Re:Election dilemma from a process perspective

[Erin.Dwyer@kyocera.com (Erin Dwyer)]

Ah!  I wondered when the Presidential Election issue was going to hit our little
group!  

[Moderator's Note:  And we all appreciate the emphasis on process topics
and NOT politics!!  Thanks all. ]

I understand the point being made below, especially the statement "The campaign
was filled with promises of reaching across party lines to cooperate for the
good of the country. It is time to deliver on those promises."  

However, since this letter has been posted to the Deming group, we need to take
the situation out of the political realm and see how it applies to processes in
general - especially manufacturing processes, since these are the focus of most
of our discussions.  So...what if this "election process" was a manufacturing
process, the government the supplier, the "Presidential Votes" the product, and
the "American people" the customer?  As the customer, the American people
specify the product they want - they do not specify the manufacturing process to
be used - after all, the manufacturing of this product is a specialty of the
supplier (the government) and most of the people in the "customer's"
organization know very little about the process and are unaware of its flaws. 
This manufacturing process has been used time & time again - it is not very
accurate - very out-of-control in fact - it is not really meeting the customers'
specification, but in the past the product has generally met the INTENT of the
specification, so past product made by this flawed process has been acceptable.

This time, however, the data given by the supplier caused the customer concern,
since it seemed the supplier never got the same product measurement twice!  On
further investigation,the process was discovered to be out-of-control, and the
measuring system was deemed neither reliable nor reproducible.  Several
variables whose impact has been minimal in the past were now crucial to getting
the right product. 

Removing profit & loss and political affiliation from the equation, would you
tell your customer to "get over it" and that you will change your process in the
future, or would you do everything possible (regardless of excess costs & cycle
time) to get the product right?

There is, of course, another factor in play here - putting back in the political
affiliation - no matter what product is finally sold, about 1/2 of your
customer's organization is going to be pretty unhappy.  So what becomes the
moral responsibility?  Leave the product as is, with questionable quality, and
make one half of your customers angry?  Or make the product as perfect as
possible and possibly still have the same half angry, or maybe the other half
angry?  Either way, you have ALREADY lost the trust of your customer.

On a different note - I do disagree with the term "rational" in the suggestion
given by Dr. Nolan.  "Rational" implies that their is no subjective/emotional
motivation behind what is being said, which is nearly impossible in this
situation - I wonder if this solution would still seem as "rational" if the
presidential candidates were in the OPPOSITE positions?  When control charting,
in order to find an average or center, it is necessary to know & understand the
points on both sides of it; it is my opinion that the same is true of this
election:  in order to find a solution, we must try to understand both political
sides - and, quite frankly, it's time we did.

It is very easy to offend people when talking politics - and although I have
strong opinions myself, I am not trying to offend anyone (including Dr. Nolan,
who I apologize to in advance) with this message - it is only meant to stimulate
people to try to look at the situation objectively and even 'put the shoe on the
other foot' so to speak.  

Message posting through the Clemson CQI Web Server.