Why Production and Quality Teams Fight (And How to Fix It)
Every manufacturing leader I talk to mentions the same frustration: production and quality teams that can’t seem to work together. You’ve probably seen it yourself — production pushing to hit cycle targets while quality steps in to halt the line for non-conforming parts. It looks like a personality conflict, but it’s not.
These aren’t personality conflicts. They’re system design problems.
Mike Fank knows this firsthand. As a quality manager with 15+ years of experience in automotive, defense, and metal manufacturing, he’s led transformations that reduced rejections by 80%. His insight cuts right to the heart of the issue.
“Your system is perfectly designed to get the results you’re getting today,” Mike explains, referencing Edward Deming’s principle. When production gets bonuses for hitting cycle targets and quality gets rewarded for perfect scores, you’ve intentionally designed a system that makes them fight.
Mike’s insights show how manufacturers can transform quality from the department everyone fights with into the strategic partner that makes everyone more successful.
We surveyed 1,000 manufacturing professionals to better understand how quality is perceived. See the results in our research report: Are Leaders and Frontline Teams Aligned?
A Common Pattern in Manufacturing: Misaligned Incentives
The conflict between production and quality stems from misaligned incentives that pit teams against each other by design. But there’s a deeper issue at play. Many organizations fundamentally misunderstand what quality should be doing in the first place.
This limited view of quality creates the conditions that lead to conflict.
The Problem: Competing Priorities
Production teams focus on hitting cycle targets and delivery schedules. Quality teams concentrate on compliance and defect prevention. When quality stops the line for bad parts, they’re literally taking money out of production workers’ pockets.
The organization rewards production for speed and quality for perfection, creating an inevitable clash.
The Fix: Shared Success Metrics
The solution requires looking at the bigger picture. Instead of departmental metrics that work against each other, manufacturers need holistic measures that align both teams toward the same goals. When production and quality share the same success metrics, they naturally start collaborating instead of competing.
Real-time visibility tools can bridge this gap by giving both teams access to the same data simultaneously. When everyone sees the same quality metrics, production issues, and performance indicators, conflicts shift from “us versus them” to “us versus the problem.”
How Quality Professionals Can Change the Dynamic
Breaking the cycle requires fundamentally changing how quality professionals engage with their teams. Mike has learned this through experience.
Stop Preaching, Start Asking
“If you preach at people, if you tell them ‘You should do this, you should do that,’ you’re probably gonna get stuck back in your box as a quality professional,” Mike explains. “Nobody wants to be told, oh yeah, you should have done it this way.”
The alternative creates immediate collaboration: “If you ask, oh, hey, how should we do that? Or, what’s a better way? Those how and what questions focus and draw people into the solution. It’ll be much more their idea, and it’s going to be much more collaborative.”
Opportunistic Quality Management
Mike calls this “opportunistic quality management.” Quality professionals can strategically allow low-stakes failures to become teaching moments. Real learning happens when something goes wrong and everyone’s attention is focused on the problem.
“When you allow the failure to occur, everyone’s eyes are now open because something went wrong,” Mike notes. “As a quality professional, that’s an opportunity to improve things.”
The key is understanding risk. Mike emphasizes never compromising on high-stakes safety or quality issues where the consequences could be severe. For lower-risk situations (e.g., process improvements or workflow changes), allowing teams to learn from experience builds trust and ownership.
When this system works, production teams start taking ownership of quality outcomes. They become proactive about identifying potential issues before they create problems and handle resolution themselves when things do go wrong.
A Two-Foundation System That Works
After years of leading quality transformations, Mike has identified a clear pattern among manufacturers who break the production-quality conflict cycle successfully.
“If I were to build a brand new system, I had nothing, I would start with two things,” Mike explains, introducing the Two-Foundation System.
- Continuous Improvement System: Mike emphasizes establishing a solid, continuous improvement methodology first. Whether PDCA, Eight Ds, or Six Sigma, the key is picking one system, mastering it completely, and ensuring everyone on the team knows how to use it consistently.
- Business Review Process: Regular business reviews where quality has a seat at the table. These sessions focus on identifying key issues, determining solutions, and then applying the continuous improvement system to address problems systematically.
This creates what Mike calls a “self-reinforcing wheel”: “You can just iterate on these two, review what happened, make it better, review what happened, make it better, and you will slowly just build out a very robust quality system just on those two principles alone.”
Timeline? Mike sets realistic expectations: quality improvements often take three to six months to show meaningful ROI, but the systematic foundation pays dividends for years.
Take Action This Week
The constant friction between production and quality teams doesn’t have to be inevitable.
The solution starts with aligning incentives so both teams work toward the same goals. Quality professionals must shift from enforcement to collaboration, using questions instead of commands to engage teams in problem-solving.
Most importantly, establish the fundamentals: a proven continuous improvement methodology and regular business reviews that include quality as a strategic partner.
One action you can take this week: Examine your current metrics and bonus structures. Are production and quality teams rewarded for conflicting objectives? If so, start conversations about creating shared success measures.
Want to hear Mike’s complete framework for making quality ‘easy’? Listen to the full episode of Shop Floor, Top Floor Talk Show here, where he shares specific examples of system redesign, risk-based decision making, and how to make quality improvements that stick.
