I’ve been in and around the quality profession for decades. When I first started, we were most concerned about products failing in our customers’ hands... too often and too soon. I worked at General Motors in those days, in the Frigidaire division when Frigidaire was part of General Motors. We made major home appliances and parts for automotive air-conditioning systems.

I was fortunate to simultaneously see two very separate industries at the same time. In both industries our quality was generally as good as anyone else’s. Our customers liked our quality, but not enough to influence the choice of what products they bought. Our jobs in those days as quality professionals were to try to improve quality without increasing cost, at a time when everyone absolutely believed that improving quality meant increasing cost. That was about to change.

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