Quality, Quality Control, ISO9000, QS9000, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Fishbone Diagrams and all the other buzzwords on these topics in American industry are synonyms to placate U.S. employees in the elusive realms of security, competitiveness, and unity.

For what purpose? Competitiveness? Employee security? My former employer in the business of CNC controls kept me occupied in training meetings on these subjects for the entire period of my employment there. On January 1, 2000, this company was bought by the Germans who will, of course, start management there by a high number of layoffs and early retirements. The top managers and stockholders always do whatever is necessary for maximum profit, irrespective of the quality control buzzwords and training programs, that is, regardless of ISO status. In November I began employment for one of the last U.S. companies dedicated building large-scale assembly lines for manufacture of motor vehicles.

In December my employer was purchased by the French. The retirement program was immediately discontinued for all employees, and forced early retirements are many. The repeated statements about being competitive against foreign competition through better quality control are, by the evidence, ludicrous -- especially for employee security.

For example, walk through the entire men's section of Walmart and try to find goods manufactured in the U.S. I could find only one: felt brim hats. All trousers, shirts, sweaters, coats and other items were made or assembled in Mexico, Indonesia, China, Korea and other countries. The same experience will be found in K-Mart, Target, Kohl's, Hudson's and all the other stores. The familiar American brandnames are still used, of course.

My point is that implementation of all the quality control standards and buzzwords has made no difference in the decline of American manufacturing. In the automotive industry, which has championed and is now demanding implementation of QS9000, the foreign vehicles have the fastest growth and the greatest share of the market. The Germans now own and manage from Stuttgart one of the Big Three. Our industries are being sold out to foreign ownership at a frightening pace under the farcical security of the ISO standards which, as a reminder, are headquartered in Switzerland.

Dean Wilson, Project Engineer
Ann Arbor, Michigan
734-769-5606

Marc,

When will the bleeding end? I know. You left that answer by the 'magic wand', so I won't press you on that.

Good post, although sad. I often wonder if this Sleeping Giant will awaken in enough time to right the ship.

The US has done a terrific job of sending industry elsewhere. It may be our number one export I suppose. I get really angry with the Financiers who get themselves into a position where the 'books' begin to run the organization. With any luck, the organization may maintain itself with innovation and a committed crew who will work hard until the doors are closed for good! How fair is this? In all likelihood, they run the business into the ground, people will lose their jobs, and the business bought up by a competitor. Then, little by little, what is left of the business will be reviewed for value added operations and those that raise cost. The value added operations will be sent to a third world nation, where the organization will exploit the impoverished all in a means of increasing profits. The nonvalue added 'cost centers' will either be disolved or, if so lucky, sold off to someone who might have an interest at fixing things. Let's hope this is the case.

Deming is right on the transformation of American management. Until this happens, jobs I fear will continue to be exported. American management will continue to believe that we are where we are today because of the super-duper job they have done for the past century. Living off the laurels of old. How long can we live on that? We are in the decline, and unless management learns the transformation, then we are doomed to become what we fear most; losers!

So in come the quick fixes! Can't spend anytime in making things right, so let's learn a few coined Quality phrases and go to work! ISO, QS9000, Six Sigma! Let's do it all! That will do! The problem; no instant pudding tastes good enough to management. They want the one that is just perfect! You know the one I'm talking about, right? The one where nobody has to do anything and gold bars land by their feet. Tastes great and easy to prepare! A wave of the Magic Wand and poof.......Success!!!

I have read many posts here, but the ones that continually come to mind are the posts where folks (you and Don mostly) sell the fact that success is a blend of many initiatives, some Quality, some not. I like this and every time I think of these posts the word BALANCE flashes in my mind. Organizational AIM is a must, but BALANCE in thinking is fundamental. No set of guidelines prepared by ISO or anyone else for that matter can prepare an organization perfectly for the future. The dynamic state of organizations may cause, strike that, should cause management to replan the organizational strategy, all things considered. Don's Venn Diagram is a perfect illustration of this holistic thinking.

The recipe for success is different for every organization. Finding the recipe will take time and a commitment from the management group. There is no instant pudding (why can't America accept this)! Additionally, there is a purpose for short term and long term planning. America must stop with the majority of this planning being of the 'short term' varity and start to deal with Constancy of Purpose; the long term commitment.

