Question

Question 3
With your knowledge in quality management how can the phrase ‘doing it right the first time and better next time’, be leveraged to aid industrialization in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana? 20 marks

Answer 1

We need to first dismantle the phrase. The first part is “Doing it right the first time” (DRIFT) and it is a commonly used term in lean management practices and quality management. The focus of DRIFT is to reduce waste and keeping the entire system lean. This means that orders are placed only when they are needed. This in other words can be translated into essential services that a person require. Facilities such as food, shelter, healthcare etc. are essential and thus should be focused on. In the face of COVID 19 crisis we have realized it and DRIFT policy seems to be a good one. However, there are weakness around DRIFT

The key weakness of DRIFT is that it focuses on bare minimum or essentials. As a result, they are good of operations such as JIT or lean. Now that is good as long as other dependent systems are working fine. If there is any disturbance in the supply chain, then it disrupts the entire operation and issues such as backorder cannot be handled in DRIFT. As a result, there needs to be improvement. The same way, while we deal with COVID 19, we need to make sure that essential services are running well but along with it, the system should look to improve the lean operation. This is where the next part of the phrase comes that says “better next time”.