Stop Talking About Quality

                   David and Sarah Kerridge


Why should we stop talking about quality? One reason is that 
people are confused about it. Quality means different things to 
different people. A friend heard of our interest in quality. "Oh, 
I know", he said. "That means seeing how bad you can make 
something and still sell it".

  Why do people think like that? To them, quality means 
"conformance to specifications" - just good enough to pass. We 
see this in the "Patient's Charter" for the Health Service, and 
other similar schemes. We know this is wrong, but ideas like this 
made more sense in the past. Many of us learned our job when the 
"wrong" ideas were right, or at least, the best around.

  At one time, goods were made by craftsmen, and quality was a 
matter of pride and self-expression. Then came mass-production. 
Cars became cheap, but not as good as the output of a craftsman, 
so that "hand made" became a word for quality.

  Mass-produced parts were cheap, so it was profitable to make 
them, test them, and throw out (or rework) the ones that failed. 
For the first time, waste seemed a good idea. Under these 
circumstances, quality meant "just good enough". New production 
methods also spread the idea that quality always costs money. 
Quality could be produced in two ways: the skilled hands of a 
craftsman, or by mass production followed by rigorous testing. In 
both cases, quality meant high cost. So just because of the past, 
talking about quality causes confusion.

  What is more, talking about quality on its own  makes everyone 
think we can treat it separately. Quality becomes one problem, 
productivity another, cost still another. We separate things 
which must be kept together, and have a Quality Manager, a 
Production Manager, and a Finance Director. The result is con-
flict and waste.

What is the alternative?

  Stop talking about quality. Talk instead about the Deming 
Management Philosophy. Yes, this does lead to better quality. It 
also leads to innovation, higher profits, greater productivity, 
reduced management stress, and greater job satisfaction. These 
are results of a good management system. Any of them on its own 
would be a good enough reason to  "Adopt the new Philosophy". To 
have all at once sounds too good to be true.

  This feeling, that there has to be a catch somewhere, must 
make many managers hold back. The Deming Philosophy seems to 
offer something for nothing: and no-one believes in Santa Claus 
any more. But while caution is good, we see something for 
nothing, in exactly the same sense, every day. It comes from 
increased knowledge, and innovation.

  Telephone engineers are busy replacing copper cables with 
optical fibres. They are cheaper, carry more information, and are 
better in every way. Duplicators with wax stencils and messy ink 
have given way to the Xerox, and the telegram to the fax. 
Advances are endless, and all come from research and new ideas.

  The Deming Philosophy is a far greater breakthrough than the 
personal computer. It originated from Walter Shewhart's scient-
ific research on variation, it was tried, tested and developed in 
Japan. It works. Not many people yet understand why  it works, 
but few people could explain a fax or a personal computer.

  The new ideas work because they are scientific, which means 
based on facts rather than opinion. Many of the ideas appear to 
contradict common sense, or at least existing practice. But then, 
every innovation, from the wheel to the microchip, seems strange 
at first. We still take advantage of them.

  What is everyone afraid of? It cannot just be change. If we 
resisted all change as firmly as most people resist the New 
Philosophy, we would still use quill pens. Perhaps one problem is 
that we have been talking only  about quality, when we should 
have talked about good management. Talk of profit, productivity, 
quality, and a less stressful life for managers by all means, but 
these are outcomes, not the place to start.

  It would be better to see action, and not just talk: but if we 
must talk, let us make sure we talk about the right things.


Reproduced by permission from VARIATION, the newsletter of the
             British Deming Association