Quality People, Quality Products
The real bottom line involves motivating people to want to improve

The first article I ever wrote about manufacturing was written in 1984, a year when a great many American consumers were frustrated. All of us were keenly aware of the high quality of Japanese automobiles and electronics entering our markets and the low quality of the American competition. We were all in what psychologists call a "bind": We had a strong sense of brand loyalty yet real frustration with the poor quality of our favorite brand. For those of us working in manufacturing, the frustration was exponential because we could not take pride in what we made anymore. That frustration -- and one too many trips to the automobile repair shop -- made me ask myself: "What is the secret to Japan’s great quality achievements?"

I continued to think about the question as I read through the increasing flow of books and articles on quality. I learned the techniques and the various approaches in all their complexity. But I always thought the secret to quality was something very basic and simple, something right under my nose. Then in 1994 I was listening to a videotaped lecture by Fujio Cho, then CEO of Toyota Motor Manufacturing USA, Inc. In his lecture he said: "A day should not pass that our team members have not made one small step of improvement in their work life, their home life and their community life." This sentence hit me like a big repair bill. That was it!

The problem for manufacturing people might be that we make things so we tend to think in terms of things. We can forget the "we the people" who do the making (well or badly). Or we devalue them as a subject of interest. For example, someone who works well with people is referred to as having good "soft skills." But "soft" is not a term of praise when one man uses it about another, let’s face it. So a key aspect of quality is hidden and right under our noses all the time. It’s quality people who produce quality products. By "quality people," I mean those who make one small step of improvement every day in "their work life, their home life and their community life."

Where does this impulse for continuous improvement come from? It’s natural, I think. My grandchildren have no supervisor, no production quota of any kind. Yet every day I notice they have learned a new skill or technique for interacting with their world. Daniel (age 3 1/2) learns a new way to interact with the computer, Carolyn (15 months) discovers a new word and Andrew (2 1/2) gets better at manipulating his favorite videotapes in and out of the VCR.

We all began that way. Yet, later in life, something seems to happen to this natural urge to improve. Maybe it has to do with our system of education or with how we are taught to work. But we grown-ups often have the natural impulse to improve buried or stifled in us. It should be management’s mission to re-inspire that impulse. As W. Edwards Deming says, "The job of management is not supervision but leadership." His famous 14 points for quality spells out what he means by leadership: "Remove barriers to pride of workmanship. People are eager to do a good job and distressed when they can’t."

It’s a tall order to change the way other people work. Not very realistic. But it is realistic for me to change the way I work. As a first step toward quality, then, we each need to think in terms of one small step of improvement in our work life, our home life and our community life every day. As we model this behavior in the work place, other folks who observe us will feel the impulse to imitate us. The people who work with them will feel the impulse to imitate them and so it will spread through the organization -- and the community. There’s a joy in getting better that is natural and infectious. And behavior is more convincing and inspiring than slogans or workshops, however well-crafted they may be.

The people who run the Baldrige National Quality Program agree. They don’t look for programs or initiatives but for something deeper. According to the 1999 criteria, "improvement and learning need to be ‘embedded’ in the way the organization operates." That is, it can’t just be a program people pay lip service to, new buzzwords to describe the same old thing. It must be the way we really work. To my mind, that means leaders must encourage it in their people by first encouraging it in themselves.

Without the genuine impulse to improve, all the quality techniques and know-how in the world won’t do a thing.

Dr. Arlie Hall is an adjunct professor for the Center for Robotics and Manufacturing at the University of Kentucky College of Engineering.

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