In 1991, Bob Galvin, the Chairman of the Executive Committee at Motorola visited the agency where I was working. At the time he passed out his "Quality Heresies." I was very taken with them. So last month, I called Paul Noakes, the Vice President of Motorola for Quality and asked a copy. He told me that the heresies have now been converted into "The New Truths of Quality," some fourteen of them, published in booklet that can only be described as elegant. He sent me a copy. I'm so impressed with them I decided to share them with callers to The TQM BBS. You'll miss the beauty of the booklet here, but the words have retained their power, even in ascii text. THE NEW TRUTHS OF QUALITY Motorola: Quality means the world to us. A decade ago, Motorola began a journey that would shape the company's success for decades to come. The issue was survival; the challenge was quality; the solution would come from our people. We didn't have a detailed map to guide us, but we set out together to achieve one very large but simple goal to improve the way we serve our customers. During our quest, we realized that holding fast to some old truths about the way to do business was preventing us from achieving our best. Out of these old truths, our experience generated new truths--insights that have helped us make some remarkable strides. In the United States, we became a winner of the first Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1988. In Japan, Malaysia, Europe and Israel, we won other quality awards against the toughest competitors in the industry. The way we do business will never be the same again. The New Truths of Quality represent an exciting new spirit on which to build success in business, industry and almost any human endeavor. We are pleased to share them with you. OLD TRUTH ONE: QUALITY IS THE QUALITY CONTROL DEPARTMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY. NEW TRUTH: IMPROVING QUALITY IS EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY. Quality control departments. They seem like the right thing to do. But once we raised our standards for quality, we realized a single department dedicated to quality wasn't going to be enough to make us really competitive. Today, quality is a daily priority and a personal obligation for everyone at Motorola. The pursuit of quality has become the single most important part of our company's culture. Unless everyone can point to his or her own personal improvements in quality our company hasn't reached the level of commitment that's absolutely essential for success. Once the quest for superior quality becomes everybody's quest, improvements occur in every part of the process. And quality products naturally follow. At Motorola, that's the only way to work. OLD TRUTH TWO: TRAINING IS COSTLY OVERHEAD. NEW TRUTH: TRAINING DOES NOT COST. In the late 70s we realized that developing our people was critical to our company's future global success. Every one of our employees would have to be trained to be just as smart as our competition. We began to offer classes and by 1988, we opened Motorola University, an institution designed to nurture the skills needed to be the best. Today, all of our employees participate in a minimum of one week of training per year Classes range from technological seminars to self-improvement workshops and foreign language courses. Employees are not only encouraged to improve their skills but to use their new knowledge to challenge the very way they do their jobs. As a result, every person contributes to the quality effort in an individual way. At Motorola, the process of learning never ends. With the dedicated work force this creates, we can deliver higher quality products and services at lower cost. OLD TRUTH THREE: NEW QUALITY PROGRAMS HAVE HIGH UP-FRONT COSTS. NEW TRUTH: THE BEST QUALITY PROGRAMS HAVE NO UP-FRONT COSTS. The average cost of bad quality in most companies is 20% of sales. This leaves enormous potential for savings simply by doing things better. From 1986 through 1991, our quality efforts have resulted in savings of $2.2 billion, including more than $700 million in 1991, simply by reducing defects in the manufacturing process. That's a savings of more than 6% of sales--just for doing things right. Contrary to what you might think, we didn't sink a lot of money into our quality process in the beginning. We simply saw that we couldn't afford to do business the way it had always been done. By challenging the processes in place, we found that we had too much space for this, too much inventory for that, too many returns, and other inefficiencies that seemed harmless by themselves. But together they added up to major potential for improvements. Then we looked for simple ways to work smarter, implemented easy changes, and started saving money. Without costing us a cent. OLD TRUTH FOUR: BETTER QUALITY COSTS MORE NEW TRUTH: YOU CANNOT RAISE COST BY RAISING QUALITY. Some hold to the belief that building in higher quality has to increase costs. It's a belief that has made sense to many companies and even to their customers for years. Motorola is guided by a different belief. One grounded in the truth