to start developing content. Develop content for at least 10 posts before you launch the blog. This will help you a lot. As soon as you launch the blog you must keep developing content. My tactics is that I post an article every week but I write two articles in replacement. Most times peeps launch a blog, post content for a while, generate traffic of readers and then content dries up. This is called burn out. To guard against this you must endeavour to replace every article you post with two articles. A time will come when you can’t write but you will still have content to fall back on while you make time to write. 

3. Be PASSIONATE

Talent will get you to a bus stop but it is PASSION that will get you to your destination. When talent gets you to a bus stop and the bus fails to show up it is PASSION that says you either wait for the bus or trek to your destination. So you wanna blog? Without passion you can’t do much. Most people launch blogs using what they are passionate about as their NICHE. I am passionate about my profession (Quality Assurance) so I have chosen this as my NICHE. I have chosen this niche knowing it’s difficult but because I am passionate about it I will succeed. Passion gives you the zeal to continue in the face of challenges. If you are passionate about blogging you will blog. I failed twice but here I am with the third one. 

4. Have Reliable INTERNET and COMPUTER

You cannot depend on mobile phone and poor Internet connection if you are serious about blogging. You must not own a computer but at least you must have free access to one. Without a reliable Internet connection you cannot carry out basic research let alone posting content. I do not have to stress this. 

5. Direct TRAFFIC 

A blog will be effort in futility if people don’t visit to read the content. The point is that if you do not tell people about your blog they will not know it exists. After you have launched a blog you need to make deliberate attempts to invite people to visit, read and drop comments. You can reach out to your connections on Social Media and invite them to your blog. You have to see your blog as a new product that requires all the publicity it can get. If you cannot market your blog please don’t bother launching it. 

Even though I failed in my first two attempts, today I have another blog (www.qmsnnaemeka.blogspot.com). This one is less than a week old but it already has over 10 articles on it. Not just that. I also have content that can last me 3 months and I am still writing. My joy today is that I don’t do copy and paste. All the articles on my blog are original. I wrote them. This blog will do so much better than its predecessors. I know this because I have religiously followed the five steps stated above. So you wanna blog? Follow the five steps above and learn from my experience. While I was failing I was also learning so I can say I failed successfully. Fools learn from their own mistakes but wise people learn from the mistakes of others. 

If this article has been relevant to you kindly drop a comment. I will be glad. 

VALIDATION, MISTAKES, VERIFICATION: THE BEDROCK OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Quality Management oversees all activities and tasks needed to maintain a desired level of excellence to ensure products are fit for intended use (consumer satisfaction). It includes creating and implementing quality planning and assurance as well as quality control and improvement.

Quality Management, among other things, is basically made up of Quality Assurance, QA and Quality Control, QC, with QA having a higher pedigree on the Management scale. Quality Assurance is the process deployed towards the prevention of mistakes or defects in manufactured products, or avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services. ISO 9000 defines QA as part of Quality Management focused on providing confidence that value requirements will be fulfilled. From a layman perspective, QA can be said to be all the steps put in place before a product is produced to ensure the product will meet set specifications or standards. QA can also be termed VALIDATION but not in a strict sense. Validation is a set of procedures carried out on processes to be certain they will deliver as expected of them consistently.

QC, on the other hand, is a procedure or set of procedures intended to ensure that a manufactured product or service adheres to the specifications/standards set before production, and meet consumer/client specifications. Simply put, it’s a set of tests carried out during and/or after production to know the degree of compliance or deviation from set standards. This is what VERIFICATION is.

Going from the above, QA is prospective (planning forward) while QC is retrospective (checking backwards). While QA establishes processes, QC executes these processes. The meeting point of QA and QC is MISTAKES. QA aims to prevent mistakes whereas QC aims to detect/correct these mistakes. Everything we do in Quality Management boils down to anticipation, detection and correction of mistakes. If we have this understanding there is no way we can run away from mistakes or hide them when they occur. Mistakes are a cardinal part of Quality Management. If they are not happening then the Quality management plan needs to be reviewed as nothing is being done.

