A revolution in quality improvement has spread throughout US industry. Companies have transformed their approach from a focus on quality inspection to quality assurance in manufacturing, inventory control and product development areas. In the early 1980s Hutchinson Technology Inc. (HTI) adopted many of these approaches in our manufacturing areas, and in 1986 developed what we call the Reliability Assurance (RA) process to apply them to support and administrative areas. This paper briefly describes how our information center used RA to define and streamline the pro-cess of its fundamental service, information retrieval.

2. BACKGROUND - THE REVOLUTION IN QUALITY

The overwhelming success of Japanese and German competitors beginning in the 1970s led some companies such as IBM to adopt a "Total Quality Management" approach in the early 1980s. This new approach to quality used Just In Time (JIT), Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) and Statistical Process Control (SPC) techniques, among others, to reduce inventory, streamline product development, and reduce manufacturing process variation.1 These and other related terms are defined in the Glossary of Quality Terms at the end of this paper.

Beginning in 1986, Hutchinson Technology's president took the approach one step further and developed a process to apply these techniques to support and administrative areas throughout the company (Hay, 1989).

This process, called Reliability Assurance (RA), entails two phases:

• Phase 1 requires a department to examine itself as if it were an independent company. The objective is to define the process flow of the service, determine the required components needed to provide the service, and identify the suppliers, customers, and customer needs. Finally, there must be quality standards in place and a process to help measure the department's performance.

• Phase 2 emphasizes solving problems to improve the quality of the service and effectiveness of a department's process.

This paper covers only Phase 1 of the RA process (Hutchinson Technology, 1990).

3. ABOUT THE COMPANY AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE INFORMATION CENTER

Hutchinson Technology Inc. is a leading company in the manufacture of suspension assemblies, thin metal arms that hold read/write heads above a spinning disk in a computer disk drive. Establish-ed in 1965, there has been considerable growth in the 1980s, thanks in large part to the explosion of personal computer sales.

HTI employs over 3300 people, with 350 in engineering, 60 in sales and marketing, and 960 in other support areas. Technical innovation moves extremely fast in the disk drive market, with pro-duct life cycles of six months to one year. To remain a market leader, its engineering, sales and marketing, and support personnel must have timely access to accurate information. The Information Center was established in 1990 to provide or facilitate that access.

In the 1980s others at HTI tried to establish a central "library" or "resource center," but for several reasons, these efforts failed. Several "mini" resource centers existed throughout the com-pany, and each was wary of losing ownership of its materials. Unfortunately, these attempts to establish a library were perceived as trying to centralize the location of materials, instead of centra-lizing the access to information.

Another reason these early attempts failed was that no one in the company had experience work-ing in a library, let alone establishing or managing one. Moreover, those who tried to establish an information center had trouble balancing the different desires and needs of various company person-nel and they lacked the skills required to negotiate an acceptable plan. These problems were exacer-bated by the lack of a management champion willing to commit the time and resources required to nurture the effort to fruition. This all changed in late 1989 when the Corporate Development Engineering Manager decided to make the center a reality. He had witnessed the early attempts, and saw an increasing abundance of incoming information from external databases swirling, uncataloged and unknown around the company.

Having previously worked for a company with a successful resource center, the Corporate Development Engineering Manager knew what had to be established at Hutchinson Technology: An Information Center that centralized access to technical and business information inside and outside the company; an organization that could link internal and external experts with customers. Its main service would be information retrieval, but it could eventually expand into other services. The details were still a bit fuzzy, but the critical factor was his willingness to fight for the center's survival.

The Information Center Administrator was hired in 1990 to make the manager's vision a reality. The Administrator began by identifying and cataloging company-owned books held by employees throughout the company, developing a tracking system for those books, and implementing a retrieval system for all of the information. Simultaneously, the Administrator began identifying the hardware and software needed to connect the company to online databases such as Dialog, and information specialists such as Teltech. The goal was to make information access as user-friendly as possible so that employees could do their research independently.

The Administrator also networked with the Information Resource Center Administrator from a Fortune 500 company, who helped draft an Information Request form. After about six months, the Administrator decided to add staff members to keep up with demand for the center's services.

