"My overcoats sell my overcoats." Monty Plat, Plat Clothiers Unless you are so flush with bucks your business is immaterial to you, take a moment and think about how your customers think about your business. Does your creation ooze the image of quality or just another so- so business? Unless you are living in a cocoon you know the hype on the need for quality and happy returning customers-our management "experts" lay on to the "I wanna be rich" crowd. But that was not always the case. Do you remember when “Made in the USA,” meant poor quality? Do you remember when our top manufacturing companies were so over confident of dominating market share that product quality and customer satisfaction was secondary to the price of their stock? Sad but true. About the time of the Korean War, Dr Edward Demmings, a nerdy and bespectacled professor from MIT was on a campaign to alert the GM’s of the day to pay attention to quality of their products and services or risk the loss of market share to competitors who would. But the over confident self- satisfied management-with cash balances bloated from being the only game in town- viewed such advice as rabble from the left and closeted academics who did not understand cash flow and profits and assumed it so much nonsense - not worth listening too. But, the struggling Japanese industrialists listened and made business history in short time. What was this way-out bit of business advice considered by some to be on par with crackpot medicines? Just a list of fourteen suggestions aimed at fostering customer satisfaction and loyalty. The “Sharp’s, Panasonics, and Toyota’s, of Japan Inc., honed their business strategies and management philosophy around these famous fourteen points of Professor Demmings. He became their hero, while American industry acted like headwaiters in some of Manhattan's elitist eateries. Demmings basic message was that the cause of inefficiency and poor quality is management, not employees, and it is management's responsibility to correct the problems to achieve desired results. Here is what the good Dr. prescribed: 1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service with a plan to become competitive and to stay in business. Decide whom top management is responsible to. 2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials, and defective workmanship. 3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Require, instead, statistical evidence that quality is built in. (Prevent defects rather than detect defects.) 4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, depend on meaningful measures of quality, along with price. Eliminate suppliers that cannot qualify with statistical evidence of quality. 5. Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, composition of material, maintenance, improvement of machine, training, supervision, retraining.) 6. Institute modern methods of training on the job. 7. The responsibility of foremen must be changed from sheer numbers to quality ... [which] will automatically improve productivity. Management must prepare to take immediate action on reports from foremen concerning barriers such as inherent defects, machines not maintained, poor tools, fuzzy operational definitions. 8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. 9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production that may be encountered with various materials and specifications. 10. Eliminate numerical goals, posters, and slogans for the work force, asking for new levels of productivity without providing methods. 11. Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas. 12. Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and his [or her] right to pride of workmanship. 13. Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining. 14. Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the above 13 points. Well, how does your business stack up? Demmings advice can be summed up in the word "caring.” That is, you and your employees caring to do the best job possible for your customers. Be selfish, hoard your customers, and make them happy so they don’t go down the street to your arch rival. It is just common sense to woo and hold your customers. Boom or bust, the underpinnings of the future of your company lies with satisfied customers. So simple but so many entrepreneurs cater to the whims of all but the guy or gal who pays the bills. Take Demmings points to heart-it is good advice Reference: W. Edwards Deming, Quality Productivity and Competitive Position (Cambridge, Mass. MIT, Centre for Advanced Engineering Study, 1982). Copyright 2003 Paul E. Adams Dr. Paul E Adams, Professor Emeritus Business Administration Ramapo College of New Jersey Author “ Fail Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful.” Available Amazon.Com. If you have questions or comments- contact me: drfailproof@earthlink.net