The Quality Letters: Manufacturing Wisdom with Humor Mixed In

Transcript

[00:00:57] Josh Santo: Our next guest is a seasoned manufacturing leader with more than four decades of experience in the automotive industry, shaping out some of the world’s most respected brands approach quality, reliability, and operational excellence.

[00:01:11] Josh Santo: Over the course of his career, he’s been a part of leading names in quality, Volkswagen, Ford, Maxon, and Schaeffler, developing systems, solving complex problems and building cultures of continuous improvement across global operations in both Brazil and the United States. Beyond his leadership roles. He’s the author of the Quality Letters and the Quality Letters Season two, A pair of books that bring more than 35 years of lessons in quality and problem solving to life through short, engaging stories that connect experience with practical wisdom.

[00:01:47] Josh Santo: I am currently serving as quality director for Schaeffer’s Transmission Systems Division in North America, where he continues to drive excellence in engineering and production performance. PlEASE welcome to the show Quality Leader, speaker and author Ed Rocha.

[00:02:04] Josh Santo: Ed, thanks for being here.

[00:02:06] Ed Rocha: Good afternoon, Josh. It’s a, it’s an honor to be here with you.

[00:02:10] Josh Santo: No, it’s an honor to be here with you. For those of you listening, we’ve got the author of the quality letters. I’ve got my copy right here. I got mine through Amazon. I’m sure there’s other places you can get it, but, the convenience was super helpful for me. so I’m honored that you’re willing to join the show and share, some of your vast expertise.

[00:02:29] Ed Rocha: I think it’s gonna be interesting and hopefully the audience will benefit from it and will inspire some others.

[00:02:37] Josh Santo: I have no doubt.

[00:02:38] Ed Rocha: afternoon.

[00:02:39] Josh Santo: No doubt that that will be the case. What we’re talking today about quality in manufacturing and what many quality professionals do that actually holds them back from helping their organization accomplish their goals. But before we get into any of that, I like to start out the same way we always start out.

[00:02:56] Josh Santo: I wanna understand what it’s like to be you for a second, or at least maybe not Ed specifically, but Ed as a quality director, what does a typical day look like for you as a quality director?

[00:03:08] Ed Rocha: Yeah, it’s an interesting progression that my career took. And nowadays it’s quite exciting because I only deal with big issues. I mean, when I was a quality manager, I had a long list of small things that I have to take care on a daily basis. And it was good, but sometimes it would distract me from the more exciting things.

[00:03:32] Ed Rocha: Now that I have this position as quality manager, for customer quality, I normally deal with the, the big, escalated. Issues. And those are the ones that we need to stop, develop a strategy, find resources, have that special care with the customers in our liaison to, resolve the situation. And it’s great because I normally have all the resource I need because as I said, we’re talking about escalated issues.

[00:04:04] Ed Rocha: So if I need the plant to help me, if I need engineering to help me, I, I normally can get those very easily. Because these are typically big issues.

[00:04:13] Josh Santo: Got it. So the bigger issues, strategy being a key point, meaning we gotta figure out how we’re gonna do something about this, how we’re gonna respond to it. I imagine also part of the equation is how do we make sure that this doesn’t happen again and.

[00:04:29] Ed Rocha: Absolutely, yes.

[00:04:30] Josh Santo: And then you gotta pull the right resources together to get them working together.

[00:04:34] Josh Santo: So you’re not necessarily solving the issue, but you’re getting the people together who can solve the issue.

[00:04:41] Ed Rocha: I like little stories, so I’ll illustrate that point with a story here. when my son was young, I coached their soccer team. Even though I was never a good soccer player, I watched a lot of soccer. ’cause I’m from Brazil and that’s what we do there. and as you, you probably have seen young kids playing soccer, like everybody goes after the ball.

[00:05:06] Ed Rocha: So it’s a mess. There’s no organization. So again, I was obviously not in the field. I’m not playing, but I’m behind the scenes organizing and making sure that the resource we had, we would, would be using it to, to win the games. And again, in customer complaints. Typically we’ll put people in a room and there will be like one big brainstorming, and then everybody has their ideas.

[00:05:33] Ed Rocha: It’s like five year olds running after the ball. so in many cases, my, my job is to stop and say, okay, let’s divide this in manageable parts. Maybe Joe does that, Peter does that, and, and we can, organize. So that is basically my, job, nowadays,

[00:05:53] Josh Santo: I love that. and what a surprising take for the audience think of this, like this, what you as a quality professional can learn from a group of five year olds playing soccer.

[00:06:03] Ed Rocha: right.

[00:06:03] Josh Santo: Right Surprising lessons and insights. what a great way to think about that. Well, I have to imagine that, in addition to that strategy and responding to issues, there’s some things that are happening on a typical day-to-day basis that take up your time.

[00:06:18] Josh Santo: I’m curious, ed, what are the metrics or key performance indicators that you’re focused on managing or improving?

[00:06:27] Ed Rocha: Yeah, I normally tell my team, that our job is to be the voice of the customer inside our organization and the voice of our organization when we are dealing with the customer. So we walk a fine line of trying to keep the customer satisfied, at the same time protecting our organization and the costs associated with that.

[00:06:52] Ed Rocha: I mean, it’s relatively easy to do either one or the other. I mean, I can do whatever the customer wants and spend a ton of money and resource. And hurt my company, or I can play hard ball with the customer to protect my company and overdo all that and have a very unhappy customer. So I think the balance of those, those two is properly, probably one of the areas that I want my team to be always focused with the head above the water level.

[00:07:23] Ed Rocha: Because again, people are working on the problems. They can turn defensive and uh, so that’s how we contribute to that.

[00:07:32] Josh Santo: For that idea of. Voice of the customer with inside the organization. How do you nurture that type of culture where you prioritize the voice of the CU customer and balance at the same time the needs of the company?

[00:07:49] Ed Rocha: Yeah, in internal meetings, I frequently remind people. Why I’m doing what I’m doing, because I will be nasty in internal meetings because I’ll be as demanding or more than I expect the customer to be. So I’ll be in an internal meeting. So I, I, again, to not be too hated by everybody, I remind them, I said, okay, I’m gonna be the voice of the customer now if tomorrow in our meeting they ask about this, what are you going to answer?

