🚀 go-pugleaf

Johan Maertens <mineral.maertens@wmich.edu> poses a number of questions about
whether quality is a fad, and is quality dead?

I don't think either of these questions apply to manufacturing or service
businesses trying to capture market share, or hold onto the share they have.
I think the perception of some that quality as a management philosophy or
business discipline is in a downturn is due to what psychologists call
habituation to a stimulus.  We have had so much placed on us as providers and
consumers in terms of giving and receiving quality that perhaps we are just a
bit overloaded and maybe somewhat reluctant to acknowledge how really
important quality is to us in what we make and what we buy.

Johan's comments on the bibliography provided suggested the following picture
in my mind.  Looking back 300 years or so the task of communicating using the
written word was not at all simple.  One used a quill pen and a bottle of ink.
 Certainly, many people who wrote letters and epistles probably Wished for a
better quality writing instrument and paper.  Then in the late 1800's came the
fountain pen with a self-contained ink reservoir.  Many people Desired this
improvement in the quality of the writing instrument.  Then in the 1920's the
ball-point pen was introduced as an inexpensive and better quality alternative
to the fountain pen.  Many more people then Anticipated the better quality,
convenience, and price of the ball pen.  Today much of our correspondence is
done on computers with word processing software and we Accept this capability
as the quality solution for communicating quickly and accurately.

So over time we have gone from quality as a non-existing but Wished for
condition, to quality as a scarce but Desired condition, then to quality as an
available and Anticipated condition, and now to quality as a common and
Accepted condition.

When quality was scarce it stood out to the masses; now quality is present
throughout most of the products we buy and the services we are given and we as
quality professionals have a more difficult challenge in obtaining the
incremental improvements.  Some businesses may take a rest on their excellence
in quality, but a competitor somewhere will work a little harder and an little
longer (we call that Continuous Quality Improvement) and thereby gain more of
the market share.  Quality will only be a fad or will only die out in those
businesses that believe their quality is good enough for their customers.


Robert A. Spencer
Business Systems Specialist
Bergen Brunswig Corporation
Tele:  (714) 385-6801
Fax:  (714) 385-4011
e-mail:  robert.spencer@bergenbrunswig.com