Well, I can go on for days on this. Time to let somebody else have a go at this.

Regards,

Kevin

Evolution....

My empathetic sympathy to you all.
Many countries are in the same boat. In Oz, the Government has actually softened its stance on quality. Government policy used to endorse ISO 9000X certification for inclusion in purchasing guidelines, this has now been removed because it is a disadvantage to non-certified companies - SO!
If Government policy want help push the point home, then I fear we are fighting a losing battle. Even any Aussie food icon like VEGEMITE is owned by an American company.
Our boat is sitting a lot lower in the water than yours, and we embraced ISO 9000 earlier than the US.
Please send food rations and inflatable rafts.
Cheers.

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"We trained hard . . . But every time we were beginning to form up into teams, We would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing . . And a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing inefficiency and demoralization."

Petronius
First Century A.D.

There are two things that are constant;
Change (progress) and the refusal to accept change (regression)

David,

I suppose that we (the USA) don't have a monopoly on bad management practices.

The problem of ISO is that many believe that this External Force (perhaps a Motivator) can bring improved levels of Quality. The fact is, that while external forces can bring about improved Quality, maintaining it must become intrinsically motivated. I guess that they (the ISO folks) forgot to mention that in the standard. If its not in writing, then folks might not know to do this I suppose.

With this in mind, then a government mandate to the ISO standard wouldn't strike me to be a good move.

Regards,

Kevin

I've heard tell that the Japanese government has some policy in relation to industry and quality, can anyone illuminate on what that might be/contain?

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Anyone have any contemporary thoughts on whether 'Quailty' is a 'farce'? :rolleyes:

Anyone have any contemporary thoughts on whether 'Quailty' is a 'farce'? :rolleyes:

I read the sad opener to this thread and some of the responses.

Certainly this attitude still exists, but I have noted a budding movement to understand Quality better. I read that Harvard Business School was planning to run seminars on Breakthrough Customer Satisfaction; the course included measurement strategies too. Imagine, teaching business majors customer satisfaction and Management By Fact! My heart swells with hope. :rolleyes:

I have also read (usually in Business Week) about companies that are enjoying gains through Quality. The common thread is that the business leaders didn't learn about Quality until after receiving their various degrees. Interestingly, there has not yet been an editorial comment linking business successes to the quality programs (specifically the honest self-appraisal required) and the catastrophic failures to the lack of same. I may write one for them and see if they print it.

Better to learn late than never, but it's clear to me that business programs should be designed with Quality included in the curriculum so the leaders understand it better. When this happens, and I believe it eventually will, I hope to see less of the derision.

Tools, tools, tools!

The various ISO and other standards, and the requirements in the standards (e.g. Management Review, internal audit, training and qualification) are tools that can help an organization get where it wants to be. In the lab accreditation world, add measurement uncertainty and PT/ILC (proficiency testing and inter-laboratory comparisons) to the list of tools.

It is the people who use the tools that make the difference.

If the folks in charge are not committed to improving the business, including providing leadership and care for the folks who work for them and improving quality of the product or service, then no amount of tools will make much difference.

However, if the folks in charge ARE committed, then the tools become a valuable resource!

Hershal

I am teaching a MBA course in Operational Management (see the MC550 board here on the Cove). I am to teach the quality chapter tonight. Or maybe I should say I am throwing out the book's quaility chapter and teaching about Quality tonight. It is amazing the mistakes in the Chapter about the various quality tools. The most amazing is a completely watered down set of Dr. Deming's 14 points that completely removes the content of the orginal and replaces them with simply empty slogans. On the subject of control charts, the students are told the the "target value" should be set as the center line. Six Sigma and Kaizen are both explained in the same paragraph as error reduction methods. I pity the poor MBA students who have instructors who just teach the chapter (by the way, the text is Operations Management published by Prentiss-Hall). It may go a long way in explaining why American management is the way it is.

