Paradigms of Variation: Misunderstanding Quality (Part 7)

In this episode, Bill Bellows and Andrew Stotz explore the intersection of variation and quality through awareness of the "Paradigms of Variation.” In a progression from acceptability to desirability, Bill created this 4-part model to offer economic insights for differentiating “Zero Defect” quality from “Loss Function" quality," with the aim of avoiding confusion between precision and accuracy when desirability is the choice.   Learn how to decide which paradigm your quality management system fits into!

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.5 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 31 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. This is episode 7, The Paradigms of Variation. Bill, take it away.

0:00:30.3 Bill Bellows: Thank you, Andrew, and welcome to our listeners, as well as viewers, if you have access to the viewing version. Yeah, so I went back and listened to Episode 6. I'm going out bike riding 2-3 hours a day, so I listened to the podcast, listened to other things, stop and write down. Let me go write that down. And, so, we're going to pick up today on some major themes. And, what I keep coming back to is, is I think the difference between acceptability and desirability is the difference between how most companies operate and how a company inspired by Dr. Deming would operate.

0:01:29.3 BB: And, I just think of, if there was no difference between the two, then... Well, lemme even back up. I mentioned last time we were talking about why my wife and I buy Toyotas. And, yes, we've had one terrible buy, which I continue to talk about. [laughter] And, it's fun because it's just a reminder that even a company like Toyota can deliver a really lousy product, which we were unfortunate to have purchased. And, we're not the only ones that, and they've rebounded and they've apologized, they've had issues. There's no doubt about that. They have issues, but they have notably been inspired by Dr. Deming.

0:02:30.6 BB: The one thing I brought up last time was relative on this thinking of acceptability, desirability, where acceptability is looking at things and saying it's a quality system of good and bad. It's acceptable, which is good and unacceptable is not good. And, that's how most organizations view quality. Again, the focus of this series is Misunderstanding Quality. Our previous series was broadly looking at implications for Dr. Deming's ideas. And, here our focus is quality. And, so what I'm trying to get across here is quality management, traditional quality management.

0:03:17.4 BB: In most organizations, in all organizations I've ever interacted with is acceptability basis, good parts and bad parts. It's a measurement system of it meets requirements, we ship it, if it meets requirements, we buy it. And, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I don't think a system focused on acceptability can explain... To me, it does not explain the incredible reliability I have personally experienced in Toyota products.

0:03:46.9 BB: Now, I'm working with a graduate student and I wanna pursue that as a research topic in the spring, 'cause for all I know, the reliability of components in all cars has improved. I don't know if it's, I only by Toyota, 'cause so this woman I've met recently and I'm mentoring her and we're working on a research project. And, I thought recently, I'd like... And, I'm not sure how to do this, but I just know, I think I've mentioned I worked at my father's gas station back in the '70s and I remember replacing water pumps and alternators and all this stuff. This was before Japanese cars were everywhere. There were Japanese cars, but not like you see today.

0:04:33.3 BB: And, so I'm just used to all those component