The Second Key to Building Quality

The Second Key to Building Quality: Consistency in Everything You Do

Consistency has long been equated to Quality. I am sure that you have heard one of the many slogans designed to foster consistency from the workforce. For instance: "Do It Right the First Time and Every Time", "If You Have the Time to Do It Over, You Have The Time to Do It Right The First Time". All these slogans are based on the premise of delivering services that will please customers time after time.

As Dr. Deming has pointed out, slogans alone, will not assure quality. Management must design and build the systems that will assure that products are manufactured and services are delivered in a manner that will consistently satisfy the customer. Management must understand the customer needs and wants and design the products and processes to satisfy those needs and wants in an unfailing manner.

When thinking of consistency, I am always reminded of the early days of McDonald's restaurants. A secret to McDonald's meteoric rise as an enterprise was its offer of consistency in quality from outlet to outlet. A family traveling on the Interstate would know what to expect when stopping at the Golden Arches. It was not going to be a gourmet meal; but a clean, family oriented environment, a satisfying meal at an affordable price. Ray Crok, McDonald's founder was the driving force behind McDonald's obsession with consistency. Every thing was specified, not a thing was left to chance.

A Quality Manager for McDonald once told me that even the seeds for the potatoes used for its fries were strictly specified.  Nothing was left to chance. French fries and sandwiches were discarded after a certain number of minutes had elapsed since their preparation was completed. Very strict rules were enforced in order to assure consistency and quality.

So powerful was McDonald's image for consistency that its archrival Burger King had to counter-act with a campaign based on somewhat opposite virtues of flexibility and great customer service: "Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us; have it your way".

Some today may laugh at the notion of considering a fast food chain as an example of consistency and quality. Let's then take the opposite end of the culinary spectrum as another example of the importance of consistency.

Have you ever had a favorite gourmet restaurant that you visited many times with only the best of experiences? You invite an out-of-town guest who you want to impress with the very best your town has to offer and share the same kind of wonderful experience only to be surprised by "an off- night."

That night the service is unusually slow because of a large party distracting the waiting staff. Your order takes a lifetime to arrive at your table and when it finally arrives it is either undercooked, or cold, or burned beyond recognition. After many excellent experiences at this favorite dining spot, how likely are you to return to this place, not to mention bring an important guest with you, after this latest miserable visit? Probably, it will take a while before you return, if ever.

Human nature works like the proverbial cat that once burned on a stove will avoid going near a cold stove as well. The last stimulus is far more important than the sum total of all experiences that preceded it. Therefore, being able to deliver quality products and services time and time again is the only way to achieve and retain customer satisfaction, which is the key to long-term success and survival.

Why is consistency so important to customer satisfaction? Another simple example will illustrate that point. Let's say that a customer has asked you for delivery of a product every three weeks. Initially, you have the product in stock and ship it right away. The next time, you are out of stock and due to some operational problems cannot deliver for six weeks.

On the average you are okay, right? Of course, you are not. This is similar to the old statistical joke of having a foot in a bucket of ice and the other foot in an oven and feeling, on the average, comfortable.

In the first instance, you may think that your customer will be delighted with your prompt execution of his order. However, your customer may have other things to worry about than where to store your product until he really needs it. This adds to his storage and handling cost, not to mention the cost and cash flow implications of dealing with your premature invoice.

If delivering early is a problem, delivering late is surely to get your customer upset. Under the best of circumstances it will raise the customer's anxiety level, but operations could also be disrupted or shut down if the product is critical to operations and the inventory is exhausted.

Consistency is achieved in this case by meeting delivery expectations within a narrow range of the target date time after time, without surprises. In this example, if the product is received in a two to three week time frame, it is not likely to cause any difficulties and it will greatly improve the perceived quality of your services.

Consistency has been viewed as a necessary component of Quality by many organizations including the International Standards Organization (ISO). The ISO standards are based on the belief that procedures that assure consistency in execution for all functions in the organization are needed in order to deliver high quality products and services.

Consistency is, therefore, one of the keys to building Quality, but how do you attain consistency in everything you do? By applying teamwork, measurement and analysis, and training throughout the organization you can begin to deliver the kind of consistency that will satisfy and delight your customers. These will be the subject of future articles.