What does “quality” mean for a global manufacturer such as

GE?

How do businesses work? What is the role of the quality

profession in business? These questions have probably
challenged many of us in different ways throughout our
working lives. Unlike most other professions, those of us with
'quality' in our job titles have changed direction and scope
many different times. In the second part of his article, David
Straker describes a simple model of the way that businesses
work and the changing role of the quality professional.

Understanding our external business environment, internal

capabilities and desires leads to changes that enable us to
sustain and grow our businesses (see figure 1). This system
is discussed in further detail below, along with consideration
of its impact on the quality profession.

Figure 1 Understanding our business environment

Understanding
The first stage of any business is understanding, including
understanding what is needed and how to satisfy these
needs. A sound understanding will lead to sound decisions,
whereas decisions based on assumptions and guesswork
will lead to surprises and fire-fighting, which is not a winning
strategy

Understanding needs (and attendant expectations) is about

all the players in the game. It means knowing who they are,
what value they bring, and what they want to take out of the
pot in return for continued patronage. Stakeholder needs are
met by a complex system involving many other stakeholders.
The classic measure of manufacturing capability, so we must
understand the entire delivery engine.

Understanding includes present and future needs and

capabilities, with a consideration of external forces, such as
competition and legislation. Imagination, based on
knowledge, is an important factor here: when customers
change their goals and competitors change strategy, we still
want to stay ahead of the game.

Real-world understanding includes awareness of the limits of

your knowledge. When this is openly accepted, associated
risks can be identified and actively managed. Much of the
work involved in business is about managing surprises.
Quality should include reducing surprises by highlighting
realities in time to prepare for possibilities. With an improved
understanding, we can make decisions that will lead to better
chances of staying in business.
This means balancing stakeholder value needs with current
and future capabilities of both internal and external systems.
It means saying no and focusing resources to retain key
stakeholders and to increase targeted value flows (such as
more lucrative customers and growing markets).
Improvement

In one sense, decisions are promises: they commit

resources to objectives. They are investing value now to
achieve value later. At a strategic level, most decisions to
achieve new business goals lead to necessary changes in
the business system. Serious business improvement is
undertaken to meet the promises, explicit or implicit, in these
decisions.

Improvements in practice have not always been successful

in helping to meet promises. A classic failure has been to
target improvements off the business line. Practicing in safe
areas is one thing, but as Wallace Andrews said: 'You can
learn all you want about Freud, but sooner or later you have
to go out with the girls.'

Understanding is the foundation of improvement. Attempting

to improve systems with intuition and pseudo-brainstorming
can be a dangerous game. Systems are interconnected
wholes: changing one element can have a significant impact
on other, often distant, parts of the system. Improvement
without true understanding is easy Improperly fixing one
problem just causes another to pop up somewhere else.
Assurance
When needs and capabilities are understood and the system
improved, all we need to do is make sure that it works.
Ideally there would be no need for assurance but it is part of
the system where specifications are important. The previous
stages ensured that definitions of what was to be done were
optimal and clear - this stage is about ensuring that things
happen on time, every time.

Basis for survival

The three pillars fit together to form the basis for survival of
all businesses and organisations. The job of the quality
professional is to understand, improve and assure the
operation of the whole business system within which he or
she works (see figure 2).

Assurance: keeping promises

The modern concept of quality started on the manufacturing
line, where quality professionals worked to ensure that
products met specifications. This is the domain of quality
control and assurance, in which we are the clear masters of
documented systems and audited processes. The quality of
assurance is, at its most fundamental, about meeting stated
or implied promises (for example, as defined in product
specifications). This quality is about consistency
Improvement: the ability to keep promises
Improvement has gradually merged into quality, and with the
dawning of the TQM era1, quality professionals became
involved in the improvement of the broad business system.
Improvement requires new levels of knowledge and skill,
such as an understanding of the way to design processes
and business systems. Products are designed by people
with professional qualifications in the subject; the design of
processes and broader organisational systems deserves
equal rigour.

Improvement is the quality of change. Initially about

changing processes, it has evolved into changing
organisational systems. It requires analysis, innovation and
serious interpersonal skills. If QA means keeping promises,
then quality improvement involves building a system to do
so.

Understanding: the quality of making the right promises

The final domain that requires our attention is that of
understanding. As Deming suggested, understanding is both
the philosopher's stone and the critical challenge for quality
in the new millennium. Quality of information, quality of
understanding and quality of decisions are as critical as the
quality of products and services that flow from them.
We must not only understand machines and processes, but
people and complex systems. Only then can we make the
right promises and ensure that we keep them.
Understanding requires a constant quest for deeper
knowledge and alternative meaning. It is not an end in itself,
but requires patience and passion to keep on digging and
refining, since the knowledge gained today may not be of
value until some time later. Learning is a lifetime's
occupation, so you might as well enjoy it. Understanding is
the underpinning that enables both improvement and
assurance.

