The Checklist

Everyone’s goal should be zero defects, but getting there is not that simple.  There is a tool that could prove to very effective for you.  And that tool is a checklist.

Pilots are very well educated people and very well trained with clear goals of not allowing a single mishap that could prove dangerous to themselves and their passengers.  The air industry does have one of the best records of safety.  Before a pilot takes off the airplane, he/she and the co-pilot go through an extensive checklist.   Now, this process cannot be simply placing check marks, which can become rote and meaningless.  A pilot should move a switch, test out a setting, read out a dial to the co-pilot – make it as tactile as possible.

Before you start to work you should have a checklist to insure that everything is ready.  Use a checklist before you run a machine.  Most of us just get into our automobile, turn the key and away we go until the car starts to make a noise, a dashboard light goes on or the car just stops.  But, we want zero defects; we want to insure that the automobile, the machine, never breaks down. Do not leave it to your memory. 

I don’t know about you but I always forget.  Once I was supposed to pick up my daughter on the way home from work.  I got to the house, took one look at my wife and immediately turned around and spent two hours going back to get my daughter.

When younger, a “mad” doctor operated on me and I lost a perfectly good kidney.  He was an “ego” maniac who could do no wrong.  Everything came out of his “wonderful” mind.    A few weeks later, I went to probably the best Urologist in the world to save my life.  I remember each day when he came to visit me in the hospital; he took out his checklist (Example: fifth day after the operation I should remove the staples.) and he went through it carefully to make sure that I was healing properly and he was doing what was necessary.  If he noticed something new, he just updated his checklist. It was a living-learning document.

Look around your work area today and with your team start to make and test new checklists.