Quality and Power in the Supply Chain: What Industry does for the Sake of Quality

235 Pages·2000·13.28 MB·English

by  James Lamprecht

Quality and Power in the Supply Chain:
What Industry Does for the Sake of Quality
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Quality and Power in the
Supply Chain:
What Industry Does for the
Sake of Quality
James Lamprecht, Ph.D.
IP--
E I N E M A N N
Boston Oxford Auckland
Johannesburg Melbourne New Delhi
Copyright 0 2000 by James Lamprecht
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lamprecht, James L., 1947-
Quality and power in the supply chain : what industry does for the sake of quality /
James Lamprecht.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7506-7343-5 (alk. paper)
1. Industrial procurement. 2. Quality assurance. 3. Business networks. I. Title.
HD39.5 .L36 2000
658.4'012-dc21 00-031226
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Contents
LISTO F TABLES ix
PREFACEx i
Part I Prologue: On Power and Its Impact on Customer-Supplier
Relations
1. Power and Its Impact on Customer-Supplier Relations 3
Introduction 3
The Role of Power in Dictating Demands 6
The Vendor-Vendee Relationship within the Automotive Sector:
United States versus Japan 8
Dual Economy in the World of International Standards 10
2. On Registrars and Bureaucratic Power 13
Constraints and Absurdity 14
Types of Organizations 15
Registrars as a Mixture of Craft and Procedural Bureaucracies 16
Virtual IS0 Certification: Guaranteed, Cheap, and Easy 17
Part I1 The Limits of Quality: Essays on a Separate Reality
3. Thoughts on the Relativity of Quality 21
The Zen of Quality 22
Is There a Universal Approach to Management? 24
Are There Universal Principles of Quality? 26
Can Quality Be Translated? 27
Quality: Absolute or Relative? 29
When a Smile Is a Sign of Inferiority 30
Conclusion 32
4. How Old Can a Company Hope to Be? 35
5. Built to Last for a While: The Age of Flexibility 41
Flexibility and Competitiveness 42
Economic Success of the Firm: Is It Based Solely on Quality Issues? 43
V
vi Contents
Quality: One Small Element to Economic Viability 45
G. H. Bass versus Vita Needle Company 46
The Dilemma of Responsiveness 48
Conclusion 49
6. On Servicing the Customer 51
Who Is the Customer? 51
The Case of IS0 9001-2000 52
Should All Customers Be Treated Like Kings? 54
7. Fads, Incompetence, Ignorance, and Stupidity 57
Introduction 57
On Stupidity 59
Federal Nonsense 60
The Case of the Truck Rental Agency 60
Partial Quality and the French Public Transportation System 62
Can You Sell Less Quality? 63
Are Benchmarks Always Conducted to Better Serve the Customer? 63
On Quality Fads 65
Ignorance: The Leading Cause of Absurd Behavior 67
On Incompetence 69
On the Limitations of Mission Statements 71
Side Effects of Exceeding Expectations 74
When Too Much Quality Leads to Ludicrous Scenarios 75
The Routine of Quality 77
Conclusion 77
Part I11 Colbertism and the Dawn of Power in Customer-Supplier
Re 1a ti on s
8. Colbertism: The Dawn of Regulatory Practices 81
Colbertism: The Dawn of Modern Government Regulation 83
Overview of the French Economic System during the 17th Century 83
The Colbert System 85
Colbert’s Rules for Inspectors of August 13,1669 86
Problems with Colbert’s System of Regulation 87
9. The Quest for Repeatability: The Emergence of Factory Organization and
Standardization 91
Military Mass Production 92
The Managerial Revolution (1840-1880): Regulation from Within 94
Adoption of the Armory System for Private Production 95
Controlling the Means of Production Prior to World War I: The Age of
Taylorism 97
Controlling the Means of Production: The Interwar Years (1915-1939) and
Company Standardization 99
Contents vii
The Emergence of the Government as Customer 99
The Role and Influence of the Military as Customer of Last Resort 100
10. Military as Customer and Controller of Subcontractors 101
Origins of MIL-Q-5923 101
Justification for MIL-Q-5923 103
Early Resistance to MIL-Q-5923 104
The Omnipresent Customer 105
Part IV The Age of Standardization
11. The Value of Standardization: Point Counterpoint 111
Introduction 111
The Value of Standards 112
