Part two. The Seam
The photograph
Low volume hides defects. The seam that works fine at ten a week is not proven at a hundred.
Read the transcript
A process running at low volume is a photograph of a process, not a moving picture of one. It shows you that the steps exist. It tells you almost nothing about whether they hold. At ten items a week a good operator absorbs every defect personally without noticing they are doing it. They spot the odd case, they make the call, they chase the missing piece. The process appears to work, because the reporting counts outcomes rather than the interventions that produced them. At a hundred a week the same person cannot absorb a hundred, and every defect that was quietly handled becomes visible at once. So ask: how many exceptions did somebody handle personally this month, and who were they? A name and a number means you have a person, not a process.
A process running at low volume is a photograph of a process, not a moving picture of one. It shows you that the steps exist. It tells you almost nothing about whether they hold.
At ten items a week a good operator absorbs every defect personally, without noticing they are doing it. They spot the odd case, they make the call, they chase the missing piece. The process appears to work and the reporting agrees, because the reporting counts outcomes rather than the interventions that produced them.
At a hundred a week the same person cannot absorb a hundred, and every defect that was being quietly handled becomes visible at once. The organisation experiences this as a sudden collapse in quality caused by growth. It is not. The defects were always there and the volume simply exceeded one person's capacity to hide them.
The instrument is to ask, of any process you are pleased with: how many exceptions did somebody handle personally this month, and who were they? If the answer is a name and a number greater than a handful, you do not have a process at that volume. You have a person, and you will find out when they take a holiday.
Two things worth doing, neither of which costs anything
Read the standard in full, free and in the open, before you pay anything or give anyone an address.