Wichita’s NPR station recently focused an OnWords piece related to quality. Consider the following: “You can usually tell that an organization has stopped caring about quality when it becomes the only thing they talk about.” As quality professionals, we revel in the fact that organizations might be talking too much about quality. In that scenario, we have won and finally impressed the message that quality is indeed everyone’s responsibility. And, is there really such a thing as too much data? Of course we know there is, but most quality engineers are going to revert to Deming: “In god we trust, all others bring data.” The last comment in this piece is compelling though: “So if it seems like a quality improvement plan has pulled all the passion out of your product, perhaps you should go back and ask what quality means for the product you sell.” This is noted as consistent with the Plan > Do > Check < Act (PDCA) cycle and sums up the nature of continuous improvement nicely. “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning.” ~Benjamin Franklin