[00:08:23] Ed Rocha: If they want to see evidence of that, what are you gonna show? So I use that frequently. So I have been dealing with the customers long enough that I can’t somewhat anticipate what most customers would expect to see. So I kind of do a little bit of role playing on that. Then we make a strategy.

[00:08:44] Ed Rocha: Then when we have the meeting with the customer, our team is well prepared. In some case, I take the lead to speak, but in many case, I don’t need to at any point at, anymore because again, the, team is already prepared for that. And again, it’s not a one man show. I mean, a lot of people are good at that and we join our effort and get that done.

[00:09:08] Josh Santo: I love that you are trying to be. For lack of a better word, the biggest critic internally, right? If, if you are harder on yourselves than your customer, then surely you’re gonna go out there and meet their needs and more. I’m very much a fan the same way, and I love that you’re communicating like, look, I’m not trying to be the bad guy here.

[00:09:29] Josh Santo: I’m pushing so that we deliver the excellence that our customers require. And to do that, we have to have these tough conversations. We have to be thorough, we have to be critical. And man, after my own heart, right there.

[00:09:43] Ed Rocha: Yeah, and I have an easy gauge. If I fail to anticipate something the customer asks in his meeting, I will kick myself because I should have anticipated that. That is my job, is to try to prepare our organization to anything the customer will do. Obviously, in some cases I may overdo a bit and the customer is much easier than anybody expected.

[00:10:07] Ed Rocha: Then they kind of look at me and say, Hey, you made a suffer yesterday and it was not that bad. I said, well, better than the opposite.

[00:10:14] Ed Rocha: So.

[00:10:15] Josh Santo: Yeah. It reminds me of a, a quote that I heard somewhere. We can debate whether or not it’s true, but we don’t have to. But, it’s the, the more Yeah, it’s, along the lines of the more we sweat and practice, the less we bleed in battle was the quote. And that’s, kind of what I’m, I’m hearing from you is like, we’re, we’re drilling, we’re prac, we’re going through, we’re covering all our bases.

[00:10:38] Josh Santo: And then the customer may be like, oh, yeah, yeah. No, that’s good.

[00:10:42] Ed Rocha: I may use that in one of my future.

[00:10:44] Josh Santo: yeah, do it. Yeah. Well, it comes from someone else. So I, you know, I like to think of it as some ancient proverb, but I’m sure it’s from a Nike commercial or something like that. I think this is an interesting topic and I want to go a little bit deeper on this piece.

[00:11:03] Josh Santo: Real quick, which is you’re, you’re talking about the voice of the customer and you’ve built up years and years of experience, like knowing and understanding your customers. But let’s say someone listening is a bit newer to the quality world, quality role, or even director of quality position.

[00:11:22] Josh Santo: Maybe they’re a brand new company for, a customer, that they’ve never really experienced before. How would you advise people to really, be able to understand their customer?

[00:11:35] Ed Rocha: That’s an interesting question because I don’t know if I would have the manual for, understanding the customer. I mean, I think a lot of that comes from. From doing it, from dealing with the customers, and without naming names, it’s interesting how the customer organizations develop kind of a culture, like one of our largest customers love to see our people at their plant.

[00:12:02] Ed Rocha: We have regular visits. we sometimes place people inside their plants while our second largest customer, they say, no, we’re busy. We don’t want you come here unless we call you. So again, we, by, by dealing with the customer a lot, we ended up developing this understanding of their culture. That’s why when one of our plants who has 30 customers, 50 customers has an issue, we add value.

[00:12:33] Ed Rocha: I mean, my, team, I used to say if I do a, a kind of a war comparison. I have three levels in my team that, I have a more strategic level. I joke that they are like the Black Ops, they will jump from a helicopter in the middle of the fire to rescue somebody that’s strapped or whatever. So they are a lot more strategic and they are like me dealing with the more escalated issues.

[00:13:01] Ed Rocha: Then I have a second group that, are visiting the customers and they are a little more tactical. They’re maybe a little more like Peace Corps. They are normally involved with the customer in less tense moments. They’re keeping the customer happy by, taking their parts to be analyzed very quickly, set up a sort if that’s necessary.

[00:13:25] Ed Rocha: So again, the Black Ops, then the Peace Corps, and then we have a third layer that is if a customer is too isolated, that I don’t have anybody nearby. We, in many case, hire a part-time person to be inside the customer. And I, I would call them like mercenaries because 20 suppliers are paying them. We are one of them.

[00:13:48] Ed Rocha: So they are more operational. They’re doing a line walk with the customer every day inside their plant. And if there is something associated with our products, they will, let us know. So we use those in different situations to deal with the customer,

[00:14:05] Josh Santo: Got it. So really my takeaway from you on that just now, you know, really getting up to speed with the voice of the customer is go and being with the customer is really what the takeaway, I love that you broke down the three levels of the team and the, the Black Ops, the Peace Corps, and the mercenaries.

[00:14:24] Josh Santo: I, I think that’s such a fun way of thinking about it. with the Black Ops, you’ve got those people like when, when you need something to get done. Like at all costs, you know, like figure out the problems, loose direction. Just get in, figure it out, resolve it. You’ve got a strategic team that can hop in there, but I love that you also have an importance of this idea of the Peace Corps and, the term that came to my mind kind of borrowing from a military, type of a strategy is the hearts and minds, right?

[00:14:51] Josh Santo: You’re there to win the hearts and minds of the customer. And, and then

[00:14:55] Ed Rocha: point. Good

[00:14:56] Josh Santo: there might be some constraints. So, who can you outsource to or, bring, some support in with some part-time and maybe some service providers, whomever it is. Find a way to get somebody there that can be your eyes and ears and report back to you, with those part-time mercenaries that you described it.

[00:15:14] Josh Santo: but ultimately it’s go to gemba, right? It’s go to their gemba. Yep. There we go. That’s the secret. Everyone always comes back down to go. Observe, see with fresh eyes, tails as old as time. Well, you mentioned Ed, you got into the topic of your team. I’m always curious when we talk to leaders to understand the scale of their leadership.

[00:15:36] Josh Santo: So you mentioned you have three levels to your team. I’m curious about just the size of the organization that you lead and around how many folks, give or take, ballpark

[00:15:48] Ed Rocha: Yeah.

[00:15:51] Ed Rocha: 20 some people that are, employees of our organization, plus the mercenaries that I have about, another 30 of them, everywhere. So it, it’s a 50 people strong team. but our company’s very large. I mean, we’re 120,000 people globally, 20 some thousand in North America, and we supply maybe.

