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Quality Is
Free
Philip Crosby
(McGraw-Hill, 1972) argued that Quality is Free. The argument
Quality is Free maybe not entirely free, but e.g., doesn’t cost more
to treat people well, quality improves productivity, satisfaction,
sales, so does stakeholder satisfaction. And…when relationships
improve, so can profitability!
Crosby said:
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Quality is free but no one is ever going to
know it unless there is some agreed system of
measurement
·
Quality is not only free but an
honest-to-goodness everything profit
maker
·
Every penny you don’t spend on doing things
wrong is a half-penny right in the bottom
line
·
If you concentrate on making quality certain
you can probably increase profit by 5% to 10%....and that’s a lot of
money for free!
Quality experts
believe that it is too costly to manage responsibility… But
responsibility has similar
characteristics.
- It is costly
NOT to manage responsibility
- Growing
evidence of positive performance link
- Little
difference in stock performance (possibly positive
relationship)
- Consider
the costs of dealing with corporate critics, losing customers
and investors, and recruitment and
retention
- As with
quality, responsibility and cost-effectiveness may
co-exist...
Let’s start
with some quality myths:
- Quality is
subjective and intangible
- It is not
possible to eliminate all defects
- Lack of
motivation or caring by the workforce causes most quality
problems
- The aim of
quality management is to reduce errors to acceptable
levels
- Quality is
best ensured by those who inspect the
work
- Improving
quality adds and reduces productivity
- Quality
cannot be measured in dollars
- Quality is
proportional to the resources spent on
inspection
But the truth
is that these all points are false and absolutely false, because
Quality is Free.
The first step
to Quality is Free: Errorless execution is the
goal.
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