At the beginning of my career in Quality Management, I worked for a CEO who believed and still believes that one who does not make honest mistakes (there are mistakes borne out of carelessness and negligence) is not doing anything. This principle which was laid down for all staff formed the foundation of my career such that today I am not afraid to try new things or make mistakes. Honest mistakes is the key to inventions as well as a necessity to modifications. Saccharine, which is many times sweeter than sugar was discovered by mistake. Constantine Fahlberg was working on coal tar and its derivatives. On 27 February 1879, after working in his laboratory he forgot to wash his hand. He made an honest mistake. While taking his meal, he observed that everything he touched was extremely sweet. Not knowing what caused this incredible sweetness, he ran back to his laboratory and started tasting all the contents of his beakers. He was lucky he didn’t poison himself but he found the beaker that contained the sweet substance. He went ahead to make a fortune from his honest mistake. As simple as his mistake was (he forgot to wash his hands) it was enough to carve out a place in history for him.

I was not in the laboratory with Mr Fahlberg at the time but I am sure he wrote down all the steps he followed to arrive at the various derivatives of coal tar. If he didn’t do this there is no way he could have replicated the process to arrive at the sweet substance which was named Saccharine. Had he not written down all the steps he followed he would have spent a great deal trying to find out what he did to arrive at the sweet substance. He could not have benefitted from his honest mistake if he was not documenting all the steps he followed. DOCUMENTATION is vital.

If MISTAKE is the pillar that unites QA and QC then DOCUMENTATION is the mortar that binds all together ensuring none falls apart. The critical questions you should ask are

1. Are you making enough ‘honest mistakes’?
2. What are you learning from these mistakes?
3. How are you using these mistakes to inspire other ideas?
4. Are you documenting all of them?

The beginning and end of Quality Management is documentation. You cannot argue against this and win. If all the steps in a process are documented properly and afterwards mistakes are spotted, one can easily go back and trace where things actually went wrong without having to speculate. Mistakes which lead to inventions can easily be replicated this way. It is documentation that points out why a mistake was made, when it was made, the effect it had, the corrective measure adopted and its effectiveness. Without proper documentation of all the steps of a process we cannot study mistakes and so we cannot replicate the ones that lead to inventions. In fact, QA/QC has not been complete until documentation is complete. It is as simple as that.

All mistakes in manufacturing/production must be reported and studied, first with the aim to correct and prevent and if carelessness or negligence is established to train/retrain or punish, as the case may be. No matter how we choose to handle mistakes we must not rule out that mistakes create the need for training of the person who made the mistake. Punishment is good sometimes but it should not be the first thing that comes to mind when mistakes occur.

There are mistakes with little or no implications while there are those with huge implications that may even lead to shut down of operations. The mistakes with damning consequences must be tackled through Change Control Process. Change Control is a formal process used to ensure that changes to a process or system are introduced in a controlled and coordinated manner.

As QA/QC people, we must encourage the system to report mistakes as there will be no use hiding them and repeating them because of the fear of being punished. Our job is to prevent mistakes/deviations or correct them when they occur. We must not fail in that duty.

PROCESS CONTROL IN RELATION TO QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

A Quality Management system is often focused on a few key areas: CAPA to identify, correct and prevent the reoccurrence of non-conformances; auditing to ensure processes are using the quality systems effectively; and continuous improvement of the quality system itself. The system encompasses the full supply chain from your suppliers through to customers, as well as training of staff on the systems and processes. Process control is very important to the successful execution of a Quality Management System because it shifts focus from the quality of the end product to the Quality of the process producing the end product. That a particular product is good does not necessarily mean that the process that produced the product is good. This is where process control relates to quality management system.  

With respect to CAPA, when non conformances are observed in the quality of the end product, the ideal thing to do is to identify the cause of this non conformance, correct it and then adopt preventive measures to forestall a repeat of the non conformance. This can be done by thoroughly inspecting the quality attributes of the end products. Well, this is true for a process that generates only a few end products in a day. The same cannot apply to a process that generates thousands of end products per hour. For such a process, there is no way all the end products can be individually inspected for non conformance.  