that doing something right the first time doesn't increase costs It saves time and money because you won t have to do it again. We've put that truth into practice. Ongoing employee education and training, new processes and procedures, and valuable early input from customers and suppliers all contribute to building quality into our products from the very start. Incremental improvements in the quality effort perpetuate the cycle. And together, they move us closer to our goal of total customer satisfaction. OLD TRUTH FIVE: KEEP MEASUREMENT DATA TO A MINIMUM. NEW TRUTH: YOU CANNOT HAVE TOO MUCH RELEVANT DATA. How do you run a quality program? First, you need to know as much as you can about your current processes and the level of quality they deliver Then you need to know exactly how any changes you make are affecting your quality. In short, you need data. Lots of it. Too often, companies operate in a vacuum--not knowing how their products and services stack up against the competition. Only with constant monitoring and continual follow-up can you get a true picture of where you stand and a clear view of where you need to go. At Motorola, we accomplish this by keeping records on our processes, analyzing them, learning from them, and sharing them. We use data to measure both our successes and our failures. More importantly, it helps us to manage our process improvement. In order to move forward, you have to know where you've been. OLD TRUTH SIX: TO ERR IS HUMAN. NEW TRUTH: PERFECTION--TOTAL CUSTOMER SATISFACTION--IS THE STANDARD. Motorola is striving to provide Total Customer Satisfaction in everything we do. Perfect quality. Perfect delivery. Perfect reliability. Perfect service. To achieve such an ambitious goal, we must have the dedication of every one of our employees. They must approach tasks at hand with belief in themselves and their power to do the job right. Accepting the philosophy that "to err is human" is simply a way of setting expectations low. And once that mindset is established it's a short step toward achieving less than the best. After all, if you don't set out to achieve perfection, you probably aren't going to achieve it. We've all heard the expression, "If it ain't broke, don t fix it" Today, the standard must be, "Even if it looks perfect, make it better." OLD TRUTH SEVEN: SOME DEFECTS ARE MAJOR, SOME ARE MINOR. NEW TRUTH: ALL DEFECTS ARE INTOLERABLE. We believe that no defect is tolerable and that perfection is operationally possible. And we're proving it. We call it Six Sigma(TM) quality. Achieving it is a daily challenge for each of our employees throughout the world. Where quality was once measured by the number of defective parts per thousand, our Six Sigma goal translates into a defect rate of only 3.4 parts per million in each step of our processes. Because our products are becoming increasingly complex and our customers' expectations are growing steadily, we're raising the bar even higher Beginning in 1992 we're changing our metrics to parts per billion. The goal is a visionary one, but our program of continuous improvement reaches out for change, refinement, and even revolution in our pursuit of the highest possible quality. OLD TRUTH EIGHT: QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS ARE MADE IN SMALL, CONTINUOUS STEPS. NEW TRUTH: BOTH SMALL STEPS AND LARGE STRIDES ARE NEEDED TO IMPROVE QUALITY. The classic approach to improving products and processes is by taking one carefully considered step after another toward better quality. Prevailing wisdom has always suggested not rocking the boat with change, but introducing it little by little. At Motorola we've found that major step-function improvements in quality are also very necessary and quite achievable. We encourage giant steps in improvement, along with the small steps, often striving for at least 50% improvement in our quality or cycle time sometimes many times that. In just five years we've achieved a 150-fold improvement in overall manufacturing quality at Motorola. Obviously, we don't do things the way we did five years ago. OLD TRUTH NINE: IMPROVING QUALITY TAKES TIME. NEW TRUTH: QUALITY DOESN'T TAKE TIME. IT SAVES IT. Many people believe that it takes extra time to do things right. Indeed, impetuous actions can certainly cause mistakes, but we've found that improving our process to improve our product quality also speeds up our cycle time. Six Sigma (TM) quality and total cycle time reduction are inseparable initiatives at Motorola. We determine the total time it takes to do something from start to finish, whether it's serving a customer or developing a new technology. By tracking data constantly we find ways to make the process more efficient, more productive, more cost-effective and easier to use. The end result is higher quality. It doesn't matter whether we emphasize reducing cycle time or increasing quality. At Motorola, one always leads to the other. OLD TRUTH TEN: HASTE MAKES WASTE. NEW TRUTH: THOUGHTFUL SPEED IMPROVES QUALITY. Time is money. It's as simple as that. If you sit down and look at the process of serving a customer or creating a new product, you discover