From the misc.industry.quality NG:
From: "Michael Schlueter" - Philips.com
Newsgroups: misc.industry.quality
Subject: Re: How to define quality?
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 16:53:55 +0100
Hi,
May be your customer can't compare and know, what can be expected - but you probably can.
I still find Taguchi's definition of quality very logical and striking; can you adapt it to your situation? His basic assumption is simple: any product causes monetary loss in the hand of its customer. E.g. if it does not work as it should, you have to complain or throw it away; if the service is not as expected, somebody else must be called in. No matter how, the customer loses money.
If you can estimate or measure this amount, you have a clear indicator of your qualtiy level. Taguchi's definition reads:
"The quality of a product is the monetary loss passed to society once the product has been build and shipped."
In other words: the product (your service) is no longer under your control - it is shipped out - your customer deals with the results of your service ... Customers do to it whatever they do. If your product incures monetary loss, somebody has to pay it: your customer by a higher price, the end-user by a higher price, society by eliminating waste and disposals (such as computers, service-folders, waste from travel incurred by consultancy etc.). Somebody (society) pays the price of *bad* quality. - How much?
The opposite conclusion from Taguchi is even more interesting, in my view: do anything to minimize total loss. In other words: find ways to create excellent service at low cost for you and low loss to society.
From this perspective "beloved" indicators like response-time for helpdesk calls, amounts on bills,...( what you mentioned) reveal their true nature: they tend to miss the point AND indicate something important at the same time.
E.g. what is the drama with a long response time? Why is it bad? Is a response time of 1h good or bad? When is it bad and when not? - I think this becomes self-evident when we look at the *consequences* - they cause a certain monetary loss.
If my car is repaired after 1h - this is probably excellent. If I have to wait at the dentist to easy my pain for an hour - this is probably absolutely bad. If I have to wait 1h until my computer responds - this is #@!!! Why?
If I can not use my car for 1h the incurred monetary loss is - probably smaller than in the dentist or computer case.
In other words: just try it - and reveal the important aspects of your business: how you (or something else) create loss inevitably to your customers ;-) Then improve.
Michael Schlueter
PS:
The car example is a good way to understand how cranked our perception of quality is. If my car is down somebody has to repair it. Once it is repaired I pay a lot of money for it. Why? Did I buy the car to spend more money on it lateron? - No, I bought it to drive it. If I can not drive it I should get money back after repair. "We repaired your car at no cextra-cost for you and give you $1.000 for your inconvenience." That would be quality - low loss for me ! - Try to figure out the minimum quality requirements for such a (repair) service, which is profitable ;-)
Answer:
The repair service needs another source of income, because its customers do not pay, they take. Who is the logical source for funding? Who built-in the bad quality (low time to repair)? - The manufacturer of the car is a logical source of income for the repair service. He/she should be charged by the $1.000+extra_costs. - As a consequence, this manufacturer would develop a sense of urgency for quality ... This holds for other products, too. ... Ultimately, this would lead to excellent cars and die-out of repair stations. At this point we need creativity and innovation: what other useful job should the people do, who run a repair service before? - How could they contribute to lower loss to society while prospering as individuals?
(Try to get this from counting bills ;-)
You see, when we want to improve - and if we really succeed - we need other means to avoid inhuman decisions (such as lay-offs of jobs). How to avoid inhuman actions in quality improvement? This is the real task.
To stay human, at some point I, as a christian, have to put the quality improvement activity back into Gods hand; because he cares and I tend to be inhuman (or sinfull) - that's my nature as a human.
But, for the less-religous readers: such inhuman decisions from improvement *can* be measured by quality loss again: the more inhuman the consequences, the more poor people are 'produced' => total quality loss increases, if counted correctly.
So evaluate total monetary loss - and do it completely and correctly.