Steve,
Your students are fortunate to have an instructor who has "been there,done that" in the real world. So, who gets a real MBA to be able to hit the ground running, and make a contribution to get results. Guess us old CQEs are not so ignorant after all. :tg:

Steve,

What is the path that we have laid out as a society for the achievement of financial success? Is it through engineering? Is it through operations? No! It's through sales, marketing or finance. Do our universities train any of those money types to understand process, cause and effect, etc. No! They train them in accounting and may be a little else. So what do we expect when we get just what we asked for? We all ask the money types to provide the greatest return on investment for our personal 401Ks and the like. If they don't come through, we drop them and run to the next investment. So what are they do, they run to the nearest solution like: layoff or going off shore. Neither of us is willing to wait for the long term solution. Until the rest of the world has the same standard of living that we do, they will continue to be an easy, quick out to make this months numbers. Steve, you are in the best position to reverse this trend by providing the next crop of MBA's with some tools to improve their operations as opposed to immediately running overseas.

Gerry

Gerry

Steve,

What is the path that we have laid out as a society for the achievement of financial success? Is it through engineering? Is it through operations? No! It's through sales, marketing or finance. Do our universities train any of those money types to understand process, cause and effect, etc. No! They train them in accounting and may be a little else. So what do we expect when we get just what we asked for? We all ask the money types to provide the greatest return on investment for our personal 401Ks and the like. If they don't come through, we drop them and run to the next investment. So what are they do, they run to the nearest solution like: layoff or going off shore. Neither of us is willing to wait for the long term solution. Until the rest of the world has the same standard of living that we do, they will continue to be an easy, quick out to make this months numbers. Steve, you are in the best position to reverse this trend by providing the next crop of MBA's with some tools to improve their operations as opposed to immediately running overseas.

Gerry

Gerry

Very good. One additional thought is the current MBA's are taught per stovepipes. Here is your accounting course. Here is your marketing course. Here is your legal course. Here is your operations course. Not how all of it fits together as a system. This is definitely the opportunity I have with this course. And I am integrating a lot of Dr. Ackoff's work.

Re the original post:

The idea that implementing quality systems as a means to stave off foreign competition probably stems from the 80's when Japan came on strong and beat us in the automotive game (among other things). Their automotive quality is still high, and they're still beating us. But, if American manufacturers hadn't taken any action the situation could be far worse.

In the end, money trumps quality any time. The Japanese telecom I used to work for closed its US plant and their Japanese plants, and it's now making it all in China.

One manufacturer I worked for had a 95% first pass yield on one of its product lines. They moved production offshore, where the yields dropped significantly to ~50%. The sad thing is, because the product was labor intensive to manufacture, it was still more profitable to manufacture the parts offshore. The irony is that both plants used the same quality system - so the actual impact of the quality system on actual quality was questionable.

As a quick FYI: I 'bumped' this thread as I was doing some SEO stuff - in this case checking inbound links - and I found this thread linked to on a few sites. I was kinda surprised.

As I look out, I no longer equate 'quality' with any country, including the US. In fact, I am continually impressed at how many foreign folks come to this site - Especially from China, but from all over.

Nor do I equate 'quality' with job losses in the US. That is purely a financial aspect. WalMart did a very good job at opening the doors to China and has succeeded as a model which has made outsourcing to Mexico (as an example) a minor irritant with respect to the loss of US jobs. To me the bottom line is I don't care where my socks were manufactured as long as they're cheap.

Yes - You are correct in my thinking - It's all about $.

What Steve brings to the table is also important. There has been a transmutation of many 'quality' concepts including in text books and courses. I think six sigma is a good example of where what was once a statistical approach to process control, capability and improvement, siz sigma is now 'a group of quality tools' to many people. It was redefined and made into a business in and of its self.

I have in front of me a book IBM put out in 1984 titled "Process Control, Capability and Improvement". I've had this book for many years. It addresses everything from measurement systems analysis to control charts and even deals at length with root cause failure analysis. The book shows how to diagram a process as a system including inputs, outputs, feedback channels and a process approach. Bottom line is none of this stuff is new. Not even ISO 9001's 'switch' to what is called 'A Process Approach'. If anyone can sit there with a straight face and say that ISO 9001:2000 introduced them to 'The Process Approach', I assume they're young.

I used to look at an MBA as 'valuable'. While in the job world it's good to have an MBA if one is looking for a job, I have come to doubt its relevance in practice. Let's see, you want an MBA, take a psychological test, a drug test, a criminal background check, a financial background check, etc., etc. It's not as bad as the days of Henry Ford who sent Ford representatives into employees homes to 'check for proper lifestyle', but it's still based upon many subjective aspects and appears to be moving back towards those days. Maybe I'm just disillusioned because many times achievement(s) and experience take the back seat to 'credentials'.

