smile away those that did not turn out so well. Golfers blame the producers of golf courses, they blame the wind, they blame the “rub of the green,” they blame those who do not fix ball marks on the

smile away those that did not turn out so well. Golfers blame the producers of golf courses, they blame the wind, they blame the “rub of the green,” they blame those who do not fix ball marks on the green, they curse those who leave spike marks in their line, and they yearn for the chance to play more. But playing does not improve the game. Understanding and practicing that understanding improves everything. Quality implementers blame management.

The conventional wisdom of doing quality management today reminds me of Prince Potemkin of Russia. He was assigned by Catherine the Great to create comfortable cities and lives for the populace. He spent a lot of money and time doing this. When the Empress wanted to see the result, he took her on a train ride. She saw villages with homes, schools, office buildings, factories, and in front of these structures stood happy peasants waving as she rode by on the train. Prince Potemkin was rewarded with many honors. However, the villages were only facades, one board thick. There was no substance behind them; the villagers were waving happily because they knew that was what he wanted.

The Potemkin villages of quality management are produced from techniques and activities such as empowerment, team building, benchmarking, IS0 9000, and lots of programs. Management rides by on the train of “show and tell” meetings and is impressed with all the activity. Managers do not look at the real results; what they are fed is anecdotal. Actually doing quality management correctly is much more rewarding and quite a bit easier than the conventional methods. The purpose of this chapter is to lay out the concepts and efforts that cause that to happen.

Those who are involved in quality management should take time to understand how important this assignment is to their personal future. Quality is the only operational function that touches every part of the organization. Having the opportunity to do it provides a tremendous advantage, and exposure, for those involved. They can help the company achieve its goals, they can make management look good, and they can cause the customers to admire and respect the organization. But the secret of doing this lies in personally comprehending the concepts of quality management and applying the proper direction of energy.

Business consists of transactions and relationships. When managed properly, the business routinely completes all transactions correctly; and relationships with employees, suppliers, and customers are successful. It is not reasonable to think that a packaged system, such as I S 0 9000, could hope to accomplish this. Business is chaotic, not systematic. Many things can remain the same each day, but the world changes continually. Situations happen and have to be dealt with. We cannot run to look at a set of procedures each time we need to take action.

Let’s define quality management:

Quality management is deliberately creating an organizational culture within which all transactions are completed correctly and all relationships are successful.

Quality management involves concepts and action.

We need to review the concepts by discussing the absolutes of quality management. Then we will list some of the actions that must be taken if quality is to become routine. When the absolutes are understood, it is possible to know how to deal with any situation that arises.

There are four absolutes of quality:

Absolute #1 -Definition: Quality means conformance to requirements, not goodness.

Absolute #2-System: Quality is produced through prevention actions, not detection.

Absolute #3--Performance Standard: Quality comes from zero defects, not from acceptable quality levels.

Absolute #4--Measurements: Quality is measured by the price of nonconformance and the complete transactions rating (CTR), not statistical computations.

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