Re: Customer satisfaction, 2 questions

[Myron Tribus <mtribus@home.com>]

The exchange between Tom Dulz and Roger White, which is reproduced 
below, raises a fundamental issue, "What is the point of it all?".
=============== snip ====
>Tom Dulz writes:
>
>...it may be worthwhile to remind ourselves that the point of it all 
>is not really quality, but the development of an ongoing stream of 
>revenue. To state the obvious, every organization needs revenue from 
>the outside to survive.  The point then,is to get this revenue. 
>Deming's famous flowchart shows this clearly.  Quality is a means to 
>an end, it is not the end itself.  And while we may believe that 
>quality is the best way to develop this revenue relationship, it is 
>not the only way...

Roger White responds:

>Surely it depends on what you mean by "the point of it all"?  The 
>"point of it all" *cannot* just be the generation of the revenue 
>stream, critically important as it is.  I don't have the time now to 
>check the archives or OUTC and TNE, the only Deming texts I own, but 
>I am sure there has been a lot of reference on the DEN to the 
>multiple purposes of an enterprise (system) e.g profit, continued 
>existence, continued employment for the workers, customer 
>satisfaction, and so on.  In other words, it's not as simple as Tom 
>implies.
>
============== end snip ======
It so happened that I read this exchange while in Zlin, in the Czech 
republic, just after giving a talk on the management method of Thomas 
Bata.  I have sent Jim Clauson a copy of that talk for posting on the 
DEN website. In my study of Bata's method, which created the greatest 
shoe company the World has ever seen, the "point of it all" was "to 
serve society".

In the period 1894 to 1932 (at the time of Bata's death in an 
airplane accident) Bata created a show company that dominated the 
world. He had factories and outlets in 83 countries and produced more 
shoes than all other companies in the world, combined.  He produced 
shoes of higher quality and lower cost than any competitor.
I shall soon be sending Jim a copy of a manual of management, written 
by one of Bata's former employees, Mr. Zadek Rybka, whom I had the 
pleasure of meeting over the last two days.  Denizens will be 
surprised to learn how much Bata preceded Deming in thinking and 
putting into practice the principles of good management.

Myron Tribus

[Moderator's Note:  Myron's paper on Thomas Bata, Lessons from Thomas 
Bata for Modern Day Managers, is available at:
   http://deming.ces.clemson.edu/pub/den/deming_tribus.htm