Archives for "Quality"
Design Programs to Meet Specific Needs
The success of your quality improvement methods depends on how well they are suited to your company’s current performance. For example, employee-empowerment programs and benchmarking againts industry leaders help high-performing firms but hurt low-performing ones.
In contrast, team training helps low-performing teams, but not high-performing ones. This is because low-performing workers aren’t ready to meet industry standard-they need basic training. On the other hand, top performers who are ready to challenge industry-best standards are held back by redundant training.
Quality/Cost Confusion
Companies get confused about “quality” – and whether it should add to or reduce cost – because they use the word two ways:
- Quality as having extra features. Traditionally, a high-quality product meant having more features. This is sales-oriented quality, and it does increase cost
- Quality as freedom from waste, trouble, and product failures. This definition, now getting attention, is production quality, and it reduces cost.
While both definitions are correct, the company must keep distinction between sales-oriented and production quality clearly in mind. Otherwise, it risks getting hopelessly confused about quality-improvement strategies and their impact on cost.
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