[00:16:14] Ed Rocha: 50 plus customer plants in, in North America because we, in some, in some case, the majority of the case, we supply the OEMs, but there are situations also that we supply a tier one who then supply the, the OEMs so it becomes a, a network. Actually, my team, I have one person in, in Canada, five in Michigan, three in Ohio, a couple in South Carolina, a couple in Illinois, half a dozen in Mexico.

[00:16:44] Ed Rocha: They’re all spread because they need to be close to the, to the customer, not close to a central office.

[00:16:51] Josh Santo: for sure, for sure. Okay. Well, let’s, talk about quality in manufacturing. You’ve got a very strong and experienced career in quality. You wrote two books at this point related to quality and, and lessons you learned in manufacturing. I wanna start out with this, ed, what do you think that many quality professionals in manufacturing get wrong?

[00:17:14] Ed Rocha: Yeah, that’s a, an interesting question. And, as you know, you were there as well. I was, uh, one of the speakers in the A IAG Quality Summit, and at the end of my presentation there were several questions, and in most of the case, I found the answers in one of my quality letters in the book. I, I made a reference to it, one that I did not after the event.

[00:17:37] Ed Rocha: I, I did write one about that it’s not published yet, was when people talked about the upper level. I mean, I was talking about the, middle level, leadership on the plants, how important they are. I was talking about operators and then somebody asked about what, what about the executives? And looking back, I mean, from the stage there, I immediately felt that that has been an area that I may have not been as effective as I could be, should be.

[00:18:12] Ed Rocha: I think I always worked hard. Maybe I wanted to be a little more autonomous than maybe I should, and I didn’t invest as much in my leadership. And again, in the A IAG summit, there was a, another speaker, Jeremy Hazel, that, spoke exactly about speaking the top management language. And I think for long time I either talk less than I should to, to my bosses or maybe I talk ish.

[00:18:50] Ed Rocha: I talk the language that we understand, not necessarily what they understand. And I, I, I like what Jeremy said in that, the presentation, he said, instead of approaching our leaders with our language, we need to learn their language. So I made a lot of, another little story here. My native language is Portuguese, but in most of the case, I report to a boss that could not speak Portuguese.

[00:19:17] Ed Rocha: Even when I was in Brazil. Uh, I worked at for Ford at the time. And Ford would send Americans to be the, the managers in, in our plant there. So from very early in my career, I was reporting to a guy that could not speak Portuguese. So I had the following options. I. Speak Portuguese anyhow, and shame on them that they couldn’t understand.

[00:19:40] Ed Rocha: Not a very smart one. The second I could try to teach them Portuguese and invest on that, or third, I could learn their language and talking to in their language. So that’s a little story that came through my mind when I was hearing that, speech. And I think even though it sounds pretty absurd when I make this illustration, but I think in many cases we go to our bosses with our CPKs and r Andrs and shells and things like that.

[00:20:08] Ed Rocha: It’s foreign language to them. They’re not evolved. Yeah. Maybe we can try to teach them, which would be the second alternative there in my illustration. But the best is if instead of going there and say, I need this, is go to them with, I can’t provide this. And okay, we know they’re under pressure for cost, for delivery and for quality.

[00:20:32] Ed Rocha: So, Maybe finding ways to attach the, I can provide to the main goals that, a top manager has, will incrEASE my chance of getting their attention.

[00:20:46] Josh Santo: There’s a lot of a lot that I like about what you said. I think that was a great example where you’re using literal different languages to, to highlight the point that, you have to be able to communicate and your point is you could speak the same language and still not understand each other.

[00:21:03] Ed Rocha: That’s true too. Yes.

[00:21:05] Josh Santo: it happens all the time.

[00:21:06] Josh Santo: And so your point is, uh, where you see a lot of people going wrong is not speaking the language of leadership. In order to get them on board with the different initiatives and priorities that they need to accomplish to be successful, successful in their role as quality leaders and quality professionals.

[00:21:28] Josh Santo: that’s something that I’ve heard as well. actually I think the first AI ag conference I ever went to, it was a topic that someone was speaking to, which is how to speak the language of leadership because over and over you get caught up in what, other quality professionals understand.

[00:21:45] Josh Santo: You know, to some degree, let’s say plant management may also understand it, but it’s not what they’re prioritizing. And so you have to adapt your message to tie into the priorities. So sometimes it’s not even about understanding, it’s about reframing the goal too. ’cause it’s just about like, why would I care about this thing?

[00:22:05] Josh Santo: Well, here’s why you care about this other thing. This thing that I’m telling you to care about affects that thing.

[00:22:11] Ed Rocha: right,

[00:22:12] Josh Santo: you should care.

[00:22:13] Ed Rocha: right. I, I remember one of my bosses, when we had a customer issue, he would, uh, call me and say, what’s wrong with our system? And I said, I don’t know. It was not followed. So I cannot tell you what’s wrong with our, with our system. I mean, people, it was a discipline matter, not a a call it system, uh, issue.

[00:22:35] Ed Rocha: But again, I mean, we, we need to bring to the point that they feel that supporting you who help them, will benefit them in the goals that they are being asked by their bosses. I mean, because everybody has a boss. I mean, even the CEO has the board over them. So, everybody has a,

[00:22:53] Josh Santo: that’s true. And this is a universal principle, whether you’re in quality or even when you’re working directly with your customers or look, maybe you are at home and you’re trying to decide, I dunno, what movie to watch or what restaurant to go to, or whatever. Just that idea of adapting the point to the audience that you’re working with, that is a, a good lesson that is applicable not just to your professional life, but certainly your, personal life and, and just about every other aspect as well. Well, let’s, let’s talk about, because you mentioned a, a couple of things and when we talked about your role, you mentioned, you know, when you were a quality manager, it sounded like you were more in the tactical side of things, and now that you’re in the director level role, you get more involved with strategic.

[00:23:41] Josh Santo: I want to talk about the importance of being both tactical and strategic within quality. So Ed, how do you recommend Quality Leaders balance tactical versus strategic quality efforts?

[00:23:56] Ed Rocha: Yeah, that’s always, a big challenge and I always, pay at most attention to, to that because, for example, it’s again, our five year olds playing soccer. Again, it’s very easy to get in the office in the morning. I worked very hard for 10, 11, 12 hours only firefighting problems. I mean, I like the little story.

