The Devil's Advocate

15

Stop obsessing about quality

Are you a victim of Total Quality Management? Been battered by ISO Standards? Sick of Six Sigma?

It appears that the ‘quality’ business has been taken over by the pointy-headed, clipboard brigade. They exhibit a borderline obsessional urge to remove every vestige of error from the world, and leave it a calm, clear place of functional order.

So how come we lust after iPhones and not Sony mobiles?

While Apple notched up a huge $22 billion profit in 2011, Japan’s largest gadget-makers revealed they expect to lose a combined $17 billion. Since 2000, Japan’s consumer electronics giants have lost two-thirds of their market value.

And yet when it came out, was the iPhone more reliable than a Sony phone? As if! Apple ...