I guess my point in this is that every country in the world is now 'interested' in quality, most do have quality systems (whether they work or not) and I dare say it would be hard to find any company in the world that does not tout the 'quality' of their product or service. That said, there is only price left. As I understand it, the fellow who brought Yugo's to the US some years back is in a venture to bring Chinese cars to the US. While many may look back and recall the Yugo 'quality disaster', we have to remember that was quite a few years ago and Yugoslovia was not in a very good position to achieve 'world quality standards'. China is making quality products and if the cars are anywhere near the quality of the current products I have which were made in China, and with the estimated cost to be roughly 30% lower than comparative autos ('luxury', size, dependability, etc.), I'm betting there will be nothing like the Yugo fiasco..I read that Harvard Business School was planning to run seminars on Breakthrough Customer Satisfaction; the course included measurement strategies too.This is one of the saddest aspects. Let me get this straight - It's January 2004 and Harvard Business School is planning to address customer satisfaction and measurement strategies through seminars. Where has Harvard been? What does that tell us about the graduates Harvard has been putting out for years if only now they are going to put some focus on these aspects of a business?

A US business can do everything 'quality' that they want - As nickh pointed out, it's typically mostly about corporate balance sheets. So if I have a US company with an effective quality system, it won't make much difference because in some other country there will be a labour (or other) cost factor that will more than make up for differences in aspects such as cost per unit (services or manufacturing).

For me, all of this is fine. I buy the cheap socks. I look around my desk and I doubt there's more than a couple of things actually made in the US - Actually, this is true as I look around my house. Almost all the items have the 'quality level' I expected when I bought them, but I'm having a hard time finding anything manufactured in the US.

Don't get me wrong - I believe in 'quality' and 'quality systems' (even considering the numerous interpretations of what 'quality is'). I always felt good when a problem was solved and the customer was happy and scrap went down, etc. Maybe I'm lamenting the demise of craftsmanship. I see quailty 'engineering' as a 'craft'. I applaud Steve's approach including the interest to point out the 'blandness' of texts. In college I know some professors who were uninterested - They taught the book and that was about it. Then there were those few who were impassioned and went far afield bringing into focus more 'detail'. They were interesting and 'broke out of the box' (although I hate that phrase). They were more like mentors than 'teachers' (professors, whatever).

Oh well - Just some ramblings.

Let me get this straight - It's January 2004 and Harvard Business School is planning to address customer satisfaction and measurement strategies through seminars. Where has Harvard been? What does that tell us about the graduates Harvard has been putting out for years if only now they are going to put some focus on these aspects of a business?


Maybe I'm lamenting the demise of craftsmanship. I see quailty 'engineering' as a 'craft'. I applaud Steve's approach including the interest to point out the 'blandness' of texts. In college I know some professors who were uninterested - They taught the book and that was about it. Then there were those few who were impassioned and went far afield bringing into focus more 'detail'. They were interesting and 'broke out of the box' (although I hate that phrase). They were more like mentors than 'teachers' (professors, whatever).

Oh well - Just some ramblings.
I'm not sure about Harvard, but I am sure about University of Chicago and Northwestern here in Chicago. This gambit of producing (like a stage play) "executive seminars" on various business topics, including Quality, Six Sigma, and anything else you can imagine, is a big moneymaker. I have had occasion to review the syllabus on several of these seminars. In my opinion, the content, depth, and rigor of the Quality courses is less than that offered by the average ASQ Section as a prelude to Certification exams. The primary difference is the ASQ Section may charge $2 or $3 hundred dollars, while the big name university charges 10 times more for a seminar which runs the same length of time (10 - 20 classroom hours.) Of course, with ASQ, you still have to pay another couple hundred to ASQ to take the certification exam.

Frankly, I think many of the ASQ Section instructors are more in the Mentor category than teacher category.

I have told both my kids: don't go into manufacturing. Find a career in an area that has to be done locally. Be a kindergarten teacher, a nurse, a car mechanic, a pizza deliveryman, but don't go into manufacturing. Here today, gone tomorrow.