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To Kelly Kjelstrom, IBM's defect prevention process (DPP) is more than just another quality improvernent technique. It could be a matter of life and death. "You see, my wife is a nurse," Kjelstrom explains, "and in the medical profession, defects--such as giving the wrong medication to a patient--can be fatal."
Kjelstrom is an instructor at IBM Santa Teresa, San Jose, CA. There, at IBM's largest software development site, he has introduced scores of engineers, programmers, and managers to the idea that preventing en-ors is even better than detecting and fixing them. Like W. Edwards Deming, Kjelstrom believes that the key to defect prevention lies in process improvement. DPP is a method for discovering the causes of errors or "defects" and improving processes to prevent similar defects from reoccurring.
APPLYING DPP
DPP can be tailored to almost any business from hospitals to manufacturing companies in any department. While IBM Raleigh, NC, devcloped DPP primarily to prevent "bugs" in computer software, DPP is now used by IBM sites worldwide for a variety of purposes. Managers at IBM Santa Teresa use DPP, for example, to prevent defects in employee-manager communications.
Companies outside ofTBM including US West, GTE, Motorola, and Boeing have expressed interest in DPP. Among these, Boeing has begun its own DPP training program.
The growing interest in DPP can be attributed to its simplicity. In the early 1980's, DPP was known as the 1-2-3 process because practitioners followed three simple steps:
1. Determine the cause of the defect.
2. Determine what will prevent the...