Conference 7.286::digital

    
    An excellent example of what we have been preaching with the
    Total Quality Management program and specifically with Six Sigma.
    
    Having the right product at the right price isn't enough.  There
    are more companies competing now for less business so having the
    right product at the right price is going to be a given.  Getting
    the small stuff right and never leaving the customer concerned or
    exposed in any way is going to be the competitive difference that
    gets business.
    
    For now and the future, the game is *never* dissatisfy the customer
    about *anything*.
    
    Steve
    

The title of this note is a good example of what you say we should not be doing.
If you are truly interested in getting the details right, I suggest you start 
with the base note. 

Or did you put that mistake in here to see if we are paying attention?

Bruce

PS -- Here is the original title (included here so that if it is corrected, you
can read the original).

       "Details that can't swept under the rug"

My, what a positive and helpful reply to the base note. We all have a 
little finger trouble at times and I don't think "nitpicking" about a minor 
typo should detract from what is a salutory lesson in what really counts 
out there just now.

- Power to mice in the company of elephants (surely there's a film in there 
somewhere!).

R

 

It may look like a nitpick, but two of the common complaints of customers
that the basenoter pointed out was 1. lack of attention to details, and 2. 
typos and mistakes in print. The basenoter did the very thing that he is 
complaining about! He certainly proved his point!

Bruce

.3>  My, what a positive and helpful reply to the base note. We all have a 
.3>  little finger trouble at times and I don't think "nitpicking" about a minor 
.3>  typo should detract from what is a salutory lesson in what really counts 
.3>  out there just now.
    
    hmm.  A "salutory lesson" eh?
    
    about what?  QUALITY???
    
    the occurance of typos impacts quality.  yep, we all have a little
    finger trouble at times, in a post to a notesfile it just provides a
    nice object lesson in consistency - in my source code it inserts bugs
    which may well not be found in testing.  Thus I must proofread what I
    really typed, and correct errors when I'm working on source.  Why is it
    ok to tolerate errors (poor quality) in human-readable typing when they
    are not tolerable in machine-readable source code?
    
    It seems to me that the message of programs such as Six Sigma is that
    we should all cultivate quality as a habit, all the time.
    
    I think the typo was a nice object lesson.  I don't think pointing it
    out was useless "nitpicking" but rather an attempt to emphasize the
    same basic message.  I do think that sarcasm ("My, what a positive...")
    both missed the point and committed the same error that it was intended
    to criticize.
    
    Incidentally, I recently read a book that got off on the wrong foot
    with me over minor errors just like the title typo.  The last straw was
    a discussion about the importance of details to quality that included
    the injunction to look at the book cover to see the shade of blue that
    IBM had chosen for their corporate image after careful research into
    subjective reactions to color - and the book cover was purple!  After
    that, it was difficult to take anything else that was said very
    seriously.
    
    Details count.  That was the message in .0, the title contradicted the
    basic statement.  Did that help or hurt the message?

Oops, nice one .5. Shot myself in the foot with .3's boob! If you're going 
to attempt a bit of sarcasm in a notesfile always spell check it first!

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the article in the base note as reminder of 
what I need to do to keep my customers happy, and very often it is a brief 
read like .0 which is most effective at re-focussing on what I should be 
doing. The finger slip in the title didn't detract from the value of its 
content to me.

Just my opinion,

R

    The error was deliberate on my part.

    Pat Sweeney

    >>                   -< There is no error in this title >-
    
    >>The error was deliberate on my part.
    
    That's not a bug, that's a feature! :-)
    
    John H.

    Here is further commentary on why attention to details and
    follow-through are critical.
    
    "Why isn't 99.9% defect-free good enough?"
    
    To show why it isn't, Jeff Dewar, QCI International, Red Bluff,
    California, came up with some examples of how some things would be if
    they were done only 99.9% of the time.
    
