Why Quality Managers are Different!
A. Quality Mgr., June 6, 1999
With apologies to Harry Reasoner, February 16, 1971 (Adapted from “Why Helicopter Pilots are Different!”)
"The thing is, Quality Managers are different from Plant Managers. Plant Managers by their nature want to manufacture out of spec parts, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately competent Engineer, will manufacture out of spec parts. A Quality Manager does not want to make out of spec parts. They try to maintain processes by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the Quality Manager stops the production of out of spec parts; immediately and (for the Plant Manager) disastrously. For a Quality Manager there is no such thing as “out-of-spec”.
This is why being a Quality Manager is so different from being a Plant Manager, and why in generality, Plant Managers are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and Quality Managers are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened it is about to."