🚀 go-pugleaf

Steve (colleagues if interested):

No Steve, that's not what I said at all.  Elaborating on the linkage:

Use >+Edsel +Ford< in your search engine.  It got 2,793 hits on AltaVista.
Adding >+decision< to the string gets it down to 291 hits.  AltaVista is at:
http://altavista.digital.com/

For one hit, see the explanation at:
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Garage/3166/edsel.html
The second sentence snipped: "The (Edsel) line was designed using consumer
surveys which during 1955 included a desire for more horsepower, tailfins,
three-tone paint jobs, and wrap around windshields."  From the third
paragraph: "Before the first car was sold one Ford executive predicted
200,000 cars would be sold during the first year. In the end, though, after
three model-years of production and 25 months on the market only 110,847
Edsels were made"  Note the Ford logo at the bottom.

The Ford executive cited above was the DoD executive during the buildup in
Southeast. Asia, the buildup that preceded the first U.S. military defeat.
The Southeast Asia data were far more dubious than 1955 Ford consumer survey
data.  Both were used exclusively (or nearly so) regardless.  That Ford/DoD
executive was nicknamed Mr.. Systems Analysis: quantify everything--nothing
else matters.  A few years ago, Mr.. Systems Analysis said "Some mistakes
were made."  Possibly the understatement of this half century.

Where did I. or anyone on this list for that matter. say ". . .theory
fervently proves we should not seek an external reality check from customers
that includes their own ratings among other feedback?"  Where does anyone,
other than yourself, claim theory proves anything?

Of course systems analysis, quantification, metrics, et al is useful.   But
that ain't all.  If it were, we could put the world on autopilot.  We are a
long way from that.

Ray Martin
RMartin@texas.net


-----Original Message-----
From: MonteMors@aol.com <MonteMors@aol.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list QUALITY <QUALITY@PUCC.BITNET>
Date: Tuesday, August 18, 1998 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: Supplier metrics


>Ray Martin writes in part:
>
>> Yes Frank, you can assign numeric values to just about anything, then
crunch
>>  those numbers to death.  That is rather precisely what was done in the
U.S.
>>  Department of Defense during the Southeast Asian conflict.  The North
>>  Vietnamese didn't answer their surveys.  So "estimates" were
substituted.
>>  Their preferences were rather clear but not readily quantified.
>
>So, Ray, you're saying measuring customer perception and assessment is like
>McNamara's management system for the Vietnam War?
>
>I missed the link. Could you elaborate on how the internal bodging and
fudging
>of substitute estimates wrought by the then-Secretary of Defense's
misguided
>theory fervently proves we should not seek an external reality check from
>customers that includes their own ratings among other feedback?
>
>Steve Morstad   MonteMors@aol.com
>