The Driftwood Tools Model

Abstract

The thing I most want to put across in this model is the concept of quality control preventing the further processing of defective material. To some people this will seem a familiar lesson not requiring any special emphasis, but that isn't so when you are dealing with young trainees completely new to industry or else devoted in their work situations to mastering the details of some other, unrelated, function. To them the words ‘quality control’ suggest scrupulous care to stop bad work going out to the customer and a greater or lesser financial outlay to achieve this end. The underlying attitude is this: ‘good quality costs money—better quality costs more. First prevent complaints by rigorous inspection and then examine your manufacturing procedure.’ I want to show that an emphasis on the second of those points can sometimes result in better quality for less cost than expected. Like other things, quality is not related only to how much money you spend, but to where and how well you spend it. To be preoccupied with final inspection will restrict you to the wrong end of the process and may, by the priorities which it implies, allow the root cause of poor quality to be shelved or ignored. It is too easy to get customer satisfaction (highly desirable) balanced out by large stocks of worthless scrap (very much the reverse). It gets a bit like putting a grid across a river: you may get clear water below, but you get an awful lot of rubbish piling up above it.