[00:24:20] Ed Rocha: So I would say, looks like, remember the old guys in the circus, that had the pole with plates on top and they would have to keep them, them going. I mean, a quality manager does quite a bit of that. I mean, there are enough things going on that you have to keep working on those, plates because otherwise they will fall and break.

[00:24:41] Ed Rocha: And it’s very easy to let that swallow you completely and your team. I mean, you can put three, five people on problem solving and that will swallow everybody. So what I would say, if you are in a, in an organization that is big enough that you could take one person from your team and put that person to work on.

[00:25:07] Ed Rocha: How do we make tomorrow better? I mean, don’t involve that person in the day-to-day fires meet with that person once in a while. So not only that person is working on, on the, the, the more strategic stuff, but you are spending time and casting a vision. But again, I made an agreement with one of my guys.

[00:25:29] Ed Rocha: I said, I will only call you to the fire if I’m really desperate and out of other resources. Otherwise, you are gonna be working on durable solutions, things that will make us better tomorrow. And then even if my other five year olds were all running after the boat, at least one of them was working on things for tomorrow.

[00:25:50] Ed Rocha: Now, if you, if somebody works in a very small organization, you have two, three people in quality, you may not have the ability to reserve a person. Then it’s possibly more difficult because you’re gonna have to somehow have the discipline to yourself say, okay, I’m gonna arrive in the office one hour before anybody else, and during that one hour, I’m gonna be strategic.

[00:26:17] Ed Rocha: I’m gonna be looking at the goals for next year, reflecting on what we are we have been doing, uh, so far, and things like that. And say what tools I need. I mean, in some case, having a database for customer complaints or for process audit will make my life tomorrow so much easier that it’s worth investing on it.

[00:26:43] Ed Rocha: But we many, many times completely ignore that. We, we get swallowed by the day to day. It’s easy. We go home feeling, man, I work it hard today. Yeah, you did. And you work a hundred percent on the past. 0% on the future. That balance. You have to find a way if you’re gonna be successful in quality. Otherwise, you’re gonna be 20 times one year in quality.

[00:27:10] Ed Rocha: That will be your experience. Not 20 years of experience. 20 times one year.

[00:27:14] Josh Santo: Ooh, what a mic truck moment right there. You could have 20 years from a timeline perspective, like you’ve been in quality for 20 years, but you’ve repeated the same year over and over and over and over. Ah, what what a

[00:27:29] Ed Rocha: I heard that from a professor in Brazil, Peter Manela. He said, don’t trust. Some people come with their resumes and they say they have 17 years of experience on something. He said, dig a little deeper. You may find out that they have 17 times one year of experience. After the, that first one year, they learned the job and they kept repeating it without improving it.

[00:27:51] Josh Santo: Yeah. I love that. It’s not necessarily about the years, but the quality of the experience, throughout those years, the lessons learned, the wisdom that’s been developed. It is time for an ad break. Now, unlike other shows, our ads aren’t advertisements. Our ads are advice, quick tips and insights from your fellow manufacturing pros in the shop floor, top floor community. Here’s the one now.

[00:28:19] Atty: Hi, I’m Atty. I work as a quality systems engineer and my advice is challenge the state of school ’cause otherwise no one else will.

[00:28:28] Josh Santo: I think he hit. A key word, which was balance. And to really get that balance, you have to dedicate and prioritize the time and the resources to make that happen.

[00:28:39] Josh Santo: So no matter what, you gotta carve out time to say, this time is focused on strategy and you’re gonna protect it, you’re gonna block it. And that reminds me, I spoke with an author of another book, this was years ago. The book was called People Solve Problems. It was by an author named Jamie Flinch Ball and a number of lessons within there.

[00:29:00] Josh Santo: But one of the key concept is your people aren’t gonna solve problems if you don’t prioritize the time to allow them to actually focus on the problem. If they’re getting pulled into all these different directions, then you’re gonna repeat the same year over and over again like Groundhog’s Day.

[00:29:17] Ed Rocha: Exactly. Yes. Yes.

[00:29:19] Josh Santo: What a great call out.

[00:29:20] Ed Rocha: I, I remember many years ago, our company used frequently co-ops. It’s more than an intern because they keep coming back. They do a semester in college, a semester with us, and they keep so they know organization well, and they are very project oriented. I mean, by definition, the company says, you’re not gonna put this guy to sort parts on the floor.

[00:29:42] Ed Rocha: You need to give him a solid project. Because at the end of the semester, he make a presentation about the project he worked on. And I remember one of our leaders at the time, uh, one of our executive said, looks like we only get something done if we put a co-op to work on it. And I said, well, I call it the power of focus.

[00:30:04] Ed Rocha: Because those guys have the ability to start, collect the data, develop the system, implement it. I mean, they’re not distracted by all the little things that, uh, happen, all the big things that happen on a daily basis. So having the focus is a key to, to find that balance.

[00:30:24] Josh Santo: Oh, what a great call out when we bring this person in and their sole job is to work on this project that we assign them and to do everything that happens.

[00:30:34] Ed Rocha: They

[00:30:35] Ed Rocha: get it done.

[00:30:35] Josh Santo: done. Yeah, the stuff gets done. Who, who knew? Who knew? Wow. But that’s what, such a great call out, that’s a great moment of reflection of to say like, yeah, so what needs to change so that others can do that as well.

[00:30:49] Josh Santo: Well, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, we we’re talking about balancing strategy and, uh, some of the tactical side of things. Uh, we talked about blocking that time, protecting that time for strategy. I’d like to hear your thoughts on what should every quality driven organization prioritize to drive quality in manufacturing?

[00:31:11] Josh Santo: What are your thoughts there?

[00:31:13] Ed Rocha: Yeah, I mean, I, most of my career I worked for large organizations with quite complex, complex quality systems. So I’ve always wondered if I would own my business, after I retire or if I would go work for a small company, or if I become a consultant and I go to a small place that doesn’t have the luxury of having such well-defined systems.

[00:31:44] Ed Rocha: Like we, we have, what would I take with me on my backpack the day I would enter that company? And I, in my mind, I thought I would take two tools, I would take eight these and process audits. Because again, obviously if the cause of the company’s having customer issues, we’d better have a high priority on that because that comes before internal scrap or whatever.

