Analysis of Marketing-, Production- and Quality Departments contribution to deliver Crosby’s „Four Absolutes” which are the underpinning fundamental requirements for quality
Introduction
In early 90’s an American company has issued a purchase order to one Japanese company with the following request:
„Hereby we order 1,000,000 units of given IC type. (3 failed units utmost)!”
The shipment has arrived on time with the attached text in consignment-invoice as follows:
„- 1,000,000 units at 0.1$ unit price.
- 3 failed units at 3$ unit price.
Note: The failed units have higher price because it took us long time to find them!”
Although this funny anecdote has an indirect advertisement of Japanese superior quality it also emphasizes importance of clear communications needed to discover customer’s expectations, which is the first of four fundamental requirements for quality as defined by Philip B Crosby one of the most entertaining writer of quality management practices.
Crosby has made his “Four Absolutes” as a response to the quality crisis causing North American manufacturers to lose market share to Japanese products due to Japanese superior quality during the late 1970’s and into the 1980’s.
How delivery of these “Four Absolutes” in an organisation by marketing, production and quality departments can improve quality performance we can see below.
Delivery of Crosby’s first ‘Absolute’
Crosby’s first ‘Absolute’ defines quality as the ‘conformance to requirements’. For the Marketing Department (MD), which is basically the first functional department in an organisation, the ‘first absolute’ is of prime importance. The reason for that is simple; just consider the situation when conformance to customer requirements fail and become discovered at a later stage in production or in the worst case during exploitation at customers. The remedial cost of such quality problems might be enormous.
The MD can deliver the ‘first...