Wasn't the protagonist in 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' driven crazy in his attempt to define quality?
Max -----Original Message----- From: mercedes-boun...@okiebenz.com [mailto:mercedes-boun...@okiebenz.com] On Behalf Of ned kleinhenz Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 9:44 AM To: Mercedes List Subject: Re: [MBZ] trip to the local dealer That word "quality" has too many definitions to be meaningful. So I don't blame MBZ for not talking about it. To some people, quality describes how many defects a new example includes. To other people (most of us) it describes how durable a particular model is. And still to other people quality may mean how beautifully the bodywork and materials are put together. And I''ve often associated the word with how robust an object is and how much abuse it can withstand. Remember the Ford "Quality is Job 1" campaign? I have friends who worked at Ford and were proud of it that movement. But as I listened to them and thought about it, their definition of quality really didn't mean much to the consumer. Ford used a industrial definition that identifies quality as how consistently any part, or assembly of parts, meet their specification. So they could define their objective for a certain model to be a cheap POS. And if the final product was truly a cheap POS, they considered it top quality. Conversely, if that model performed better than a POS, it failed the quality test. So, of course MBZ is not going market the word "quality" when there are so many ways to fail that expectation. Ned _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