Let’s look at a scenario to drive this point home. A universal packaging machine running at a speed of 35 takes less than a minute to fill 25 pouches of 70gm tomato paste. You can do the math to find out how many sachets the machine will generate in an 11 hour shift. Having done that, please imagine the possibility of inspecting all the sachets for non conformances. You can agree that it’s impossible. You cannot inspect your way out of the problem. This is because even the few sachets you inspect cannot be said to be a representative sample of the entire sachets produced. You can only use representative sampling for a process you are sure is under control.  

A process that is under control is a process that is stable. A stable process is one which has variations that are in agreement with the upper and lower control limits. To determine the stability of a process control limits must be set and then the process monitored over time and data generated. Analysis of this data determines whether the process is under control or not.  

The fact is, without evidence of process control, you have to apply 100% inspection of all the sachets in the scenario mentioned above.  This inspection-focused approach is actually a very costly method for preventative action . And it is really not preventative at all! At best, it is reactive, at least when a process is out of control. Even for a process that is in-control, it shows poor foresight, in that we could predict for the in-control process the percent of product exceeding requirements. Failing to address those issues before shipment is simply a poor quality system.  

The bottom line is that using such preventative approach increases the cost of production as more and more line inspectors have to be employed so as to achieve uniform quality in all end products. This approach will fail woefully when cost-benefit analysis is applied.  

The economic approach to preventative action is process improvement to prevent the occurrence of the nonconformance. This creates the need for a control chart to achieve process improvement, since only a control chart can differentiate between a common cause of process variation, which is built into the process, and a special cause of variation. Reacting to a common cause variation as if it were a special cause increases process variation. The point is that you cannot do meaningful process improvement without a control chart. Failing to recognize that is one of the reasons non-conformances reoccur at some organizations, and their quality department is constantly fighting fires! 

Finally, when you talk about improvements to the quality system itself, you focus on internal KPVs (key process Variables) that estimate the system responsiveness to problems. Here again, you need Process Control to differentiate between the expected common cause variation in response and the special causes, since the special causes often provide insight into the dynamics of your systems, and thus the potential for improvement. 

You cannot genuinely achieve a continuous improvement in your Quality Management System without employing Process Control. 

PROCESS CONTROL IN RELATION TO PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE

Process Control is defined as all the activities  involved in ensuring a process is predictable, stable, and consistently operating at the target level of performance with only normal variation. It is a technique which takes the guesswork out of quality control. It is a scientific, data-driven methodology for quality analysis and improvement. 

Process Control can also be defined as an industry-standard methodology for measuring and controlling quality during the manufacturing process. Quality data in the form of Product or Process measurements are obtained in real-time during manufacturing. This data is then plotted on a graph with pre-determined control limits.  

Before attempting to control a process it is necessary to understand how the process works and what it does. Once the process is well understood, operating parameters such as temperatures, pressures, flow rates, and other variables specific to the process must be identified for its control. In order to maintain a safe and hazard-free facility, variables that may cause safety concerns must be identified and may require additional control. It is important to identify the measurables that correspond with the operating parameters in order to control the process. Measurables for process systems include: temperature, pressure, Flow rate, pH, Humidity, Level, Concentration, Viscosity, Conductivity, Turbidity, Redox/potential, Electrical behavior, Flammability.  

Once the measurables are identified, it is equally important to locate where they will be measured so that the system can be accurately controlled. Selecting the proper type of measurement device specific to the process will ensure that the most accurate, stable, and cost-effective method is chosen. There are several different signal types that can detect different things. These signal types include: Electric, Pneumatic, Light, Radio waves, Infrared (IR) etc.  