some amazing things. During most of the process of developing products or offering services, things wait in line, or wait for a manager to make a decision. Nothing constructive is happening, nothing of value is being added to the products or services. These lapses in time, no matter how great or small, show an opportunity for improvement in the process. Reducing our cycle time makes it possible for our customers to get their products faster or their needs served sooner. When you cut that time, costs go down, and quality goes up. It's just common sense--working smarter serves the customer more quickly. OLD TRUTH ELEVEN: QUALITY PROGRAMS BEST FIT PRODUCTS AND MANUFACTURING. NEW TRUTH: QUALITY IS ALSO IMPORTANT IN ADMINISTRATION AND SERVICES. It is easy to understand how manufacturing processes might be affected by implementing a quality program. Today, however, service is a critical part of most businesses and the very purpose of many of them. The need for quality in this sector is just as dramatic as it is in manufacturing. At Motorola, we believe quality service is a matter of anticipating solutions to product and service needs that our customers have yet to recognize themselves. That means listening closely to them, asking them how we can be a better supplier and what we have to do to be worthy of more business. The competition will never let us rest. And our customers' expectations will continue to grow. To keep their confidence in us high, it is absolutely necessary to continue our quest for perfection in everything we do--from products that perform as promised to prompt response for quotations, accurate invoices and shipping documents, and easy-to-understand instruction books. OLD TRUTH TWELVE: AFTER A POINT, CUSTOMERS WILL NO LONGER DETECT QUALITY IMPROVEMENT. NEW TRUTH: CUSTOMERS WILL SEE INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS IN BETTER PRICING, DELIVERY AND PERFORMANCE. Many people believe that beyond a certain level, further improvements in quality may not be noticeable to customers. While this may be true in the short term, it will not hold true in the long run. Motorola is faced with increasingly complex products, formidable competitors, and customers whose expectations continue to grow. We know that to remain competitive we must continually strive to improve our quality. And these improvements will be passed on in the form of better products, lower prices, and faster delivery--all very apparent to our customers. Continuous quality improvements are essential to any company's future growth and survival. There will always be more for us to discover, to learn, to achieve. OLD TRUTH THIRTEEN: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. NEW TRUTH: THOU SHALT STEAL NON-PROPRIETARY IDEAS SHAMELESSLY. Valuable lessons are not always learned within your own company It often helps to look to the outside for different perspectives. That's why Motorola benchmarks the best companies. They can be competitors or they can be in completely different businesses. We also listen to our customers and our suppliers. When your mind is open you can learn something from practically everyone. It's a good way to keep from reinventing the wheel. And, it can also be a reciprocal process, fostering trust and mutual respect. We use the knowledge we attain to generate ideas and to develop new technologies, products and services, and to improve our cycle time and quality. At Motorola, we recognize that listening to others and learning from them is an integral part of the quality process worldwide. OLD TRUTH FOURTEEN: OUR COMPANY COMES FIRST--SUPPLIERS BETTER BEAT THE PRICE NEW TRUTH: WORLD-CLASS QUALITY COMPANIES MUST BE WORLD-CLASS CUSTOMERS. At Motorola, we made a big mistake when we started our quality program. We failed to recognize our suppliers as part of our team and neglected to bring them into the process early on. With fifty percent of our costs based on parts we acquire from our suppliers, we should have seen right away how critical they were to our success. If we had to do it all over again we'd do it differently. Because our suppliers are so much smarter about all the parts they supply than we are, they can teach us. We can also teach them, and we can grow together If you're going to be a world-class purveyor of your product in the marketplace, you must also become a world-class customer Motorola is rapidly learning this lesson well and intends to practice this policy. About the company: Motorola is one of the world's leading providers of electronic equipment, systems, components and services for worldwide markets. Products include two-way radios, pagers and telepoint systems, cellular telephones and systems, semiconductors, defense and aerospace electronics, automotive and industrial electronics, computers, data communications and information processing and handling equipment. Motorola was a winner of the first Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1988, in recognition of its superior company-wide management of quality processes. With sales of more than $11 billion, Motorola employs more than 100,000 people in facilities around the world.