    We'd have to live with:
    
    o 1 hour of unsafe drinking water every month;
    o 2 unsafe plan landings per day at O'Hare;
    o 16,000 pieces of mail lost by the U.S. Post Office every hour;
    o 22,000 checks deducted from the wrong bank accounts each hour;
    o 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions per year;
    o 500 incorrect surgical operations each week.
    
    From Kathleen Baine
    (Who gets crazy when she sees "it's" when "its" is the proper usage.)
    
    

    re .9, list of things like lost mail
    
    I bet we already do live with those things, and worse.
    
    Don't assume any current system is 99.99+% defect-free.
    
    		-John Bishop

re .9, .10
    
>I bet we already do live with those things, and worse.
    
   You'd win, John.  Why do you think the frustration level expressed here
   and in every "letters to the editor" page in every newspaper in the
   country is so high?  Because you can't count on many things to even be
   90% right, let alone 99.9%.
   
fwiw,

Dick

    RE .9
    
    Kathleen, with one misspelled word in the text of your note,(see plan*)
    you accuracy works out to be 99.9991% I'd say you just made it.
    
    

    
    Re: .9
    
    I've seen that data and use some of it in my Six Sigma class.
    The version I've seen says that the surgical procedure data is
    5000 per week not 500.  Can you confirm which is correct?
    
    Re: .12
    
    > Kathleen, with one misspelled word in the text of your note,(see plan*)
    > you accuracy works out to be 99.9991% I'd say you just made it.
      ^^^^
    
    You do know the story about glass houses I assume?
    
    Steve
    

    re 13
    
    I thought that was the king in the glass castle that shouldn't stow
    thrones??
    

    >>I've seen that data and use some of it in my Six Sigma class.
    >>The version I've seen says that the surgical procedure data is
    >>5000 per week not 500.  Can you confirm which is correct?
    
    A presentation from Xerox I have, "Xerox Quest for Quality and the
    National Quality Award," gives the following factoids:
    
    a 99.9% yield would result in 18 plane crashes a day; 
    	17,000 lost pieces of mail per hour; 
    	3,700 incorrectly filled prescriptions per day; 
    	10 newborn babies dropped each day in the delivery room; 
    	$24.8M wrongfully deducted from our bank accounts each hour; 
    	500 (five-hundred) botched surgeries per week.
    
    John H.

    Is it about time for 'Worsing's speech to IBM' to make another
    appearance?  I have a copy to post if it isn't already available in
    another note.  It has great relevance to this discussion.7
    
     jim

    One must be very careful in this note to spell everything correctly
    so this entry should not be a problem.
    
    However, try as I might, I cannot see the problem with the topic
    title.  Would any reader care to elucidate the problem described?
    
    Calvin
    

    
    	The title of the article reprinted in the basenote is:
    
    	     "Details that can't be swept under the rug."
                                 ^^
    
    	Now check the topic title again.
    

    The point is that the best plan, whether it's "empowerment" or "six
    sigma" or whatever the quality scheme de jour is, is useless without
    basic respect for the customer in details: answering the phone,
    following up, and correct spelling in correspondence with customers.

    Good customer service is getting the details right consistently.

    Thanks for that.  I guess the phenomena is rather like the Investment
    in Excellence (aka New Age thinking) and Lou Tice's 6 F's
    demonstration.
    
    Calvin (Feeling embarrassed at at such a simple problem/fix)
    
    

	From .0:  "Those who act on the knowledge that details make the 
		   difference will be well set. "

	Some months ago a group of us visited Stow to see what the Customer
	Support people do all day.  I was impressed.  The nice people in
	charge at Stow gave us a handout with a notepad, some brochures, and 
	a ballpoint pen.  I've lost the brochures and the notepad.  The
	ballpoint pen, bearing the "Digital" logo, lingers on to remind me 
	often that Digital is the company whose name appears on cheap 
	ballpoint pens that require unseemly scratching to get them started...

	Well, _of course_ it's silly.  But I wonder what kind of ballpoiont
	IBM gives away...

	Regards, Robert.

    re -1:   "But I wonder what kind of ballpoint IBM gives away..."
    
    	      ...a Big, Blue one, of course!