Origins of the International Organization for Standardization 114
Regulations: Who Are the Interested Parties? 114
The Economics of Standardization 116
The Limits of Standardization 117
Standards and the Law: A Powerful Combination 119
Standards Proliferation in an Age of Regulation 120
Will It Ever End? 122
Conclusion 123
12. The IS0 9000 Phenomenon and the Privatization of Military
Standards 125
Was There Quality before IS0 9000? 125
Antecedents to the IS0 9000 Movement 127
The Need for Quick Fixes 130
The IS0 9000 Phenomenon: A Case Study in the Manufacturing of
Consent 131
The IS0 9000 Series 131
Origins of the IS0 9000 Standards 132
MIL-Q-5923 and 9858 and IS0 9000: D6jja Vu! 132
Evolution of the IS0 9000 Movement in the United States 135
The Universal Language of Quality 138
What Others Have Said about the Series 140
Evolution of the IS0 9000 Series 140
Was IS0 9000 a Fad? 144
Is IS0 9000 a Legitimate Paradigm for the 21st Century? 146
13. Quality Professionalism and the Ideology of Control 149
What Is Professionalism? 149
The Ideology of Quality 151
Influence of the Military and the Ideology of Quality Control 154
Influence of the Military on the Perception of Quality 155
viii Contents
The Role of the ASQ(C) in Promoting Supplier Regulations 162
Recent Trends: The Ideology of Management (Soft Quality) 164
The Quality Function and the Economy of the Firm 164
Conclusion 166
Part V Consequences of Standardization
14. On the Origin of Procedures 171
Procedures during the Dawn of Industrialization 172
Heritage of the American System 173
Procedures: Anathema, Panacea, or Placebo 174
On Working Knowledge 175
15. Writing Procedures 179
Introduction 179
Frederick Winslow Taylor on Procedures 180
Herbert Simon on Decisions 182
Some Examples of Dubious Procedures 183
Should You Ever Deviate from a Procedure? 183
Should All Processes Be Repeatable? 185
What Is the Best Way to Document a Process? 187
Can (Should?) Procedures Be Written for All Possible Scenarios? 188
Procedures versus “Show Me” 189
Types of Procedures 190
What to Do? 190
Are Special Software Packages Needed to Document Processes? 191
Are Procedures Required for All Industries? 192
Should Procedures Be Written Like a Computer Program? 194
Summary and Conclusion to Parts 111-V 196
Part VI Conclusion
16. By Way of Conclusion: Dos and Don’ts 201
Challenges for the Quality Professional in the 21st Century 201
Need to Integrate Many Methods 201
Challenges for Companies in the 21st Century 203
Final Thoughts on Don’ts 204
How to Simplify 206
IS0 9000 Software: No Panacea 208
On Quality-Speak 208
Teamwork: Another View 209
Smaller Would Be Better 210
INDEX 213
List of Tables
Table 1-1 Partial List of Mergers in the 4-Month Span from December
1997 to March 1998 7
Table 2-1 Four Types of Organizations 16
Table 4-1 Manufacturing Companies Founded by Decade (1770-1997) 38
Table 4-2 Percent of Manufacturing Companies that Were 100 Years
Old by Decade (from 1990-1940) 38
Table 4-3 Chemical Companies Founded by Decade (1770-1997) 39
Table 7-1 How Would You Rate the Seminar and the Speaker? 67
Table 7-2 Frequency Breakdown of Score for Seminar and Speaker
Questions 68
Table 12-1 Partial Comparison of MIL-Q-9858A Text with ISO
9001-1994 Text 133
Table 12-2 Members of the U.S. ISO/TC 176 Group 137
Table 12-3 Some Typical and Occasionally Inaccurate Statements
about the ISO 9000 Series 141
Table 12-4 Chronology of the ISO 9000 Phenomenon as Reported in
Quality Progress (1989-1992) 143
Table 12-5 Analysis of Trends and Advertisements in Quality
Progress (1990-1994, 1998) 145
Table 13-1 IQC Number of Publications by Organization and by
Periods (Ranking in Parentheses) 156
Table 13-2 Measure of Concentration 157
Table 13-3 The Quality Establishment as Represented by
IQC-ASQ(C) Presidents for the Years 1945-1995 159
Table 13-4 Breakdown of Dominant Themes as Reflected in the
ASQC Conference and Transaction Papers (1947-1960;
number of articles = 911) 160
Table 13-5 Sample Review of Contributors to ANSI/ASQC Standards 163
Table 13-6 Quality Progress Subject Index and Count (1968-1992;
number of articles = 1822) 165
ix