Hutchinson Technology's President strongly encourages departments to review the RA process. So, from May to June of 1991, the Administrator worked with an RA Facilitator from the Education and Development Department, applying RA to The Information Center. Spending a few hours each week, the RA process was completed in five weeks.

4. THE RELIABILITY ASSURANCE PROCESS

As explained in the Background section of this paper, RA Phase 1 requires a department to examine itself as if it were an independent company. The objective is to define the process flow of the service, determine the required components needed to provide the service, and identify the suppliers, customers, and customer needs. As a part of defining the process flow, a department identifies quality checkpoints in the process that assure customer satisfaction. Finally, a department sets goals and develops a process to help measure the department's performance toward those goals.

Departments within Hutchinson Technology vary considerably in how they interpret the RA process and the sequence of steps they take through it. Another company's experiences will vary depending on its needs, services, and culture. The rest of this paper describes the generic RA process, and includes descriptions of how Hutchinson Technology's Information Center applied the RA process to its primary service, information retrieval.

4.1. Defining the Services

Begin the RA process by determining an information department's services, or primary outputs. The services may be internal or external to the department:

• Internal services are those that occur within the information center environment, where the information center staff are the sole researchers. These internal services may include accessing journals/periodicals or book and video inventory lists, and helping users with database access terminals.

• External services are those that require information center personnel to interact with systems or people outside of the information center environment. These may include document delivery, interlibrary loan, an Expert Network or access to online databases.

The major services provided by our information center are information retrieval, book purchases, book repository, and new information alert. In this paper only the RA process for information retrie-val is included. This is because information retrieval is fundamental to the department's mission and is the service most frequently provided.

4.2. Component Specifications

A component is something used to produce or provide a service. One component identified is the request form used to record the information interview. The component is not merely the piece of paper, but the information conveyed on the paper. The component specifications are the quality, quantity, and timeliness of that information, and the cost of obtaining that information.

4.3. Identifying the Customers.

A customer is a person or another department which directly uses the service the information cen-ter provides. While this could be virtually anyone in the company, the primary customers of the HTI Information Center are R&D and manufacturing engineering, sales, marketing, and management personnel.

4.4. Determining the Customer's Needs

Invite customers or their representatives to a meeting to gain honest input. At the start of the meeting, be sure to explain why the information center exists and why they have been invited to the meeting.

During the meeting ask them to explain their likes, dislikes and specifications regarding the ser-vice. Ask them to quantify their expectations. For example, if they say they want a "quick turn-around time on requests," ask them to specify the amount of time, i.e., "a four-hour turnaround." This feedback may be added to the specifications for a department's service.

4.5. Identifying Suppliers

Refer to the list of components to determine component suppliers. The supplier can be internal or external. It could be a university library for interlibrary loan, a professional on the list of experts or the mail center for the delivery of documents. There may be more than one supplier for each component.

4.6. Defining the Process Flow

The process flow is a logical assembly of the tasks required to produce the service. Begin by brainstorming for a list of tasks, and arranging the list chronologically. As the process flow (Figure 1) illustrates, the first eight steps entail identifying the subject, prioritizing the search, and perform-ing the internal search. Steps 10 through 20 account for any necessary external searching, search verification, and, if possible, information delivery.

The heart of RA is the identification and implementation of quality checkpoints in the process. Identify each of the inspection points as internal, incoming or outgoing:

• Internal quality refers to the quality level of a process, even if the cause of a failure is a bad component.

• Incoming quality refers to the quality level of any component that is received.

• Outgoing quality refers to the quality level the customer actually sees in the final product.

The first incoming quality checkpoint is step 4, where the integrity of the information on the Information Center Request Form is insured.

Internal quality of the process is checked in step 15, where the request form with the information received at the time it is received, are cross-referenced.

Finally, the outgoing quality at the end of the process is checked by using an Outgoing Quality Evaluation form (see Measuring Attainment to quality Goals).

4.7. Estimating Quality Levels

Estimate how well the information center staff is meeting the agreed-upon service specifications. The service specifications become the evaluation criteria, so assign a quantitative value to each one (e.g., in a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is unacceptable and 5 is excellent).