[00:32:12] Ed Rocha: I mean, it, it’s affecting our customers. I would put 8D, I would leave at teach at. So let’s do it right to see if by doing them well they don’t come back. So when we solve, they solved, they’re gone. We can go to the next one and slowly that would reduce, minimize, uh, customer complaints. And the second one would be process audits.

[00:32:39] Ed Rocha: Because again, I could enter the company the first day, lock myself in a conference room and try to start writing procedures and work instructions and things like that. But first I wouldn’t understand enough of the organization. Secondly, it would be too slow. I mean, I would be. Done writing procedures after two years of working the company is not any better because I, so I, that’s why I say I would take process audits.

[00:33:06] Ed Rocha: I would get other people with me would go to the Gemba again and say, let’s see what’s happening here. And, uh, find weak, weak points and, and solve them. Again, people could stone before that, but before I think on FMEA, which is a phenomenal tool, but it takes you understanding enough of the process to anticipate what can go wrong while the process audit.

[00:33:35] Ed Rocha: You go there and you see what’s going wrong and you work to fix, and I think that process audits gives at least three benefits. One, the operators will see the quality guy, the plant manager, the industrial engineer come to ask him questions, so they say. These guys value quality. I mean, they’re coming here to ask me questions.

[00:33:58] Ed Rocha: Second, It’s extremely educational for the people performing the audits because if I walk a process doing a process audit, and tomorrow I’m working on an 8D for a customer complaint associated with that process, I know it much better because I spent two hours there last week or whatever might be the case.

[00:34:22] Ed Rocha: And the third point is when I do find weakness, then I can solve things that will have a practical and immediate benefit. I mean, again, if I say, oh, that wasn’t clear, the operator didn’t do the right thing, not because he’s bad or for discipline or lack of accountability or anything, it was not clear. So let’s develop a work instruction for that or OR procedure or something.

[00:34:48] Ed Rocha: But then I’m not gonna again be sitting in my office. Dreaming about what procedure should I possibly write?

[00:34:56] Ed Rocha: So at least those two tools would be the first ones I would go after implementing.

[00:35:02] Josh Santo: Well, I love that. Uh, and you know, it’s not just because I work at EASE, because EASE process audits is something that we spend a lot of time, uh, working with our customers on. Uh, and they use our tools for it. But it’s, uh, the fact that, you know, you brought it up that the whole idea that you could have 17 times one years of experience.

[00:35:20] Josh Santo: And so if you’re coming in and you’re. I gotta make the work instructions, I gotta create the FMEAs. Those are take a lot of time, take a lot of knowledge and expertise. In the meantime, you’re just repeating the same year over and over. Whereas you know these, these two tools allow you to get out there and start identifying areas to.

[00:35:39] Josh Santo: Improve and add value pretty quickly, pretty immediately. The eight Ds for, look, here’s a problem. And that problem, like you said, it could be customer complaints, it could just be even on the internal side, you’re doing the process audits, I’m noticing this thing. We need to figure out what’s going on or a better way to do it.

[00:35:56] Josh Santo: So having a dedicated methodology to come to that, that, that logical, you know, hard to dispute conclusion of what needs to change and those ideas of how to change it and, and effectively implement it. And then that, that forcing function of process audits, that dedication and commitment to go there, check in with operators, show them one, quality’s important, but two, that we want to hear from you.

[00:36:22] Josh Santo: You’re the one doing this every single day. What’s going on? What could help? You do it better, more efficiently, et cetera. Uh, and how that can be educational, not just for the folks who are auditing. So if you’re, you’re brand new, it’s a great way for you to go and learn. Uh, but it’s educational. For the whole org, look at what we’re seeing, look at what we’re encountering, this is what we should prioritize and do, et cetera.

[00:36:43] Josh Santo: So I I love that you’ve got two tools that no matter what, no matter where you go, you’re gonna, you’re gonna implement that. well, let’s talk, we, we’ve brought this up, uh, a couple of times in the call so far, but you wrote two books. You wrote the quality letters, I, I love how you describe it, the quality letters, the first quality book that is not boring, and that’s a passion project of yours, and it’s been very well received.

[00:37:08] Josh Santo: I’d love for you to talk to us about the original intent behind the creation of the quality letters.

[00:37:16] Ed Rocha: Yeah. I’m planning to retire next year and a couple of years ago when I start, uh, making that more concrete, that the time would be coming, I thought, man, I, I put so much of myself. I, I learned so much. I made so many mistakes and all that. It’s kind of sad too. Walk into the sunset, and take those, with me.

[00:37:40] Ed Rocha: So I became intentional, even internal in meetings and things like that. I was kind of trying to, to be purposeful and, and teach a concept, almost to an annoying point. I mean, people were discussing problem and I would stop a couple minutes to come up with my illustrations and my little stories. So I decide to put them on paper and I start sending an email to a small group of quality colleagues.

[00:38:08] Ed Rocha: And I just to create a kind of a fun format, I wrote them as if they were old fashioned style ladders. So I start greetings to all of those, and then I go, to a concept and I said, it has to fit in one page, phone 12, calibrate, whatever. So I said, if it takes more than that. I may split right another lesson, but has to take three to four minutes to read, because otherwise people won’t, I mean, if I send a, a long thing, and even in the book I say, don’t start reading, this as a cover to cover thing.

[00:38:46] Ed Rocha: You read one, put on the side, go through your day, because then you, you’re going to get that embedded. Then more people start asking to be put on the, that distribution. a guy from headquarters heard about that and proposed to give me a, a page on our intranet. So it became from Ed’s desk, the quality letters.

[00:39:08] Ed Rocha: That’s, uh, my page internally. And I kept publishing once a week, uh, a new story. Then I said, why am I restricting to our company? I’m not sharing any intellectual property here, so I decide to put it in LinkedIn. I start. Publishing one per week in LinkedIn. I am, story like 90 something in LinkedIn, at this point.

[00:39:33] Ed Rocha: And again, a lot of people, actually it was some of my contacts in LinkedIn that said, Hey, if you put this together in a book, I’ll make it mandatory reading for our quality department. So said, why not sat down on Saturday morning between Christmas and New Year’s, last year, 24, organize the thing added according to what Amazon guidelines are.

[00:39:57] Ed Rocha: And I published and it has been a very gratifying process.

