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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (31381)	7/12/1999 11:03:00 AM
From: Clarksterh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Ian - I notice you avoided answering the question - point to any producer anywhere which has achieved 100% customer satisfaction (i.e. the customers had no suggestions). Clark

To: Ian@SI who wrote (31381)	7/12/1999 11:10:00 AM
From: w0z	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Ian, TQC is only a part of the pathway to success. Focus on the customer has been proven to be just as if not more important. That is how US manufacturers took share back from the Japanese. A BIG part of customer focus is VALUE, i.e. adequate quality at a competitive price. If you want an example of TQC taken to extreme, you need only look at MOT and their 6-sigma quality program of the early 90's. While they focused their entire company on this madness, Nokia took their cellular business and INTC took their microprocessor business. I remember how torqued I was at MOT when they were touting their quality and at the very same time missing shipment deadlines on their 68040 processor. 6 sigma didn't mean much to me while they were causing my company (HWP) to miss workstation sales because of missed delivery commitments. Have you wondered why you don't hear much about the Baldridge Award lately? It is also interesting to look at how some of the winners (MOT and XRX in particular) have fared since they won the prize. I think Richard was just trying to say that quality is only a part of achieving customer satisfaction and not the total answer.