Quality level estimates must cover both the quality of the final product and the efficiency of the process itself. Each estimate is a stake in the ground, a point against which future performance is measured. To determine process quality levels for the department, the group must estimate the current process by estimating the unit output, cost and throughput time:

• The unit output is the volume of the service produced during a selected period of time. Out-put will vary depending on the amount of requests, but it is needed to help estimate the unit cost.

• The unit cost is the actual time spent by the staff, multiplied by the department labor cost, plus the materials used in providing the service.

• Throughput time is the total elapsed time from the start of the process flow to the service delivery. Internal throughput time is that portion of throughput time over which an information center has direct control. For interlibrary loans, for example, total throughput time includes the time delay waiting for the book to be shipped. Accordingly, internal throughput time includes only the information center staff time spent processing the paperwork.

4.8. Measuring Attainment to Quality Levels

The first step to improving the information retrieval process is measuring the current quality level. The best way to measure the quality of the information service at HTI is by using an evalua-tion form, Outgoing Evaluation form. This form, sent to every 20th customer, was used to measure the accuracy, timeliness, and usefulness of the HTI searches. Then, the evaluation data were entered into a spreadsheet, so that various calculations could be made and performance graphs could be developed and made.

5. INTERPRETING THE MEASUREMET RESULTS

Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5 illustrate average quality ratings for the information retrieval service at HTI. These include the average cost per search, average internal throughput per search, and average total throughput over a 12-month (fiscal year) time frame, respectively. These data are further used to measure the information center's performance and track possible trends for information services.

The outgoing quality evaluation data collected seem to indicate that the customers of the HTI information center are pleased with the center's performance. However, after reviewing accuracy and timeliness criteria, it was concluded that the customers had varying definitions of the terms used on the evaluation form. Thus there is a need to clarify the definitions in any future evaluation.

Figure 3 shows that the average cost per search has decreased, indicating a decrease in the time spent on information retrieval. Average internal throughput time has also decreased. There is a close connection between internal throughput and cost as shown in Figure 4. Both Figures seem to suggest that the information center has improved the efficiency of its inforation retrieval work.

Figure 5 shows that the external throughput time increased dramatically during the Christmas holiday period (month 3), possibly reflecting the reduced staffing at our academic document suppliers. This clearly indicates that the information center needs to work with its suppliers, and perhaps find alternative document services.

5. CONCLUSION

Special libraries must become more in tune with their customers if they expect to play a vital role in industry. While various quality programs can not guarantee that a special library will provide exceptional service, the programs are an important step toward measuring and improving perfor-mance. It is also important to note that any quality program requires a staff that is willing to spend time and energy applying the techniques to make it work.

The Information Center staff at HTI has used the HTI's own Reliability Assurance process to streamline its fundamental service, information retrieval. As indicated in the Results section, there are areas for improvement, most notably in the Center's relationship with its information suppliers. These will be addressed in RA Phase 2, when the Center develops partnerships with the document delivery suppliers through a supplier base management system.

ACKNOLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank the following people at Hutchinson Technology for the important role they played in developing and implementing the Reliability Assurance process, and for their assistance in completing various portions of this paper:

President Wayne Fortun; Corporate Development Engineering Manager Rodney Young; and Jarvis Watnemo, Brad Flores and Lora Elwell, Internal Consultants.
 
 

WORKS CITED

American Supplier Institute. (1991). Quality Function Deployment Implementation Manual for Three Day QFD Workshop. 15041 S. Dearborn, MI: American Supplier Institute.

Grant, Eugene L. & Leavenworth, Richard S. (1988). Statistical Quality Control. 6th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Hay, Edward J. (1989). Just-In-Time Breakthrough, Implementing the New Manufacturing Basics. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hutchinson Technology, Inc. (1990). RA Phase 1 Workbook. Hutchinson, MN: Hutchinson Technology Inc. (Hutchinson Technology licensed the materials to Rath & Strong, a Boston-based, nationally known consulting firm, who renamed it Internal Product Quality Phase 1 Leaders Guide. 1990. In 1991 the American Management Association produced a video at the Hutchinson facility documenting the RA process.)

Hutchinson Technology, Inc. (1992). Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Application. Hutchinson, MN: Hutchinson Technology Inc.