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When "Good Enough" Isn't Good Enough,
Core Ideas of Total Quality

by
Linda Turner and Ron Turner

© 1998 All rights reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven References and Copying Rights

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: Beginnings Bureaucracies have forgotten why they were created in the first place. Total Quality Management is a paradigm shift that starts with a frontal attack on "common sense." To improve things requires a rebellion against the modern bureaucracy.

Chapter Two: Commitment to Continuous Improvement How could anyone oppose a commitment to continuous improvement? Consider what messages underlie the following common cliches: "If it ain't broke, why fix it? I've been doing it this way for twenty years and never got any complaints." "Good enough!"

Chapter Three: Adoption of a Customer Focus A customer focus is the opposite of, "Let the buyer beware." The Golden Rules and Customer-Supplier Interview Questions should be the basis for all relationships with both internal and external customers.

Chapter Four: Systems Thinking A system's approach looks at overall system design rather than looking for what's broken. Once systems are truly understood, it will be accepted that incentive systems should be tied to how the system as a whole operates rather than how each individual part operates.

Chapter Five: Understanding Variation People who don't understand variation will mislearn myths like, "Yelling works and encouragement doesn't." It is far better to err on the side of not saying anything rather than to err on the side of falsely accusing people.

Chapter Six: Strategies Once adopted, a Total Quality approach will change the roles of everyone working in an organization.

Chapter Seven: Questions Commonly Asked Do all decisions get decided by consensus? How important is top management commitment? What is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award?

References

Photocopying Privileges

Acknowledgments

This book series would never have been completed without the assistance of many people. We want to thank Dr. Charles Burger of Norumbega Medical Service, Inc. John Bragg of N.H. Bragg & Sons, Inc., Randy Harriman, Chief of the Bangor Police Department, and Joyce Hedlund, President of Eastern Maine Technical College for helping us to refine these materials as we provided them workshops on Total Quality Management.

We also relied heavily on the editing skills of Thom Amnotte, Merlene Sanborn, and Linda Coleman.