RE: Quality Integration?

[Jonathan Siegel <jmsiegel@yahoo.com>]

Having top mnagement directly responsible for quality,
rather than delegating it to a separate quality
department, is not a bad idea. But is the director
interested in any sort of consulting or outside
expertise? This would be the proper role of the
quality group, but it rather sounds like not. 

I guess the basic idea to communicate -- if possible
in the situation -- is that effective quality involves
a kind of scientific discipline, so that people with
expertise in the discipline have something useful to
say, something that would make their advice helpful to
people whose background is a general management
education. 

If your management is not interested in this idea, I'm
not sure what you can do. The truth is our society
does not really back it. Unlike doctors, lawyers,
teachers, engineers, real estate agents, barbers,
truck drivers, and others, quality professionals have
no legally defined profession and no official
recognition for their expertise.  Unlike these other
professions, management usually has no obligation to
turn to people with any particular qualifications. 

Central to Deming's vision of the role of quality
expertise was his perception of it as a profession,
analogous to being a doctor or lawyer. But society's
recognition of the profession Deming developed has,
thus far, been quite uneven. 

We would never imagine a doctor having to justify the
very of concept of medicine as a profession,
attempting to persuade a highly skeptical audience
that there is such a thing as a body of knowledge
which helps people cure illnesses, and that when
people who have this knowledge tend to the sick they
get better results than people who don't. And yet you
seem to be facing a very similar situation.

Good luck. 

I've experienced something similar myself; it was one
reason why I spent a couple of years attempting
(unsuccessfully so far) to get a PhD. Credentials
provide at least some evidence that what one is doing
requires education. But there ought to be a better
way. 

Sincerely,

Jonathan Siegel
jmsiegel@yahoo.com