[00:40:02] Josh Santo: I love that. So it’s really about. Sharing wisdom. You haven’t repeated the same year over and over in your,

[00:40:10] Josh Santo: in your career, right. You’ve

[00:40:13] Ed Rocha: a couple times, but.

[00:40:14] Josh Santo: You, you’ve got a ton of knowledge maybe. Oh, sure. Maybe there’s moments where you had to relearn a lesson. We’ve all been there. But you, you’re, you’re not necessarily, it’s not so much the knowledge side that you’re focused on, it’s the practical application.

[00:40:27] Josh Santo: It’s, you may know this concept, let me tell you about it actually being applied. And that really is the type of sharing that, that can help reduce the need to, to go 20 years to learn, a certain topic. So I love that that was an initiative. And I’m curious, do, do you have a letter or two, that you, you’d share with the audience?

[00:40:51] Ed Rocha: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll start with quality ladder number one. The one that, started the whole, snowball.

[00:40:57] Ed Rocha: Uh, I, I called it a dog with two masters. And I, again, I do that start, I say greeting things from all, from an old quality guy to the younger colleagues, blah, blah, blah. Quality be with you. That became my sentence that I repeat in every letter.

[00:41:16] Ed Rocha: It ended up being a slogan in, in a quality week. In one of our plans, they made posters saying, quality be with you. But anyhow, I, I go to tell a story that in many case, we are in a meeting with a dozen people, like situations. We talked before. We are discussing how we’re gonna improve something or solve a problem.

[00:41:38] Ed Rocha: And we make good progress. We find good solutions. We live there and nothing happens because we were not purposeful to define who’s gonna feed this dog. And I mean, we’re all busy. We leave that meeting hoping that one of the other 11 people that were in the meeting will take care of that because. Yeah, all good ideas, but I’m busy.

[00:42:02] Ed Rocha: Or, an email, same thing on an email. I mean, somebody send, sends an email to 20 people saying, make sure this is done by the end of the day tomorrow. Each one of the 20 will hope that one of the other 19 will take care of that, by tomorrow. Actually, I derive this concept from a saying that we have in Brazil that a dog with two owners starves to death.

[00:42:27] Ed Rocha: Obviously, the meaning is one owner will expect the other one to, to feed the dog. And so what my final message on this short letter is, plEASE, quality, professional. If you’re in a meeting or sending an email, define who’s going to do what. When. Define the expectations, assign it. If you don’t know, take your best guess.

[00:42:51] Ed Rocha: Worst case scenario, that person will come back and say, Hey. I’m not the one, I don’t have the food to give to the dog. It, it’s Joe Doe. Okay, then you forward to that person. You are still better than throwing the thing on hyperspace and expecting that somebody will feed the dog. So I, I close with, uh, the sentence that I also modify each time, but I said, ownership is key.

[00:43:17] Ed Rocha: Then I’ll pick another one. This is number 13 in my first book. that’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I called it the rear view mirror. And I, in this one, I don’t even say what is the application, but I start with a little story. When I was in college, I had a girl that was one year. behind me in, in college and she could not drive yet in Brazil, it’s 18, uh, years old that you’re allowed to drive.

[00:43:47] Ed Rocha: So she was preparing to get her license. So what we were doing, I would pick her up and when we were relatively close to the, to the college, I would let her take the seat, uh, the driver’s seat. And I was teaching her how to drive. And one thing that I observed was that she was driving and every time she looked at the rear view mirror, she would be staring at it for a few seconds.

[00:44:16] Ed Rocha: And I said, Hey, you shouldn’t do that. Your brain is better than that. You take a glance there and you look forward again. And she eventually got her license, got a brand new car from her dad, and she was driving, following a bus. And she took one of her, long pauses looking at the rear view mirror. When she looked ahead again, the bus had stopped that.

[00:44:38] Ed Rocha: The bus stopped and she was at the bumper. She had no time to, to brake. She crashed the car behind the bus. And I’m careful to not be misinterpret on this one because I’m gonna say I love KPIs. I think they’re extremely important everywhere. On the other hand, I’m getting tired of meetings where people show 30 slides with KPIs.

[00:45:06] Ed Rocha: We look at the thing, we see, oh, this one is going well, this one is not. And we keep going. There’s no, what are we gonna do about that? So 30 minutes later, the meeting is over. Everybody goes away. It’s information only. I mean, come on, either. The KPI is stupid and we should not even bother about it. Or if it’s important, if it’s not going well, we need to stop.

[00:45:33] Ed Rocha: Do we understand why it’s not going well? If there is a, a quick explanation and nothing we can do about it. Okay. Maybe we let it be, for example, I don’t know, a sales chart, and then it goes down and somebody says, well, that was a COVID error. Okay? We don’t have an action to prevent COVID. so, but in the majority of the case, you have a chart showing that you are not meeting the goals.

[00:46:00] Ed Rocha: You are looking at it with a dozen people in the, in the room, and you’re not stopping to say, okay, what are we gonna do about that? Let’s talk about that. Let’s assign to somebody. Otherwise, it’s like driving the car most of the time looking at the rear view mirror. And there is a reason why the windshield be so much bigger than the rear view mirror.

[00:46:21] Ed Rocha: Yeah. You get information there. It’s important. I’m not saying it’s not important. It may help in many case, but then you look forward again, the car is moving, looking forward is key. So that’s just another of my hundred stories that I have published, so

[00:46:40] Josh Santo: I, I love both of those. And I, I want to just recap them really quick. That idea of the, the, the dog with two owners. what a great say in a dog with two owners starves to death because it’s like, we all agree that, that someone should feed the dog. Yeah, we all agree. Great, great meeting guys.

[00:46:58] Josh Santo: We’ll see you next week. not good for the dog, right? Not good for the business. Your point, make action items clear. Who’s responsible for what? Ideally when, right? Because it’s like, yep, I know I will feed the dog in three months. Well, that’s also not great as well. And to your point, you don’t have to know who. But, but throw it out there. Because if you throw the wrong person, they’re gonna say, not me. Great. We’ll move on to the next one. Somebody’s gonna feed this dog even. I have to do it myself, kind of thing. So I love that. That is a, a great lesson to share. And then with the rear view mirror example, looking at KPIs, that’s a, a lagging.

