SPEAKER_02: 0:02

Welcome to Ashto Resource QA. We're taking time to discuss construction materials, testing, and inspection with people in the know. From exploring testing problems and solutions to laboratory best practices and quality management. We're covering topics important to you.

SPEAKER_01: 0:18

Welcome to Ashto Resource QA. I'm Brian Johnson.

SPEAKER_02: 0:22

And I'm Kim Swanson, and we are here today to talk about continual improvement. I am so excited. Everyone at Resource loves to talk about continual improvement, and our guest is no exception.

SPEAKER_01: 0:34

That's right. Our guest today is Tracy Barnhart, our quality manager. She lives and breathes continual improvement, which is why I thought she would be the perfect guest for this episode. And uh Tracy, welcome.

SPEAKER_00: 0:48

Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01: 0:50

We're talking about this topic in our December episode because it's the end of the year. No surprise, the uh the soon will be the beginning of the next year. And a lot of people make New Year's resolutions. And I think, you know, uh on an individual basis, uh and people should be thinking about their companies and their quality improvements in the new year as well. So not everybody does it on that interval, but if you aren't thinking strategically about the improvements you'd like to make next year, we are hoping to push you in that direction if you're listening to this and think about it. And uh we we actually have a plan for what we want you to do. We're gonna talk about quality leading up to that, but I have a call of action at the end. So stay tuned. Don't don't turn it off because you don't want to hear about quality. We have an assignment for you, which I know that everybody loves assignments, especially around the holidays when they're trying to do a million other things. Um but okay, so that's the lead-in. I can tell Kim really loves it.

SPEAKER_02: 2:06

You are selling it so much as this is great. I I am here for it, but you are selling this.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11

We're talking about quality today with Tracy. Uh we've been, we've we always we always think about quality, but uh our our strategic roadmap really uh was a way for us to to talk more broadly about it with our customers, advertise these concepts more broadly. Um and really the focus is on having this uh quality revolution in in construction materials testing. So quality management, continual improvement.

SPEAKER_00: 2:43

I hope people are aware that they are that we have this information on our website on the quality tab, the information that you just spoke of. We have our quality policy for Ashtur Resource on there. And I believe the Ashtur Resource Roadmap, if I'm not mistaken, that's public information as well that Brian was just referring to.

SPEAKER_01: 3:03

You can go to the About Us and there's a quality tab, and you can get all the information on our roadmap and quality in layman's terms. Talk about, hey, what is this quality management revolution that you guys are talking about? And what what would our laboratory look like if we were if we were part of that?

SPEAKER_00: 3:20

Well, one of the items in the roadmap is embracing processes which can which foster continual improvement. So always having a focus on continual improvement and ensuring that you have a culture of quality within your laboratory, that it's a trickle-down effect from the top management, top leadership all the way down to your newest employee, that it doesn't just stay in that management sector of people because you want everyone to feel and embrace the quality culture in your organization.

SPEAKER_01: 3:53

That's right, top to bottom, right? Everybody's thinking about quality. So no more of this. Oh, they don't need to know that. They don't need to know why they do that. Yeah. How many times have you heard that over the years from people? And and if that is your mindset, it's time to make a change.

SPEAKER_00: 4:11

That's right.

SPEAKER_01: 4:12

And be get on board this quality management revolution that we're set for we have set forth on, and we're trying to talk about today uh and and always. Uh so Tracy, another question. Whose responsibility is quality?

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Every person that works in the organization. It is your responsibility to ensure excellence in the work that you do. You cannot think that that's gonna happen from your supervisor or your colleagues. You have to take it seriously and implement whatever you need to do to focus on continual improvement.

SPEAKER_01: 4:49

Okay, so I I'm a let's say I'm a technician, and you're telling me my responsibility is is quality, even though I'm not the quality manager. That's not in my duties. Uh I've read I just read over my position description. Yep. And it doesn't say that. How what what can I and what by the way, I also have to follow these standards, right? And so what how can I participate in this? What what's my what's where where where can I contribute?

SPEAKER_00: 5:17

One easy way to get people on board with this is to incorporate quality training when you first hire somebody. We do that here at Astro Resource. I sit down with new employees and talk to them about our quality management system, our quality policy statement, the goals that we have related to quality. And so I think it's important to disseminate that information to all employees to ensure that they understand, not only know what they are, but understand them and understand how those things apply to their particular job duties. And then ultimately the employee would run with that then. They know, okay, we have these specific quality goals. I know if you're a testing technician, I know how important it is that the work that I do is the best that it can be, so that we're delivering the highest quality product to our customers.

