Any individual who knows me knows I am a Star Wars geek. I devote way extra time than I care to admit obsessing about the Star Wars films, collecting random star wars toys, and musing about the “what ifs” in the Star Wars universe. The other day, it occurred to me, “What if The Empire had implemented a High-quality Management Technique on the Death Star?” So I believed a bit on this, and here’s what I consider might have helped The Empire in their endeavor to rule the galaxy if they only had place Excellent Management as a strategic initiative.
Project Management: From the time that the death star plan had been conceived, it took The Empire just about 20 years to complete the Death star. A project this big needs many roles involved, and delegation of activities. The Death Star project management group consisted of three key folks – Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader, and Emperor Palpatine. These are not the a lot more flexible managers, and are not above taking employee errors or missed deadlines with the aid of a lightsaber, force lightning or a death ray.
Maybe if The Empire implemented a Excellent-Primarily based Project Management Method, they would be in a position to clearly define the roles involved in the project, assign tasks to these roles, and handle the project from an aggregate level. Workflow keeps the project deliverables on track, and possibly this level of visibility would allow them to sustain control, with no having to resort to the Dark Side as their only indicates of clairvoyance.
Document Management: Let’s be truthful – even The Empire could’ve employed a strong document management method. Given the sheer size of the Death Star, with the thousands of “employees” that worked there, there would have been tens of thousands of records that would will need to be controlled – Perform Guidelines, Job Descriptions, Procedures, Floor Plans, and the like. You would assume that with this “technological terror” The Empire constructed, there would be secure Document Management Technique in location.
Then how did a small droid like R2-D2 plug into the network and was in a position to download the Death Star plans like it was a space walk in the park? My guess is that The Empire, in all its glory, was employing a file system to retailer documents. If The Empire would have applied a Document Control system like these in a High-quality Management Method, access to these especially sensitive documents would have been limited to those who had the right access rights. In addition, document control can limit the specifics of specific fields within the information, so that no sensitive data is accessed.
Employee Coaching Method: With no correct employee coaching, then a lot of organization run the risk of High quality incidents, Safety incidents, and other dangers to the organization. It appears to me that The Empire was not tracking training in a centralized system. If they have been, then they would have been in a position to see that practically 80% of the Stormtroopers in The Empire could not hit a target with a blaster if their lives depended on it (and it generally did). Or possibly they would have uncovered the truth that their patrol procedures clearly miss safety breaches – Like 80 year old Jedis skulking around the tractor beam. Proper training system enable managers to see visibility into not only who is educated, but also how nicely they are educated and regardless of whether actions will need to be taken to update instruction records for poor overall performance.
Supplier Management and Supplier Rating: Let’s face it – The Empire had to have contracted out to create this Death Star. All the components that go into constructing a completed item rely on suppliers and contractors to aid total the method. When watching the movie, we know that the Rebels found a weakness in the design of the Death Star (thanks to the weak document management method). If The Empire would have had a genuine-time inspection and rating technique, they would have been able to inspect that access port, and send out a Corrective Action to the knuckleheads who believed placing a direct access to the Death Star core was a very good thought.
Nonconformance, Audits and Corrective and Preventive Action: Let’s keep on this, then. Naturally, we know that the Death Star had a defect. It was only in the final hour did The Empire realize the danger, and by that point it was also late. If they had a quality method in place, they would have found this flaw, irrespective of whether via normal space Audits (or at the pretty least an Audit by way of tremors in the Force), or a Nonconformance when the defect was installed, and issued a Corrective Action to fix the trouble. Clearly, High quality took a backseat to their overconfidence, and eventually resulting in, well… you know the rest.
non-conformance software and Reporting: As I said just before, the principal project managers applied fear as their key motivator, and seldom relied on the data to assistance them with Good quality. In the film, you see the officers of the Death Star sitting in a conference space, and not a single of them developed a report – If they had a robust reporting system that collects high quality data from all areas of the Death Star, and rolls this information up to help determine the top rated dangers and top quality troubles, then maybe that meeting would have gone differently. Possibly if that poor guy had shown Darth Vader his most current Top quality Report, he wouldn’t have gotten the old “force choke” from the Dark Lord of The Sith. Possessing a top rated-level reporting program that presents the Top quality System challenges in a single view could have mitigated their dangers.