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The continuous improvement concept applies to all departments, products, services, and activities through-
out an organization. At South Carolina Baptist Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, 2,500 employees have been
trained in continuous improvement techniques. Managers learn a coaching role, empowering employees to recog-
nize and act on their contributions. Baptist has learned that countless improvements require a long-term approach
to building quality into the very fiber of the organization. Over time, project by project, human activity by human
activity, quality through continuous improvement has become the way the hospital's employees do their work.
T a s k 2. Listening comprehension: an interview with a management consultant about quality con-
trol.
Interviewer: Sarah Lockhart is the Quality Director of AP Management Consultants. Sarah, how is Quality
with a capital Q different from what's always been known as 'quality control'?
Ms Lockhart: The idea of Quality is a concept that is coming to be the driving force of many parts of in-
dustry today. The interesting thing is that it can be applied to both the service sector and the manufacturing sec-
tor. We can talk about Quality of manufacturing and quality of service. Quality is something that affects all the
functions of the company and all the staff from board level down to line managers and employees.
Interviewer: So how would this be applied to manufacturing?
Ms Lockhart: Well, the key idea here is 'Zero Defects' – the company should be aiming to produce goods
that are perfect. So that customers are entirely satisfied and they don't discover any faults at all after delivery
has taken place.
Interviewer: Yes, but surely nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes sometimes.
Ms Lockhart: Well, yes, people make mistakes, but we believe that everybody wants to be perfect and
they want their product to be perfect and to have no eff...defects.
Interviewer: Ah, I see.
Ms Lockhart: In the past it was considered impossible to mass-produce goods to a very high standard.
There would always be rejects and some faulty goods would inevitably get through to the customer, because
carrying out a quality control of every manufactured item would be too expensive and therefore unprofitable.
Quality control usually consisted of random checks – operating rather like Customs officers in the green channel
at an airport. Customers came to expect there’re to be some faults in the goods – and it was just a fact of life in
manufacturing. Anything that was wrong could always be put right later by complaining to the supplier and get-
ting him to repair or replace the faulty goods.
Well, the Quality revolution, if I can call it that, turns these views on their head. There are several reasons
for this. First, putting mistakes right – fixing a faulty machine or collecting it and replacing it – are labor-
intensive and costly and it's more cost-effective to eliminate the need for this by producing a perfect product
with zero defects in the first place. Second, if your competitors are able to produce goods with zero defects,
then clearly customers will prefer those. So in order to survive, you have to keep ahead of your competitors.
Obviously this applies to services too – your service has to be so good that there is no dissatisfaction and hence
no complaints from clients. Complaints usually mean that there are defects in your product or in your service –
and even your accounts department is providing a service to you and your suppliers and customers.
Interviewer: The big problem about all this is the other links in the chain. I mean, you're dependent on the
quality of materials supplied to you as a manufacturer that you will then transform in your factory. How does
this fit in?
Ms Lockhart: Yes, I agree, this is one of the problems. You normally don't have a direct control over your
supplier's processes, but you can change suppliers in order to obtain the materials of the highest quality. This
will normally mean paying more, but the extra cost can be easily justified if your own production quality im-
proves. If, however, you're obtaining poor quality materials from a single source, you may have to start looking
for alternative suppliers, or impose your own quality control on all incoming supplies before you accept them.
Interviewer: All right, suppose a company wants to introduce Quality as part of its business philosophy,
how easy is it to set about doing this?
Ms Lockhart: First of all you have to sell the concept to everyone in the company: at board level, to senior
management, to line managers and to the employees. Everyone has to believe in Quality for it to succeed – it
won't work if you have a group of people somewhere in the company who are working against you – that may
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