SPEAKER_01: 6:07

If I if you're a technician and you're and you're running tests, are there are there opportunities for you to make improvements beyond the state of requirements, the test method?

SPEAKER_00: 6:18

Of course. Absolutely. There are always improvement opportunities. We find that here at Azure Resource all the time. But yeah, you don't want to just focus on here's the test method, this is what I should be doing, A, B, C, D like a recipe, but also focus on how can we improve the processes that we have in our laboratory, maybe redesigning the system that we have for testing in the laboratory. Maybe people are spending too much time walking around from one station to the other, maybe realigning things so things are more efficient. Maybe uh improving the training program for technicians? You've gone through it yourself. Did somebody just give you the standard and have you read it and then you're supposed to figure out how to perform the test? What can we do to improve training and understanding of those test methods? Is there something that could be improved with the equipment that you're using and be proactive about that and ask do we have money in our budget to purchase equipment that might help us in our quality journey to become more efficient in our work or to at least improve the quality of the testing?

SPEAKER_01: 7:28

Yeah, and and Cam, in your role, let's talk about your role, communications and uh all the other various things that you're involved with, which which is a lot. Uh a lot of different things, a lot of helping people figure things out. Um how does quality play a role in your non-technical tasks?

SPEAKER_02: 7:54

That I mean, quality is every is everywhere at resource and should be everywhere for everything, I think. But um for me, it's making sure that you know, our you know, our website is communicating what we need to communicate clearly. Is it aligned with our organizational values, right? So, like is it concise? Are we being transparent where we can be? Are we doing things like that kind of thing? Um, also internally, when my work, you know, doing helping with communications internally, I've done training, communications training for staff of how to be more effective and efficient in your communication, right? So it's not only, you know, like quality in the technical way, but how can you be a quality coworker, right? And how can you communicate, how can you communicate effectively and efficiently? Because that is all a part all a part of quality. And I also like I've created some job aids for staff of like here's a checklist. And I think that's something even like technicians can do too. If you're having trouble with like remembering this one part and you have a tip that you use, share that. That's a good that's a part of quality, right? Sharing those little things that you do that make your job easier with other people that are doing similar things. So, you know, I think I just helped you similarly yesterday, Brian, about like, I'm like, oh, you're still accessing those files that way? Like, that doesn't seem like the most effective way. Here, let me show you how I do it, and this may help, right? So it's not hoarding the knowledge, it's sharing it with everybody and communicating effectively in general, I think. I talked in circles on that one. So hopefully that answered your question, Brian.

SPEAKER_01: 9:46

You definitely answered my question. And the the point is that there are aspects of everybody's job duties and even ones that aren't specifically in their job duties, uh that can uh receive some attention for continual improvement, uh, are part of quality. It's not, I think what a lot of times when people hear us talk about quality, they're thinking about testing, testing, testing. Right. And it's much more than that. It's it's management, it's training, it's communication, it's everything, and it's everyone. And and that is what you need to embrace uh to have a quality organization. Uh and and you have to spread it. You you you can't, like Kim said, you can't hoard it. It is not only these are not responsibilities that only reside in Tracy's area of expertise, even though we brought her on to talk about it because she it is her her job duty, you know, to be managing the quality, which means she handles a lot of the audits that go on and and management reviews. So, so I I want to talk to you next, Tracy, about about the management reviews, because a lot of times when we talk about uh setting our goals uh for different departments and for the organization overall, uh some of that stuff comes out of the management reviews. Um and and how how does that how does that evolve?

SPEAKER_00: 11:15

Management reviews, you shouldn't uh go into those just thinking it's a checklist of items that you have to get through. You want to take it a little bit more seriously than that. Uh of course, there are certain things that we have to include on our records because of our ISA 9001 certification. But we get into at the end of our management reviews a SWOT analysis where we're spending a lot of time talking about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to our organization and really focusing specifically on the weaknesses and the opportunities that things that are maybe we should be doing that we're not doing right now, improvement opportunities. And we focus a lot of that on that. And then yes, that can lead into improvements in the next year or goals that we create for the next year that we really hadn't thought about before. So those discussions really help us with the framework of quality and the culture of quality going into the next year for that specific program that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01: 12:16

Yeah, so we think about these inputs. You talked about SWOT analysis, but I don't want people to get hung up on that because there are a lot of ways that you can you can get this information. Some of them they just you just have a conversation or you think about it, you write it down, you share ideas. So I think sometimes when people think about this, they they're like, oh man, we're gonna have to hire a consultant to teach us what this means, and we're gonna have to do all these formal things. Right. Uh don't don't let don't let formalization uh get in the way of making continual improvements to your organization.

