The Major Cost of Non-Conformance

Yesterday a pink and purple unicorn was delivered to our house. It was cute and very sweet only we didn’t order it. After calling around to see if any of our friends or family ordered it, I took a closer look at the packing slip. It said that it was ordered by a woman in Texas and was to be delivered to that same woman. Now why would I be receiving her unicorn? It turns out my sister ordered something from the same store and asked for it to be shipped to my home. The mystery was unraveling.

Long story short, I was able to find the woman on Facebook and LinkedIn. I sent her a Facebook message and explained that I wound up with her unicorn. It turns out that the unicorn is a gift for her daughter’s fifth birthday and that she received a box that day with a packing slip directed to me. It contained the gift that my sister had ordered for me.
I called the customer service number for the store, explained the situation and things are now on their way to being straightened out. But the story doesn't end there...

I was thinking how one error in a warehouse caused an enormous waste of money (and time). Between salaries (theirs and ours), shipping, fuel, printing costs, a lot of money will be spent trying to get the right packages to the right people. The second time.
Think about it, in the original order only a few people were involved; the woman in Texas, my sister, the warehouse worker who located and packed the items, and the shipping clerk at the company and the FedEx employees at both ends of the transaction. That’s about 8 people.

Because of this mix up, not only were the first parties involved but now there are more; me, the woman in Texas again, the customer service reps at the store, my husband (for driving to the FedEx location to ship the unicorn back to the store), the woman in Texas driving to her FedEx store to return my sister’s gift, the FedEx employees in Texas and New Jersey at the front end, the warehouse workers who now have to send new items to Texas and New Jersey, the shipping clerk (s) at the company, the FedEx delivery people who have to return the wrong orders to the warehouse, the FedEx workers who have to deliver the correct items to New Jersey and Texas and finally, the warehouse workers who have to record and restock the first items that were incorrectly shipped. That’s about 17 people involved in this one minor mix up. It doesn’t even factor in poor customer service. I’m just hoping that little five-year-old gets her unicorn in time for her birthday.

Years ago, I taught a class about quality improvement and one of the highlights was something called “The Price of Non- Conformance”. That’s what happens when there are costs incurred from not doing something right the first time. The Price of Non-Conformance for a $19.99 pink unicorn is enormous and most likely due to one person not doing something right the first time.