[00:47:38] Josh Santo: Indicator, this represents what already happened and we could spend a ton of time looking at what already happened, or we can recognize this is where we were and focus on where we need to go. And we can use that to help guide the decisions we make with where we’re going. You know? But we have to focus on, like you said, the, the, the windshield is much bigger than the rear view mirror for a reason.

[00:48:02] Josh Santo: so I think that that’s a, so two interesting, great topics. Put them both in context. Make sure you’re assigning follow up to folks, otherwise things don’t get done. Make sure that you’re understanding these, these KPIs, these metrics. They’re the lagging indicators. we need to get ahead of those ’cause we’re al like we’re already ahead of them, you know, so like, let’s, run the business ahead of them.

[00:48:26] Josh Santo: great lessons. This is, has to have been. An interesting experience for you working on identifying these lessons and, and sharing them over time. What have you learned about this approach to sharing knowledge and wisdom with others?

[00:48:43] Ed Rocha: Well, that’s one that I, I am not a hundred percent sure it’s, it’s working. and the reason I say that is, when I was teaching in my first job at Volkswagen, we had painted on the wall. If the student didn’t learn, the instructor didn’t teach.

[00:49:00] Ed Rocha: And then I was visiting one of our customers, assembly plants, and I saw a guy in the assembly line with a T-shirt. I came back and I ordered an identical one. The next, the same day, it said, I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you. In other words, there is the other side that has to be, uh, part of it.

[00:49:22] Ed Rocha: So, again. I collected these concepts that I think are important for anybody’s career and, life. I present them in the format that I thought was easy to digest. But again, the other side has C two take interest. And as I said, don’t, don’t sit on the sofa and read my whole book. Read one, discuss with it.

[00:49:48] Ed Rocha: Yell, yell back at the, the story. If you don’t agree, call me or whatever, then go with your, with your life. Then maybe you’ll be better. My conation is okay. If, a thousand people read my stories, if five of them internalize and follow them, I made five people better. So maybe not 1000, but five, five people will be better professionals out there.

[00:50:18] Josh Santo: You can put the wisdom out there, but it has to have a willing recipient because it’s, it’s a two part equation and I I, I love that you called it out. I can, I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you, and you’re highlighting there has to be a commitment from both sides and that kind of larkins back to our conversation about adapting your message to your audience.

[00:50:43] Josh Santo: That is one of the things that you can control. If you’re explaining it the same way, they’re not understanding you as the teacher, you as the explainer. If you really want to be good at communicating that message, you have to work with them to understand how they. Understand. That’s what great teachers do.

[00:50:59] Josh Santo: That’s what great coaches do, is they, they find those ways to adapt the concept to their learner. And you also mentioned earlier that Brazil is known for soccer. Well, the how I really got exposed to, to Brazil, that’s a weird way of saying it, but I did Brazilian jiujitsu throughout

[00:51:19] Ed Rocha: Okay.

[00:51:20] Josh Santo: So I, and I, and I loved it.

[00:51:22] Josh Santo: I mean, what a great sport that was. But I had a coach, and this wasn’t with me. I, I observed him in one of the kids’ class and I saw he was, he was coaching a kid who was crying ’cause he was frustrated, he wasn’t executing the technique. And the coach said, if you are here to learn and you are not learning, that’s my fault.

[00:51:43] Josh Santo: If you are giving me your time and your effort and your trying and you’re not learning, that’s my job as a coach. And I took that small moment. From that instance. And that’s the, the, the same type of concept you’re describing. That’s, that’s, I learned that as well. You have to, as long as they are committed to learning, you have that responsibility of finding the ways in which they’ll learn.

[00:52:08] Josh Santo: And, and it’s that dual commitment.

[00:52:11] Ed Rocha: one of my quality ladder. I talk about the different type of learners, the visual learners, the audio learners, the kinetic learners. And again, if we recognize that we can use the right techniques to pass the to the audience the best way we can. Uh,

[00:52:28] Josh Santo: yes. Well, great. I got, uh, one more question for you before we, talk about story time. What’s going on in the world of quality in manufacturing that you are genuinely excited about?

[00:52:41] Ed Rocha: yeah, it’s interesting. Besides being excited about returning in four months, I am, uh, very, I mean, I have. Love the automotive industry. I mean, I went to engineering school because I wanted to be in the automotive, uh, industry. I mentioned that my first job was at Volkswagen, and my mom says that when we were driving to the beach, we would drive in front of this humongous plant that Volkswagen has in Brazil.

[00:53:13] Ed Rocha: 28,000 people, worked there when, the time I worked there. But I would say I want to be an engineer and work there. And when I was like seven or eight years old, and that eventually was my first job when I was actually stealing in, in college. And I’ve seen change. I have one of my stories called who invented quality.

[00:53:35] Ed Rocha: I tried to go through the evolution of, uh, quality and things like that, but I have been thinking on the last four years or so, I don’t think there was. Such an overlap of disruptions or changes at the same time as we have today. And that’s exciting. I mean, for a hundred years there were two epicenters, Europe and us.

[00:54:04] Ed Rocha: Suddenly the last few years we moved to three. Now we have Asia, particularly China with as many sales, as much importance as the other two. So it, it’s a big change and electrification of cars, whatever speed we are going, whatever speed we should be going to, that it is a, a revolution going on in our lifetime.

[00:54:31] Ed Rocha: And we’re gonna be telling our grandkids about, about that ride sharing. I mean, yeah, there were buses and subways and taxis when I was a kid, but ride sharing with, we had the hippie style, but not the. the ride sharing that is done, that’s relatively new. And if, depending where you live, I mean, when I go to Sao Paulo to visit my family, it’s impossible to park in that city.

[00:54:58] Ed Rocha: So I don’t take the car, I take ride sharing and go places. The autonomous driving again, I mean, some people bet on a higher speed of adoption of that. Some people will say, well, it’s gonna take forever. But we’re moving towards that. I mean, my, my t when I was 18 years old didn’t have, uh, adaptive cruise control, actually didn’t have cruise control at all yet at that time.

[00:55:24] Ed Rocha: But today we have lane keeping and cruise control and the thing that you can cross your arms and the car will go and things like that. And artificial intelligence, I mean, it’s impossible to think where that’s gonna take us. And I think. Change brings risk and opportunity in equal measures. And I think it’s gonna be up to you younger guys to take, either be screwed by the risks that come with that and lose the boat and be left behind, or take the opportunities and be the ones, leaving the, the future and going there.

