Mango

Calling All QHSE Professionals

Admin — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 03:01:38 +0000

We can be heroes – and not just for one day

Some people know what they want to do from a young age and devote the rest of the lives to doing it. Mother Theresa. Nelson Mandela. Mahatma Gandhi.

These heroes had a vocation - something which drove them every moment of every day - a calling that they couldn’t ignore.

Most people, however, do not. Jobs are stumbled upon, taken in desperation and then (often) endured.

That was me. I’d like to say that Quality and Health & Safety were my vocation. But no. I was 22 years old when I got my first job as a Quality Control Technician. Upon hearing that I’d got the job, I didn’t have an outpouring of energy and pride because I had finally realised my long-held dream of working in Quality. Instead, I heaved a huge sigh of relief because the rent was due and groceries had to be bought and I was sick of being unemployed. A guy offered me a job; I took it. End of.

And it’s not what you’d call a glamour industry. The uniform of choice is either the unflattering neon of high vis or the looks-good-on-absolutely-no-one white lab coat.

There’s no level of cool, either. No-friends Nigel/Nigella over there with his or her quality checklists on a clipboard…no, not the cool table at all.

Putting the real SMARTS back into QHSE Compliance Objectives

Admin — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 23:12:27 +0000

If there’s one thing in business that gets woefully mishandled, misused and short-changed, it’s the good old-fashioned objective. And within the field of compliance - and QHSE specifically – things are no different.

More often than not, objectives are big, flabby and non-specific. Poorly written, they relate only tangentially to the organisation’s business plan. They hide in filing cabinets, unseen and unloved by senior management, employees or customers. They are brought out for a viewing once a year, but because of their inherent faults, it’s a depressing, demotivating exercise. Tick the box, update the year, rinse and repeat.

Such a shame.

As QHSE compliance professionals, we need to lavish time and attention on developing our objectives.

Objectives have the potential to be extremely powerful instruments. They keep us on task. They should directly link us to the organisation’s business plan, putting us at the centre of things instead of, as so often happens, on the periphery.

Meeting objectives gives us a professional and personal boost, but failing to meet them does even more - it provides us with valuable data about the state of our projects and/or system, and the evidence with which to justify changing it.

So how to write them?

Is Your Compliance System Feeling the Love?

Admin — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 20:26:01 +0000

You’ve had the consultant in. You’ve spoken with a few mates who have been down this track before you. You’ve got nice folders with coloured tabs to keep the documentation in. You have a meeting once a month (which probably doubles as Friday afternoon drinks). The certificate has been framed and sits nice and straight in reception.

System in control, right? Not so fast, cowboy!

Unlike the teacher you had when you were 6 years old, auditors aren’t impressed with the snappy folder and other glossy paraphernalia. Auditors are a cunning bunch - well-practiced in the dark arts - and they have ways of knowing. Think Sherlock with less mad hair.

The first clue they’ll spot as to the health of your compliance system is that little number right beside the word “Version”.

If it says “1”, the auditor hears alarm bells ringing. Big, loud alarm bells.

“Version 1” tells the auditor that no-one around here is thinking very hard about things. That no-one really cares about improving the system. Or that they don’t know how to improve the system. Or, worse still, that they just can’t be bothered.

It tells the auditor that there is little compliance love.

Compliance love is the hallmark of well-functioning systems. It’s when everyone in the organisation willingly and happily plays a part in meeting the organisation’s compliance requirements.

Mission Statements – What Are They Good For?

Admin — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 02:46:15 +0000

Not much would be most peoples’ immediate response.

In the old days, small businesses didn’t need such a thing as a mission statement. Because you worked alongside your boss, his or her commands were plain to see. And if you were the boss, well, you just got on and did it. The customer was right in front of you too, or just on the other side of town, so the distance between you and them was easy.

But with bigger organisations came a greater need to control. More people in your factory means a diluted relationship with each one. What’s more, modern transportation and communication meant that customers could be many miles - and many links in the chain -away. Easy to have a breakdown in communication. Easy to have people working at odds with each other.

Despite their prevalence, mission statements weren’t much chop. Good for making the eyes glaze over, they were synonymous with flannel and PR grease. The oft quoted “you should be able to say it in a sentence” meant that they were often unwieldy amalgams of very long words, containing little in the way of inspiration or challenge.

Quality Managers - Where Has all the Love Gone?

Admin — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 02:07:34 +0000

Every dog has its day, and the 1980s and 1990s were the best days to be a Quality Manager.

The Japanese were streaking ahead and everyone wanted a piece of the action and the certificate to go with it. You weren’t a gung-ho, on-the-ball kind of organisation if you didn’t have your very own Quality Manager at the top table. Quality systems were cutting edge and there was lots of enthusiasm for this new way of working. Good times.

Then the dark days dawned. The turn of the 21st century saw retrenchment on a massive scale. Middle management took the hit. Quality Managers hadn’t made anywhere near enough noise to ensure that the top brass understood and appreciated their value.

An holistic approach to problem solving, the ability to build bridges between departments and functions, a common sense approach to customers, the ability to listen, investigate and act… well, it’s just not very sexy, is it? And a bit abstract, maybe?

Quality Managers were shown the door.

But hey, the certificate has to remain on the wall, right? Enter the Company Accountant as The Unwilling Arbiter Of The Quality System. Added to an already full plate, and with little understanding of the needs of a healthy compliance system, this was never going to work out.