SPEAKER_00: 12:50

Absolutely. Don't make it harder than it has to be. Our management reviews are very conversational. You've been through a number of them. We're just they're long, but we're having a very good, productive conversation. We typically don't have time to do any other time of the year. So it's really great just to sit down and focus on those things and as Kim mentioned, learn from one another and implement some improvement opportunities with our quality co-workers.

SPEAKER_01: 13:16

That's right. That's right. It's all about the the entire team contributing. So I we talked about management reviews just there. If you're not really aware of those or you're not comfortable with those, I did want to share that we have um we have podcasts and and webinars uh about management reviews because we know it's an area of confusion for people.

SPEAKER_00: 13:39

Yeah, and and Brian, I will say that improvement opportunities, that's one of the key outputs of a management review. You should be identifying improvement opportunities, or you're not focusing on the right things during those discussions. So it's something to keep in mind.

SPEAKER_02: 13:55

I also think some people might get held up, as you said, Brian, about like the formality of the whole process, but also thinking of improvement opportunities as these big things that change. It doesn't have to be a big thing, it can be a really small thing. And that's actually a really great way to start switching or changing the culture, is start with small, quote unquote, easy things. And then people will see, oh, this is what we do, and you'll like build the culture and the confidence that people like, oh, if I suggest something that's going to be an improvement, uh it's gonna be listened to, it's going to be implemented if it's available, you know, like if we are able to do that. So I think don't necessarily think that it has to be these big massive system-wise changes. It can be as simple as a job aid here or there, or you know, a change in something relatively minor, but that can get the ball rolling and build momentum in a positive way, like snowballing, but in a good way.

SPEAKER_00: 14:57

Also, with management reviews, we're always continually improving our management reviews, the process itself. Because every time we do one, I typically organize those. I'm moving topics around because the conversation didn't flow quite as well as I wanted it to. So we're never doing things in the same order year to year. I'm adding topics that we should discuss. We didn't used to have SWOT analysis included in there. And then we determine, wow, that's actually really good stuff to talk about at a management review. So you you want to think about continually improving even those basic processes that you're doing, internal audits and management reviews, and not just kind of, you know, sit back and think, well, we've always done it this way, it works for us, it's fine. But they're always like Kim said, even little changes can result in big improvements.

SPEAKER_01: 15:44

Yeah, try different things. Try different things.

SPEAKER_02: 15:47

There's there's a hold up, I think that this happens in people's personal lives as well when you're setting goals or making changes, that you try something thinking it's gonna be an improvement. If it's not, you can go back. Like there's nothing saying like you can be flexible like that. And you know, like, okay, I think this is gonna help. And then the we try it, and you're like, oh no, that actually came up more other problems that I wasn't thinking about. And it's you know what, let's go back. Like, we can change our mind. It is not, you know, like you're not stuck doing something just because it was suggested and you thought it was gonna improve. Reevaluate, like, did this improve it? You know, maybe okay, maybe we go back, maybe it was better the other way, or what adjustments can we make so it will be better. So I think that's an important reminder for people that it's not only you don't only have to go forward. Sometimes it's okay to go backwards if that change wasn't impactful like you were hoping it would be.

SPEAKER_01: 16:42

A lot of great points there. Uh I would say that uh another thing that I want to make sure people realize is all that stuff that Tracy and Kim were just talking about. Uh, if you really want to make it explode at your company, you do also have to uh this is gonna be something Kim will be excited about, you have to communicate about it. Uh so you do have to talk about it. You do have to this is something that as a manager, I I would say that is my biggest area of improvement that I need to work on is celebrating those small wins, celebrating those small changes. Because a lot of times I will get into this mindset of expecting. Like I expect our team to be dedicated to making continual improvements. And I don't always take a pause and recognize those little changes like I should, but every time you recognize it, it's a little, it's it's another little way to motivate others to also want that recognition, even if they won't admit it, want that want that that recognition or or or to just be noticed for doing a good job. Because so many of us are just expected to be able to do what we do really well, right? And and yeah, that that should be an expectation. Um but it you you gotta talk about it and you gotta build up that community.

