Business World: Computers Elevate Product Quality Standards
One of the spinoffs of the manufacturing revolution under way in the U.S. is greater consistency. Modern computer-controlled production and processing machines have electronic sensors to reject bad parts or alert operators when a chemical process is out of kilter. The expression often applied to Computer Integrated Manufacturing, or CIM, is that either it works right or it doesn't work at all. The percentage of defective products likely to slip through inspection and out onto the market thus declines.</br></br>Now, of course, this is just one measure of "quality." It means only that the product is built the way it was engineered. It doesn't mean that it was engineered well, or that it will last forever. Engineering is usually a compromise that attempts to keep cost as low as possible while at the same time satisfying a consumer's expectations. So "quality" is a subjective or comparative judgment, not an absolute.</br></br>Despite such ambiguities, Congress by resolution and President Reagan by proclamation again have declared October National Quality Month. The showcase event of this observance occurred at the Vista Hotel in New York last week when top executives of some of America's largest companies -- GM, Ford, IBM and Coca-Cola, for example -- gathered for a "National Quality Forum." Quite predictably, the emphasis was on quality improvement as a means of making American-made products more competitive with foreign-made products. The participants got some good cheer in the form of Gallup Poll results showing that 66% of the respondents now favor American products for quality, compared with only 61% three years ago. Those polled indicated a willingness to pay some premium for higher quality.</br></br>Skeptics will no doubt wonder whether CEOs are really serious about quality or whether such things as the National Quality Forum are mainly grandstanding. Customer satisfaction with American products has had ups and downs, with the downs especially acute in the 1970s when inflation meant easy selling, whether the product was good or bad. But times have indeed changed and a good case can be made that any CEO not making use today of modern tools of engineering and manufacture -- with their greater possibilities for quality control as it is traditionally defined -- is courting extinction.</br></br>Colby H. Chandler, chairman and CEO of Eastman Kodak Co., is this year's chairman of National Quality Month, a fitting role for a man who began his working life as a quality-control engineer. Taking a break from the Vista proceedings, he talked about how today's CEOs view the subject.