In order to control the operating parameters, the proper control method is vital to control the process effectively. On/off is one control method and the other is continuous control. Continuous control involves Proportional (P), Integral (I), and Derivative (D) methods or some combination of those three. Choosing between a local or distributed control system that fits well with the process affects both the cost and efficacy of the overall control. Understanding the operating parameters allows the ability to define the limits of the measurable parameters in the control system. Choosing between feed-forward, feed-backward, cascade, ratio, or other control logic is a necessary decision based on the specific design and safety parameters of the system. Even the best control system will have failure points; therefore it is important as well to design a redundancy system to avoid catastrophic failures by having back-up controls in place. Fail-safes allow a system to return to a safe state after a breakdown of the control. This fail-safe allows the process to avoid hazardous conditions that may otherwise occur. 

Depending on the control logic used in the process, there may be lag times associated with the measurement of the operating parameters. Setting lead/lag times compensates for this effect and allows for accurate control. By investigating changes made by implementing the control system, unforeseen problems can be identified and corrected before they create hazardous conditions in the facility. The proper integration of a new control system with existing process systems avoids conflicts between multiple systems. 

Control limits are determined by the capability of the process, whereas specification limits are determined by the client's needs. Data that falls within the control limits indicates that all equipment in the system are operating as expected. Any variation within the control limits is likely due to a common cause—the natural variation that is expected as part of the process. If data falls outside of the control limits, this indicates that an assignable cause is likely the source of the product variation, and something within the process should be changed to fix the issue before defects occur. This is where maintenance comes in.  

In general, the term maintenance is described as any activity – such as tests, measurements, replacements, adjustments and repairs — intended to retain or restore a functional unit in or to a specified state in which the unit can perform its required functions. It involves fixing any sort of mechanical, plumbing or  electrical device should it become out of order or broken (known as repair, unscheduled, or casualty maintenance). It also includes performing routine actions which keep the device in working order (known as scheduled maintenance) or prevent trouble from arising (preventive maintenance).  

Having read all the above, you can agree with me that process control cannot be overemphasized when it comes to maintenance. Because prevention will always be better than cure, maintenance must rely on variables generated by process control mechanisms in order to accurately predict when a system failure is most likely to occur. Generation of data by process control has to be followed up with diligent analysis of such data. If this is not done then the whole aim of process control had been defeated as data should not be generated and stored without analysis.  

Every manufacturing facility has to have an Equipment Maintenance Plan, EMP, which has a bedrock on process control. The smooth running of the operations of such a facility will depend on how good the EMP is. QA personnel, Production personnel including supervisors and machine operators are to be trained adequately on process control. They need to know what to monitor, when to monitor and how often. There must be appropriate documentation in writing or in electronic form to support such monitoring otherwise nothing has been done.  

Generally speaking, there are four types of maintenance in use: 

Preventive maintenance, where equipment is maintained before break down occurs. 

Operational maintenance, where equipment is maintained in use 

Corrective maintenance, where equipment is maintained after break down. This maintenance is often most expensive because worn equipment can damage other parts and cause multiple damages. 

Adaptive maintenance, where equipment is maintained by letting it adapt to new environment. 

Process Control best suits preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance (PM) has the following meanings: 

The care and servicing by personnel for the purpose of maintaining equipment and facilities in satisfactory operating condition by providing for systematic inspection, detection, and correction of incipient failures either before they occur or before they develop into major defects. 

According to Bamiro, Nzediegwu, Oladejo, Rahaman and Adebayo (2011) , preventive maintenance is the work carried out on equipment in order to avoid its breakdown or malfunction. It is a regular and routine action taken on equipment in order to prevent its breakdown.  

BENEFITS OF PROCESS CONTROL TO MAINTENANCE  

1. Preventive maintenance reduces cost of maintenance and enhances productivity which is affected if process control is not done and equipment are allowed to break down 

2. Process Control gives room for adequate planning of production activities  

3. It allows for proper Inventory of equipment spares to be kept and prevent the stocking of unnecessary spares which tie finances down 

4. It makes employees up and doing as they know their work will be monitored and the data they generate properly analyzed  

5. It improves safety of operations