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The Productivity-Quality-Profit Triangle: Where Managers Add Value
Principles of Management · Chapter 15: Productivity and Quality ManagementSection 15.1 · lesson 101 of 11712 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
Where managers add value.
- Define productivity and explain how it is measured
- Define quality in its several senses
- Apply the cost-of-quality framework
- Relate productivity and quality to profitability
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,568 words). Read along, or search it.
Productivity and Quality Management
The Productivity-Quality-Profit Triangle
Managers are judged, in the end, on three things that pull on each other. Productivity, quality, and profit. This section untangles how they connect. We'll define productivity, and see why it's harder to measure than it sounds. We'll separate efficiency from effectiveness, and look at five routes to improvement. Then we'll meet a measurement trap that makes a worse system look better. We'll define quality in its several senses, and sort its costs into four categories. We'll weigh two competing views on whether quality costs money, and connect quality to profit. And we'll finish with a productivity gain that turned out not to be one.
Productivity Defined
Output Divided by Input
Productivity is the ratio of output to input. It's simple to state, and surprisingly hard to measure. There are two main ways to measure it. Partial productivity measures output against a single input. Output per labor hour is the classic example. Total factor productivity measures output against all inputs combined. That means labor, capital, materials, and energy, all together. Both measures carry genuine measurement problems. They're sharpest in service and knowledge work, where output itself resists clean definition. A manufacturing line's output is a countable unit. You can count what came off the line. But what's the unit for a knowledge worker? A completed analysis, a resolved customer issue, a piece of original design? Often there's no single, agreed-upon unit to count at all.
Table 15.1.1
Efficient at the Wrong Thing
Three related terms are routinely confused, so let's separate them carefully. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. It means pursuing the goal that actually matters. Efficiency is the ratio of output to input. It's essentially the same as productivity. The distinction matters, because an organization can be highly efficient at the wrong thing. Picture a team producing a large volume of a report that no one actually needs. By the narrow input-output measure, it's efficient. But it's genuinely ineffective. Its considerable output serves no goal worth pursuing in the first place. Table fifteen point one point one compares four organizations on all three measures. Organization A is high on productivity and efficiency, but low on effectiveness. It produces a large volume of a product feature that customers don't actually want. Organization B is moderate on productivity and efficiency, but high on effectiveness. It produces exactly what customers value. Organization C is high on all three. Organization D is low on all three, producing little, and missing the goal. Notice the comparison that matters. A out-produces B, yet B is the one doing the right thing.
Improvement Routes
5 Ways to Raise Productivity
There are five routes to improving productivity. The first is working harder. That increases effort, within the existing method. The second is working with better methods, which improves the process itself. The third is better technology. It substitutes capital for labor, or improves what a given input can produce. The fourth is better inputs. That means better materials, information, or people entering the process. And the fifth is eliminating work that need not be done at all. That route doesn't try to do an activity faster or more cheaply. It removes the activity entirely. This last route deserves particular attention. It's the largest of the five, and the least used. Why? Organizations far more readily reach for working harder, or for adding technology. Asking whether an activity should be happening at all is harder, and more uncomfortable. Think back to the unneeded report. A better method won't fix it. Only elimination does.
The Measurement Trap
Part Versus Whole
A specific measurement trap recurs across productivity improvement efforts. It's measuring the productivity of a part, rather than of the whole. This connects directly to local optimization, from Subchapter five point four. It also connects to bottlenecks, from Subchapter five point three. Improving one station's measured output can look like a genuine productivity gain. Yet it can actually worsen the system's overall performance. That's especially likely if the improved station isn't the constraint. Its faster output just produces more inventory, piling up in front of the actual bottleneck downstream. The station's number goes up. The system's performance doesn't. So before celebrating a productivity gain, ask what boundary it was measured inside.
Quality Defined
3 Senses That Can Disagree
Quality is a slippery word, because it carries several distinct senses. And those senses don't always point to the same conclusion. Conformance to specification asks whether a product or service meets its documented technical requirements. Fitness for purpose asks whether it actually serves the use it was intended for. The customer's perception asks how the customer herself experiences and judges it. That judgment is independent of either technical measure. The point worth stating directly is that these can diverge. An organization can meet its own specification precisely, and still deliver something the customer judges poor. How? The specification itself failed to capture what the customer actually cares about. In that case, perfect conformance just means reliably delivering the wrong thing.
