Beware of problems with your company and product leaking from one department to another.
When issues are caused by one department’s error, it may not be detected until the product reaches another group or even the customer.
Unfortunately, the farther down the line the mistake travels, the less likely it will make it back to the original offending party to correct future mistakes.
This can put your company in a constant battle of producing errors and mistakes that are never corrected and the effects thereof constantly being felt by those “downstream.”
The last time we needed a faucet for our bathroom sink, I found a new, sealed box on the store’s shelf and purchased it.
When I got home and opened the box, I saw that the faucet wasn’t the same as was shown on the box. In fact, it wasn’t even close.
Oops.
I took the product back to the store where the customer service folks and then the department manager helped me and refunded my money.
In this case, a quality assurance problem with the product wasn’t felt by the packaging and shipping people but rather those at the end of the line: the customer and the customer service people.
Granted, not all problems will be caught before your products are handed off to the next group.
However, you need to have a feedback mechanism in place to continually refine and correct issues that are detected later in the purchasing cycle so that they can be prevented with future occurrences.
Your company may be broken into silos internally but don’t let this let you run your business inefficiently.
Identify the problems in one group or department that have a root cause in another and make changes across the board.