Is quality old fashioned?

By Jack Keough -- Industrial Distribution, 7/1/1999

ONLY A FEW YEARS AGO THE BUZZWORD in industrial distribution was quality. Every distributor, it seemed, was setting up a quality control management system plan and many became ISO certified. Buyers came to expect quality and, in some cases, didn't even inspect products from certain suppliers upon delivery.

But as our Annual Survey of Distributor Operations shows, that quality may be losing a little of its luster. According to the survey, which was released this month, only 28 percent of the distributors are ISO 9000 certified. And while others say they have a quality program in place, there is a legitimate question as to how strong the program actually is.

Dr. Kathy Newton of Purdue University, a principal author of the study and an acknowledged expert in the industry, says there is a great deal of diversity in how companies implement quality. "There are many 'traditional' quality tools that are still not being adopted, even by those firms who said they have a quality management system in place," she says. "For example, only 45 percent of those who indicated they have a quality management system in place are using statistical process measures, and only 55 percent have an improvement suggestion system in place.

"A surprising 40 percent of those responding ... had no quality teams working in the company. More common quality tools that distributors are adopting are evaluation of suppliers (80 percent), work procedures (75 percent) and strategic planning (65 percent)."

If you have a quality program in place, now might be the time for you to review the plan and decide whether or not to implement new procedures that might be more in line with today's needs. If you don't have some type of plan, take the time to create one.

Document your findings and establish benchmarks to see how well you're doing in meeting customer demands. Get feedback from your customers and evaluate your own suppliers. You may find that quality is an important tool that can help you get new customers as well as keep old ones.

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