Quality Dimensions
Products and Services
Quality also breaks down into dimensions, and they differ for products and for services. A product's quality dimensions typically include performance, reliability, and durability. They also include conformance to its stated specifications. Service dimensions deserve particular attention, because services are where most employment now sits. There are five. Reliability means delivering the promised service consistently. Responsiveness means answering, and acting, promptly. Assurance is the confidence and competence conveyed by the people providing the service. Empathy is genuine attention to the customer's individual situation. And tangibles are the physical, observable evidence surrounding a service that is otherwise intangible. Tangibles matter precisely because the service itself can't be seen. The evidence around it stands in.
The Cost of Quality
4 Categories of Quality Cost
The cost of quality framework sorts quality-related cost into four categories. Prevention cost is spent before a defect can occur at all. Think training, process design, and careful planning. Appraisal cost is spent detecting a defect, through inspection and testing. Internal failure cost arises when a defect is caught before it reaches the customer. That means rework, scrap, and delay. External failure cost arises when a defect reaches the customer. That means returns, warranty claims, and reputational damage. The framework's central claim is about the ordering. Prevention is the cheapest category. External failure is the most expensive, often by a wide margin. And yet organizations systematically underinvest in prevention. That's the one category positioned to make the other three smaller.
Figure 15.1.1
The Later the Defect, the Higher the Cost
Figure fifteen point one point one lines up the four categories, against the point in the process where each is incurred. The proportions are illustrative. The shape is what matters. Prevention happens at the design stage. Appraisal happens at inspection. Internal failure is incurred before shipment. External failure comes after the customer has the product. Read from left to right, and the cost escalates at every step. A defect caught and corrected at the design stage, through prevention, costs far less. The identical defect, discovered only after it has reached the customer, costs far more. Same defect. A very different bill. The only thing that changed is when it was found. That escalation is the central claim the whole framework rests on.
2 Competing Positions
Does Quality Cost Money?
Does quality cost money? Two positions compete, and this course presents them fairly, rather than resolving them. The traditional trade-off view says yes, quality costs money. Higher quality requires more careful materials, more inspection, and more skilled labor. All of that raises cost. The quality movement claims the opposite. Improving quality actually reduces cost, because it removes the rework, waste, and failure that poor quality generates. On this view, the investment in prevention pays for itself many times over, through what it eliminates downstream. So which is right? Each holds under different conditions. The traditional view holds more where quality is already reasonably good. There, further improvement chases diminishing, marginal gains. The quality movement's claim holds more strongly where current quality is genuinely poor. There, substantial rework and failure cost is still available to be eliminated.
Quality and Profitability
Necessary, Not Sufficient
Quality connects to profitability through two channels. The cost channel runs through the cost-of-quality framework. Better quality, pursued correctly, lowers internal and external failure cost. The revenue channel runs through customer retention, and reputation. It also runs through customers' willingness to pay a premium for a product or service they trust. Now the honest caveat, which deserves a clear statement. Quality is a necessary condition for profitability. It is not a sufficient one. Poor quality reliably undermines profitability. But excellent quality alone doesn't guarantee it. A high-quality product aimed at the wrong market can still fail. So can one that's priced wrong. And so can one delivered through a failing business model, despite genuinely excellent quality.
Case Vignette
A Productivity Gain That Was Not One
Here's a composite case, constructed for instruction. Farid is a production supervisor at Harborline Manufacturing. He was praised for substantially raising his station's measured output per labor hour. He'd done it by introducing a faster, less careful inspection step on his own line. Over the following months, rework at the downstream final-assembly stage rose sharply. Defects that Farid's faster inspection had let through were now being caught further along, at much greater cost. The organization's overall output and cost position had actually worsened. Yet Farid's own station looked more productive than ever. His station-level metric was measuring the productivity of a part, not the whole. His faster inspection hadn't eliminated the defects. It had simply moved their discovery downstream. And it moved their cost into a more expensive internal-failure category. Catching and reworking them there cost far more than catching them at his own station would have. Next, Subchapter fifteen point two turns to Total Quality Management, the philosophy built directly on these principles.
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