[00:56:02] Ed Rocha: Again, it’s a time of such changes that again, maybe I’ll be watching from the bleachers or I’ll be a consultant to companies or I’ll be writing books. But you guys that are gonna be leaving the next few years, you are in for a ride of a of a century.

[00:56:20] Josh Santo: Yeah, it certainly seems like it. You’re right, there’s a lot of forces coming into play that’s really making this an interesting and, exciting time in the industry and, a lot of lessons to be learned, in the next, number of years or so. the ideas that you called out, ride sharing, autonomous drive, driving artificial intelligence, electrification of cars.

[00:56:39] Josh Santo: I’ve heard some, some crazy ideas and concepts. Uh, autonomous driving’s already here. To what degree, you know what? Reliability is still up for debate, but we’ve, even in downtown Austin, we’ve got the Waymo’s just. Going around doing their thing, driving on their own. At least from my perception, don’t at me if I am getting some technical aspect of that wrong ride sharing.

[00:57:02] Josh Santo: You think about autonomous driving and the concept of ride sharing. The question comes, do you even need to own a car at that point? You know, if, if robots are just taking you around, AI is the buzz right now. What, what is going to happen? a lot happening there. Electrification of cars. You know, I talked with a, with an analyst who, who talked about how can you tap into kinetic energy, so the motion of the vehicle in order to then power the vehicle.

[00:57:28] Josh Santo: And that was a thought that just kinda. Blew my mind right there. Like imagine that the act of moving generates the energy that then drives the car. Whether or not we’re close to that, I have no idea, but I just thought that I’d share that. well, all right, we’re getting close to wrapping up, but Ed, I know you’ve told us a couple of stories.

[00:57:46] Josh Santo: I think you’ve got another story prepared for us. I’d love to hear, that story.

[00:57:52] Ed Rocha: Yeah, I, I, again, following our, preliminary conversation, I thought it would be. Interesting. A little more on the leadership side. In this case, when I worked for Ford, I was in the resident engineering team at the plant in Brazil. Our team had a manager there and we reported remotely to Michigan. And when I was 27 years old, I was the youngest guy in our team and our supervisor was his time to come back to the us.

[00:58:28] Ed Rocha: He was an American. It was time for him to come back to the US and I was given the opportunity to replace the guy. I mean, he was in the business for almost as long as I was alive. And he was very experienced. He was very wise. So the team would come to him with a problem and he would give a solution and people would go ahead and follow his direction.

[00:58:58] Ed Rocha: When they invited me to take his position, I called my team that, again, I was the youngest. I mean, even the co-op student was a year older than I was at that, at that time. I told them, I said, guys, there is no way I can provide what our previous, boss did. If you are not gonna be able to come with a problem, and I have the the solution to give to you.

[00:59:22] Ed Rocha: So let’s make a deal. You bring a problem, you bring a proposed solution for that problem, and I will tell you 80%, 90% of the times I will say, I don’t have any better idea. Go ahead with your solution. I said, maybe I was in a meeting yesterday or I faced something, the other day that I may tweak a little bit.

[00:59:45] Ed Rocha: But in most of the case, what you bring is gonna be the best idea. Was a little rough in the beginning because again, people were. Almost confused with that direction. I mean, they were used, no, the boss gives answers and they were still coming. And I would say, well, you may need this and this and this information.

[01:00:04] Ed Rocha: So they would go back, get that, and eventually they had enough knowledge to formate a proposal and then they start feeling more fulfilled. By that, I mean, instead of being golfers, I mean taking for information to the boss, taking the solution, go back. They suddenly were active participants of the solution, for the things.

[01:00:31] Ed Rocha: But then comes the sad part of it. As I became more experienced, I slowly turned into my previous boss because it’s faster. So I caught myself, in many case, people coming to me with a problem and I’m no longer exercise that. Say, Hey, what do you need to, to propose a solution for this? Do You need more information.

[01:00:56] Ed Rocha: Do you need guidance? Whatever. I fell trapped to the same thing, that it’s faster. I’ll tell the guy, well do this, and he would go and do that. It’s faster. I’m busy. So I, again, that’s another story in my, in my book I called How I became a Worst Leader. So that’s my little story for, this, podcast, is I became a worst leader because I forgot what made me a good leader in the beginning.

[01:01:27] Ed Rocha: That was helping people develop solutions instead of providing them all the, all the answers. When I woke up to that, I tried to revert a little bit, but I, I would say I probably went a good third of my career, the central third of my career, being the guy that would give the answers. Instead of being the guy that help the team develop the answers, I think I, I reversed back to my previous style and I’m doing that very, very intentionally now, and I’m telling people, guys, in another four months, I’m not gonna be here.

[01:02:07] Ed Rocha: Okay. So what do you think you need to, to find the answer for that? So, lately it has been very easy to go back to my original leadership style, and it’s gratifying. People are, they leave smiling in some case. I mean, maybe shaking their heads, their heads, but they’re getting better, they’re getting stronger.

[01:02:28] Ed Rocha: Hopefully, we’re not gonna have a collapse when I’m not around.

[01:02:32] Josh Santo: what a great leadership lesson there, which is your job as the leader is to, empower the people. Help them. And that’s how, that’s how you solve the problem. You don’t solve the problem by having the answers. You solve the problem by getting the people together who are gonna find the answers that you, maybe you would’ve had, probably you would’ve had.

[01:02:54] Josh Santo: Right. But you’re also in that experience, giving them the opportunity to have the new experiences that. Share for that wisdom. What an important point. I love that you shared that story. We covered a lot today and it’s been a great conversation. Uh, really excited that we were able to have you on the show.

[01:03:11] Josh Santo: I took a lot of notes. I know that the listeners are gonna benefit from it as well. So sincerely, ed, thank you for joining the Shop Floor top floor talk show.

[01:03:21] Ed Rocha: Thank you very much for the opportunity of being here and again, I’ll be very happy if you guys go to Amazon and buy the books. I make a dollar 99 every book that’s sold, so, I’ll be, I’ll be rich if you all buy, uh, my book. No. Alright.

[01:03:37] Josh Santo: That’s right.

[01:03:38] Ed Rocha: I, will be rewarded by the knowledge that, hey, more people are learning.

[01:03:43] Ed Rocha: And that’s, again, that was my objective to write those. So, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. It has been fun. ​