Quality in the Mainstream by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

In the late 1990s I became infatuated with the Community Quality Council movement in Singapore. These councils were invariably founded by Deming enthusiasts and focused on transforming communities to the quality way. At the same time in Asia we were seeing the development of PQASSO, a standard for voluntary organizations, the Charter Mark and Investors in People in the public sector. It seemed to me that everywhere I looked quality was finally emerging from the manufacturing industry to take its rightful place at the heart of communities.

I was so enthusiastic that in 2000  I began an intensive two year project in a town of Cavite with the sole purpose of spreading the quality message. The plan was to engage with individuals, interest groups, industries and institution to help them achieve their goals through the use of various tools and techniques. Over the two years we maintained a staffs office and work with voluntary groups , local industries, schools and church. It wasn't easy but it was never dull, as a preconceived notion and conviction I held about quality and people's desire to practice it were tested to the limit.

Around early 2000 a bombshell struck;it seems the CQM movement in Asia was a failure. This was shocking, but it did not surprise me as it had become obvious the CQM approach was not going to work in the mainstream. The people we engaged with had no time for quality tools and techniques training. They wanted action and saw quality as adding nothing but time. Of course, they wanted to do a good job and do the right things right, but they told us that this trait cam after from within and could not be taught.

I was faced with a dilemma as I was equally convinced that quality had a major contribution to make community level whether in the form of ISO 9001 certification, Whole School Evaluation scheme or the application of lean or six sigma. I was enthusiastic about what quality could do in the mainstream that I was blind and do as to what community could do for quality.

Everyday the community was showing me and telling me that quality has become a core value embedded in every individual, interest group, institution and industry in the community. Most quality professionals reading this article will accept this at face value. The problem for a layperson is that there is no vocabulary to help describe and practice this "quality" at such an important personal level. What the quality profession has to offer appears alien and "organizational" to them. Communities are not organizations, but we all know that organisations are communities are communities; both are also systems.

Most professionals recognize that 21st century systems are socio-cultural, self organizing, open, purposeful and information bonded. They have the power to determine the task and he means of achieving it. Intrinsically they want they want to do the right thing and require a high degree of autonomy to be able to adapt and grow in a rapidly changing environment. The task facing the quality profession is to provide a structure to harness this dynamism and help these systems to succeed.

The closest quality has come to this so far is the promotion of concept of excellence, but definition of excellence is weak and organizational. What is needed is a definition of excellence that people can embrace as intuitively good. I propose the following definition: "Excellence is a voluntary ongoing process of agreeing emerging expectations. It involves all creators, consumers and complement's. in the system defining, realizing and delivering these expectations in an effective, efficient, ethical, elegant and enjoyable manner."

People accept this definition of excellence as it emphasizes what they know already. Its practice must become the universal aim of all systems and it must become the universal method underpinning every activity. It needs to attach itself like a good virus to very task and system undertakes.

Before embarking on your own community crusade, recognize that community systems operate in your workplace and this is where experimentation should begin. The formality of organizations makes it easier to hold people's attention.

At a community level both inside and outside organizations we can all promote the core value of doing the right things right. Nobody will resist this fundamental desire and it opens up a questions of "who decides?" and " by what method?" Your answers will come easily. The system decides by practicing excellence. The systems serves us. Now let the fun begin as we all develop systems capable of practicing excellence and reaping its just rewards.

Cutting down Quality with Cost by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

In the 1980s most of the companies were desperately trying to cope with yet another recession.It was during those tough times that the term " downsizing" was invented to describe the efforts being taken to improve efficiency and focus on core values. Unfortunately, because managers took the easy way out and simply cut resources and staff levels rather than work to create real effeciency improvements, it wasn't long before the term became discredited.

Instead of building new business through improved value propositions and competitiveness, many organizations simply became less capable and continued in a spiral decline. Major companies in UK like Ferranti and Marconi sacrificed themselves to this flawed strategy and thier long and honorable tradition of excellence in engineering was lost forever.

The term "rightsizing" was invented to desguise the impications of change, backed up wih assurances that the companies were " refocusing" and "reasserting core values". For short whil people were fooled , but it didn't take long to realize that nothing had changed and the end results were exactly the same: people still lost their jobs, companies still failed.

The companies that formed the core of the UK motor industry Austin , Rover, Triumph, and Jaguar, became synonymous with poor quality in the 1970s and the 1989s and this gave European and Japanese engineering companies an entry into our domestic market, which they have continued to extend ever since.

In the next five years, the global automotive industry has been desperate to reduce costs, but instead of improving effeciency and value focus there has been a discernable tendency to reduce product quality. This is not simply a reduction in bodywork metal and the increased use of plastic, as those measure could still return a good quality product overall, it seems the companies have resorted to poor quality build quality and mechanical components that only have a short life. The entire automotive sector seems to be following the example of the failed British motor manufacturing industry of 20 years ago.

Users and maintenance workshops of top brands such as BMW, Toyota and Audi have said that the build quality of new cars is worse that they have ever seen and replacement mechanical items have a significantly shoter lifetime than the originals. Corners have also been cut in overall vehicle design, meaning that gaining access to worn-out parts now involves the disassembly of a greater number of unrelated components increasing the time and cost of routine maintenance.

The word for this trend is "downengineering". It implies not simply reducing the complexity and cost of mechanical components, but completely losing sight of the need to maintain product value. After a disastrous quality failure in early 2010, the chairman of Toyota admitted that his company had "lost its way" from the heyday of automotive excellence, and sadly this failure was soon followed to another problem.

But Toyota was simply the first to get caught out on safety issues, and therefore publicly pilloried:other top marques are heading along the same path, and several other high profile failures followed last year. These quality failures are not just economic catastrophes for manufacturers, they are also causing serious problems for thier customers.Numerous people have found that after trading in their tatty old car for a new vehicle on the scappage scheme, their new vehicles may have attractive-sounding features such as better sound systems with iPod sockets and satnav options, the ownership experience is actually worse than it was previously.

But if the word "downengineering" is used to descibe production cost economies , how long will it be before everybody understands that it really means poor quality? And how long will it be before "rightenginnering" is invented to replace it?