The domain of the quality professional is significant, and just

as business systems are interlocked, so are these areas
necessary to ensure we make and keep wise promises. If
QA and improvement are about keeping promises, then
understanding is about ensuring that the right promises are
made.

Figure 2 Understanding, improving and assuring the

operation of the whole business system
Virtue is not the first thing that comes to mind when people
think about GE. An industrial and financial services giant that
is on track to generate $150 billion in revenues this year, GE
under Jack Welch was known for hard-driving management
and for delivering market-beating shareholder returns.

Welch's emphasis on values is one way he is putting his own

stamp on the company, and it's having an impact throughout
GE. It affects how the company runs itself and treats its
employees; the kinds of companies and countries it chooses
to do business with; and the technologies it invests in. Welch
takes it as a given that companies have an obligation not just
to make money and obey the law but also to help solve the
world's problems

Of course, GE isn't the first big company to wrestle with

questions of corporate social responsibility. In fact, it has
been slow to join the debate. As GE perpetually reinvents
itself-by embracing Six Sigma quality, globalization, buying
and selling on the Internet-it often sets the standard for how
global companies should be run.
GE Commitment to Quality

Globalization and instant access to information, products

and services continue to change the way our customers
conduct business.

Today's competitive environment leaves no room for error.

We must meet our customers' needs and relentlessly look
for new Ushering in a new era in the global electric power
industry, GE Energy executives, customers and Welsh
leaders recently gathered in Baglan Bay, Wales, to celebrate
the installation and commercial operation of the world's most
powerful and most efficient gas turbine technology.

First, What is Six Sigma?

First, what it is not. It is not a secret society, a slogan or a

cliche. Six Sigma is a highly disciplined process that helps
us focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products
and services.
Why "Sigma"?

The word is a statistical term that measures how far a given

process deviates from perfection. The central idea behind
Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many "defects"
you have in a process, you can systematically figure out how
to eliminate them and get as close to "zero defects" as
possible. To achieve Six Sigma Quality, a process must
produce no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities.
An "opportunity" is defined as a chance for nonconformance,
or not meeting the required specifications. This means we
need to be nearly flawless in executing our key processes.

Key Concepts of Six Sigma

At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few key concepts.

Critical to
Attributes most important to the customer
Quality:
Defect: Failing to deliver what the customer wants
Process
What your process can deliver
Capability:
Variation: What the customer sees and feels
Ensuring consistent, predictable processes
Stable
to improve what the customer sees and
Operations:
feels
Design for Six Designing to meet customer needs and
Sigma: process capability
Quality for Customer

1. The Customer

Delighting Customers
Customers are the center of the GE universe: they define
quality. They expect performance, reliability, competitive
prices, on-time delivery, service, clear and correct
transaction processing and more. In every attribute that
influences customer perception, we know that just being
good is not enough. Delighting our customers is a necessity.
Because if we don't do it, someone else will!

2. The Process

Outside-In Thinking
Quality requires us to look at our business from the
customer's perspective, not ours. In other words, we must
look at our processes from the outside-in. By understanding
the transaction lifecycle from the customer's needs and
processes, we can discover what they are seeing and
feeling. With this knowledge, we can identify areas where we
can add significant value or improvement from their
perspective.

3. The Employee

Leadership Commitment
People create results. Involving all employees is essential to
the GE quality approach. GE is committed to providing
opportunities and incentives for employees to focus their
talents and energies on satisfying customers.
All GE employees are trained in the strategy, statistical tools
and techniques of Six Sigma Quality. Training courses are
offered at various levels:

Quality Overview Seminars:

 Basic Six Sigma awareness
 Team Training: basic tool introduction to equip
employees to participate on Six Sigma teams
 Master Black Belt, Black Belt and Green Belt Training:
in-depth quality training that includes high-level
statistical tools, basic quality control tools, Change
Acceleration Process and Flow technology tools
 Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Training: prepares teams
for the use of statistical tools to design it right the first
time.
 Quality is the responsibility of every employee. Every
employee must be involved, motivated and
knowledgeable if we are to succeed.

Our Customers Feel the Variance, Not the Mean

Often, our inside-out view of the business is based on
average or mean-based measures of our recent past.
Customers don't judge us on averages, they feel the
variance in each transaction, each product we ship.

Six Sigma focuses first on reducing process variation and

then on improving the process capability.

Customers value consistent, predictable business processes

that deliver world-class levels of quality. This is what Six
Sigma strives to produce.
GE success with Six Sigma has exceeded our most
optimistic predictions. Across the company, GE associates
embrace Six Sigma's customer-focused, data-driven
philosophy and apply it to everything we do. We are building
on these successes by sharing best practices across all of
our businesses, putting the full power of GE behind our
quest for better, faster customer solutions.