Quote:
Originally posted by rickg
Been awhile since I've heard Demmings name touted anywhere. He and his "methods" were real big in this area in machine shops in the early 90's. That's when Boeing got on the quality improvement band wagon, and made all their suppliers comply with their requirements. ISO 9000 was all the rage. We had meetings, started quality improvement teams, watched films, met with their QA gurus. It was a mad house! Cost the company I was working for at the time thousands of $$! Now look where they(Boeing) are. Getting shoved aside by Airbus.
This country has been lazy for too long about quality. If we don't figure it out, we'll be left in the dust. I see the struggle up close and personal being in a manufacturing industry. We have a hard time competing. The shop I work at now was started and ran by a real "buy american" type guy. He bought only american made machines. He's gone now(retired), and we're buying foreign made machines so we can get good dependable equipment. The american made stuff is crap! Needs constant maintenance and replacement parts. Pretty sad.
And trying to keep our people on top of what they're making on the machines is a constant struggle. There's too many that don't much care. They come in, put in thier hours, and collect their check. Hard to find machinists that care, or have any real skills.
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ISO 9000+ is still the rage.
Looking at Boeing's problems with unions, they would be an excellent example of the half-measure implentation of CIP and its successor TQM I am refering to. I've also read their problems are as much politcal as they are anything to do with quality issues - our friendly policy towards Taiwan implemented by the Bush admin has pissed off our biggest potential new market for airplanes, China. Couple that with the international unpopularity of the Iraq war, and your going to be setting things up quite nicely for the French, who by the way just sold a huge amount of airplanes to the Chinese. In addition, in one sentence you infer it was a waste of time and money to implement CIS, then later you say all the American equipment you get is crap. Since most American corporations do not use CIP and TQM and foriegn companies are noted for it, you may be making my best argument for me.
One company I worked for went from 700 million GR to 2.8 billion GR, maintaing about the same numbers of employees. Their stock has quadrupled. They credited all of it to fanatical adoption of CIP and TQM. A whole lot of managers had to get fired to make it happen. Out of curiosty, what became of the company you worked for that implemented TQM?