SPEAKER_00: 18:09

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 18:11

Okay, so we are at a a very good stopping point of this discussion to talk about next steps for everybody. Uh so I know that I've I've heard this from other people where they say, Oh, it must be nice for you to work in this quality area where you have time to go do this because I'm so busy, I have all these things to do. Um, but what I and I know this is it's a busy time of year, everybody's got a ton of stuff going on. But take time if it's on a commute home, if it is on you, you're sitting in traffic, shopping, whatever you are doing, you're wrapping gifts, whatever. You think about processes, think about ways you can make improvements anywhere in your life to try to get this mindset developed if you don't already have it. Um an idea strikes you, write it down, bring it to the table, talk to other people uh in your office about it, and and we're gonna try to help stimulate some of this conversation for you. Uh, we are gonna send out a poll. This is gonna go to all the good little Astro accredited uh people out there, uh the laboratories out there that are in our program, uh, and and basically anybody who's on our mailing list, and we're gonna ask you if you have considered a quality goal that it leads to continual improvement at your organization. And what we would like to do is take some of those that we get back and talk about them in our January episode of the podcast. And if you are up for it, we'll ask you if you consent to this. But if you uh consent to us mentioning you by name and your company by name, and it might be a little, a nice little way to speak. Spread that message of continual improvement and quality among your other offices or in your office or in the industry as a whole. So we'd love to get some participation there. And like I said, we'll be talking about that in the new year. And let's let's spread that continual improvement and quality mindset throughout the industry and throughout well the world.

SPEAKER_02: 20:30

The world?

SPEAKER_01: 20:31

Throughout the world. That's a world of quality out there. Is that too small? I think the universe. Oh.

SPEAKER_02: 20:37

Universe? Galaxy.

SPEAKER_01: 20:38

Universe. Galaxy. What's bigger?

SPEAKER_02: 20:40

No, yes. I don't know. Outside of my mind. Infinity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 20:45

Infinity. Yes.

unknown: 20:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 20:47

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 20:48

Please cut all that.

SPEAKER_02: 20:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:50

And these and these goals are New Year's resolutions that people might actually keep.

SPEAKER_01: 20:57

They are.

SPEAKER_02: 20:58

Yes. And I I think we will be sending out the survey, uh, and a survey or and it will be linked to in this podcast as well. And uh as set for realistic participation in things, it may be our February episode, Brian, just so we can get enough people. You say January. I don't want to hold us to that. It might be February, depending on how many amazing responses we get.

SPEAKER_01: 21:24

I'm flexible on that. On that point, you know, just like we were talking about. We're set, we set I'm setting forth this goal of January, but you know what? If we don't meet it, that's okay. Because our our end goal is really to have this. So if we're a little delayed, that's okay.

SPEAKER_02: 21:41

Yes, and I wanted to be transparent about that and say it might be February because everyone is busy at the end of the year and the start of the new year. So, but we will be doing this. We will be uh you'll see it on our social media, you will see it uh in an email for sure. Um, and again, I'm sure there's a link already in the podcast description because future Kim is on it and it is gonna be there. Um, but also speaking of future quality things, I want to put a plug-in for our uh technical exchange happening in March. So Tracy, do you want to tell us a tiny bit about that?

SPEAKER_00: 22:20

Yes, it's coming up the week of March 9th, I believe, in Louisville, Kentucky. We hope that we will see you there. We're gonna talk about quality, we're gonna talk about technical topics. There's gonna be a lot of networking opportunities. It's a great event. And hopefully you'll be moved to join us in Louisville.

SPEAKER_02: 22:42

Yes, if registration isn't open already when you're listening to this, it will be open very, very soon. Um, so again, continual improvement there. Hopefully we can get uh we try earlier and earlier to get registration open every year. So we're trying to improve that. Uh so if it's not already open, uh be on the lookout for that. And you can check out more information at astra resource slash events or astro resource.org slash events uh for more information on the technical exchange and more information on the quality information we were talking about. Again, for transparency sake and all that, you can go to astro resource.org slash quality and you can see our quality policy, our values, our mission, our vision, and the roadmap that Brian was mentioning.

SPEAKER_01: 23:30

Thanks everybody and have a great holiday season and end of the year. And I hope you bring the spirit of quality wherever you go.

SPEAKER_02: 23:40

Thanks for listening to Ashto Resource QA. If you'd like to be a guest or just submit a question, send us an email at podcast at ashto resource.org. Or call Brian at 240-436-4820. For other news and related content, check out Ashto Resources' social media accounts or go to ashtoresource.org.