Okay then, how about another Senior Manager? The one who isn’t at this meeting and therefore can’t turn the job down? Yeah…

Why the Quality Department Needs to Grow Some Cojones

Admin — Mon, 26 Aug 2013 04:24:23 +0000

During a recent visit to a new prospect, the company’s CEO openly told me “I keep our quality department costs as low as I possibly can – but spend just enough to keep the certificate on the wall.”

It was a typical (and clearly very honest) assessment of the perceived value of quality management within the industry.

In fact, if you ask most organisations to truthfully tell you why they’ve got a quality department, they’ll tell you it’s so they can point to a certificate on the wall when key clients are waiting in reception.

Clearly most organisations still view their quality department as an overhead.

After the meeting on the drive back home, I thought more about the CEO’s comments. I guess I was a bit annoyed – but not with the CEO. I was actually more annoyed with the folks in the quality department whom I’d met afterwards.

It wasn’t that they were at all unpleasant or bad at what they did - it was because they had done such a poor job ‘selling’ and communicating their value to the company.

Unfortunately I’ve been around long enough to know that this situation is very typical – especially in small & midsize organisations. But being a big believer in the tangible value that quality management can generate, it still annoys me.

Time and again, I come across the following issues with quality personnel:

New Mango Module for QHSE Compliance – Workflow Management

Admin — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 00:09:43 +0000

The latest addition to Mango is a workflow management module which is already proving a big hit with existing customers.

Far too many organisations are hindered by poor workflows and processes but don’t know what to do about it.

Now there’s an answer right within Mango.

Mango’s workflow module is all about flexibility – allowing you to quickly create custom workflows that don’t precisely fit within one of Mango’s other modules.

In fact, we’ve already seen some really inventive uses of the workflow module by existing customers. Here are a few examples to whet your appetite:

Examples include:

Ngai Tahu Tourism - created a Boat Incident module which records incidents and accidents, as well as the follow-up, investigation and corrective actions.
Skellerup – created a product change note workflow that allows it to electronically document a change to a specific design with appropriate authorisations.
Matrix – created an ‘Enviro’ module that records all the environmental energy and water use on a per project basis. It also monitors achievement of targets and areas of improvement.

As the above examples demonstrate, Mango’s workflow module is incredibly flexible.

New Features Just Released - Focus on Human Resources

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:02:59 +0000

Significant Improvements to Various Modules - January 2013

We are pleased to be able to report that our first release for 2013 has just gone live. Here are the details of all the changes:

Human Resources module

A hotly requested function from customers is the ability to import access profiles. This will allow clients to automatically create access rights without the need to tick every access, edit, delete and add tick box in the Access Rights module. The setup of the profile is under System Admin and is then used in the Access Rights sub-module.
We have enhanced the security around the Employees search screen as well. We have added another filter in Access Rights called “Can View All Employees”. If selected then the employee can view all the details of employees in the Employees module. If not selected then they can only view their own details.
Another security feature added is the ability for some employees’ details to be viewed by others (but not all employees). This function has been added to the Access Rights and is called “This Employee’s Details Can Be Viewed by”.

The Economics of In-House Software vs. 'Off-the-Shelf' Cloud Software

Admin — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 07:20:53 +0000

Beware the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome

For those of you who know Australia – and Melbourne in particular – the prospect of police having to guard the entrances to the city’s famous Flinders Street train station would no doubt be hard to comprehend.

But that’s exactly what the authorities were considering a few months ago when I happened to be there for the Easter break.

Even more astonishing was the cause. You see this was nothing to do with terrorists, or a footy match between two fierce rivals; it was actually all down to software!

The problem was the new rail ticketing system – Myki – which by all accounts has been a disaster, causing massive delays and violence to erupt amongst the otherwise placid Melbournites. No wonder some were suggesting the system be renamed Myki Mouse!

Worryingly, a potentially bigger issue was also lurking - the threat of people getting crushed during peak times because of massive overcrowding. That’s just plain scary and from a health & safety point-of-view just about as bad as it gets.

But what really got my attention about this story was the fact that most of the problems with Myki were in fact software-related.

The question everyone wanted answering was why Melbourne were having such problems when both Brisbane and Perth had just been through similar upgrades without any issues.

Latest Mango Enhancements - April 2012

Admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:20:54 +0000

Especially Significant for South African SHEQ Clients

This month’s release has, in particular, made our South African SHEQ clients very happy. We have added details for: ID Number, Known As, Gender, Race, Disability, OFO Code, Occupation Level, Occupation Code into the Human Resources Module. Our South African clients have been asking for these for a while so we are really pleased to have delivered what they needed.

Another popular customer-driven request has been a Health Monitoring module. This cool new feature, as requested by a number of our Australian clients, will help clients monitor the health of their staff seamlessly in Mango.

A further request - from both local & overseas clients - was to add a Comments module into the Accident/Incident and Improvement modules. This module now allows anyone from outside the investigation team to add a comment to an accident or improvement. This really makes Mango a great collaborative tool from accident and improvement investigations.

Here are the details of all the changes to each module:

Human Resources module

More fields have been added to the Employee module:
a. In Employee Details tab: ID Number, Known As, Gender, Race.
b. In Other Details tab: Disability, OFO Code, Occupation Level, Occupation Code.