Quality is a way, not a thing

PBN Staff

04/28/2007

I recently had the opportunity to speak to members of the Food Processing Suppliers Association. In doing my preparation, one thing that kept coming up was food safety. One mistake can destroy a company.
How would you like to deal with that kind of pressure? I bet if you asked most business people if they could be 99.9-percent perfect, they’d take it. In some industries that might cut the mustard, but it certainly won’t in others.
If everyone achieved 99.9-percent quality, according to Insight Syncrude Canada Ltd., this is what could happen:
• Two plane landings daily at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago would be unsafe.
• 22,000 checks would be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next 60 minutes.
• 1,314 phone calls would be misplaced every minute.
• 12 babies would be given to the wrong parents each day.
• 268,500 defective tires would be shipped this year.
• 103,208 income-tax returns would be processed incorrectly this year.
• 880,000 credit cards in circulation would turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.
• 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions would be written in the next 12 months.
• 107 incorrect medical procedures would be performed by the end of today.
When I founded Mackay Envelope Co. many years ago, every time we landed a new account we checked and doubled-checked the first order to make certain it was correct. Nothing is more destructive to a company’s bottom line and its relations with customers than defective products. We still test throughout the manufacturing process and then test again just before shipping. Then we test the testers to make sure they know what they’re doing.
Quality is a mindset. It must be an obsession. It has to be part of a company’s culture. You can’t just talk about it. You have to practice it every day for years.
As Aristotle said, “Quality is not an act. It is a habit.”
Have you ever seen a team run on the field yelling, “We want to be No. 2?” Everyone wants to be No. 1. Those who actually achieve it are those who are willing to put the blood, sweat and tears into their effort.
The American Society for Quality Control published a booklet many years ago called “The Hare and the Tortoise Revisited: The Businessman’s Guide to Continuous Quality Improvement.” One story tells about a Japanese quality expert who stresses the need for patience and discipline. He likens the quality process to farming bamboo. Once the bamboo seed is planted, the farmer waters it every day. He does that for four years before the tree even breaks ground. But when it finally does, it grows 60 feet in the next 90 days.
It’s that kind of commitment to the long view that marks the companies that have been most successful in achieving outstanding quality.
Bottom line: Quality products and quality service begin with quality thinking, and it’s the same in any business. Everyone talks about quality, but customers can quickly figure out who is willing to make the required effort. And those businesses have a very good chance of sticking around for a very long time.
Quality comes from pride. Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. So you need to autograph your work with excellence.
If it’s almost right, it’s wrong.

Mackay’s Moral: The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.
Harvey Mackay is author of the New York Times No. 1 bestseller “Swimming With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.” He can be reached through his Web site, www.mackay.com, or at Mackay Envelope Co., 2100 Elm St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414.

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