When I was a kid there used to be is a scene in the science museum at Fort Worth, Texas USA where some cavemen were performing brain surgery on a tribesman. I don’t know who performed the first surgery, but out of 120 prehistoric skulls found at one burial site in France, 40 had trepanation holes (a hole that is drilled or scraped into the skull). Surprisingly, many premodern patients had signs of their skull structure’s healing; suggesting that many of those that proceeded with the surgery survived the operation. Truly an amazing feat when you think that there was no anesthesiologist or understanding of antiseptics. It’s only been a few centuries ago that gold, silver and pearls were perscribed and ingested as a cure for some ailments and that the heart was finally determined to be a pump for the circulatory system. Certainly mankind has come a long way in the past couple of centuries. One could make the case that the average mom with a first aid kit compared to the premodern tribesman surgeon, could be thought of as Medical-School-trained. At least in the industrialized nations.

Yet today, with all the advances in medical technology, we’re told that one of the most dangerous situations to be in is to need some sort of medical care. Obviously, increased knowledge alone does not appear to have overcome the propensity for problems. Part of the solution is in the timing associated with dispensing that knowledge. It has been said that the attention span of humans has decreased in recent years to that of goldfish. Then there is the problem with retention. Although people are often referred to as a company’s greatest asset, and while we have tremendous flexibility and the capability to accept and innately reason on vast amounts of stimuli coming at the same instant, as discussed we can have a considerably short attention span particularly when under some sort of stress and tend to have limited knowledge. Even when we have received knowledge through training we can be forgetful. Some analyst say only about 10% of what is presented in a typical training session isretained. The National Training Center’s pyramid graph of Average Learning Retention Rates starts out with 5% retention for lectures and goes to 75% retention when practiced by doing. While these rates don’t appear to be backed up by any hard scientific evidence, they none the less make the point that relying on training is problematic especially in complicated procedures. A 25% lapse in memory or even just 1% can still yield disastrous results. What if attention and retention problems were eliminated?

In comparison, computer technology provides the ability to never forget once knowledge is inserted and never waiver in attention span. We rely on schooling, training and certifications to arm people for the workforce; however, in more and more cases that training is outdated almost before it is completed. Binding the human workforce with a multimedia collaborative knowledge base of expert information that is always current, always available and designed to be used at the point of activity (when it’s really needed) overcomes the only two reasons for having quality problems with the vast majority of workers; lack of knowledge and lack of attention!

 It was 0600 hours on Tuesday morning when Captain Chuck Storer slipped into the F8 Crusader cockpit for morning maneuvers. He had been on the same routine for the past several months. He felt fortunate having his wife and kids with him on base these last few weeks but was understandably apprehensive about the future. The war was on and he knew shortly he would be on his way to Nam for the real thing. But today, in familiar surroundings he could relax and go through the exercises that had almost become rote. He knew the touch and go landings at the airfield couldn’t compare with what he would be faced with in the gulf of Tonkin trying to land on that postage stamp of a carrier. His ride, the F8 “Crusader” saw action early in U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Its fighter models participated both in the first reprisal in August 1964 and in the myriad attacks against North Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder. The Crusader was used exclusively by the Navy and Marine air wings and represented half or more of the carrier fighters in the Gulf during the first four years of the war. The aircraft was credited with nearly 53% of MiG kills in Vietnam. It also had photo-reconnaissance capability and operated longer in U.S. service than any of the fighter versions. The Crusader played a crucial role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, providing essential low-level photographs impossible to acquire by other means. The Crusader could climb 30,000 feet per minute and Captain Storer’s exercise today included going to 36,000 feet while evading imaginary surface to air missiles. At times today he would be traveling close to Mach 1.2 or almost 800 mph. That’s roughly twice the speed a bullet from a 38 special travels. The crusaders could however, get up to 1,225 mph. He loved this life and felt fortunate to be living in an era of such tremendous technological advancements.

At 0910 the base helicopter arrived at the crash site. Captain Storer’s last communication was spent describing a spider crack forming on the cockpit glass then abruptly halts.

I called the pitch Can-A-Peas. It was the first project in my new position as the quality statistical weenie, I mean engineer. A perk at major corporations like this aerospace company was that you really got to move around the operation and spend a year or so in different departments of the organization. I started in inspection moved to quality data systems, budget systems, coordinate measurement, avionics quality and now statistical quality control.

I was waiting on the director of Quality and representatives from the Navy, our major customer, to covey my findings. I was excited to say the least, as mentioned, the title of my presentation was Can-of-Peas with a graphic of the same. The project however was sobering. Seems a couple of the company’s aircraft suddenly came apart at high altitudes killing the pilots and crashing the planes. My job was specific; I needed to determine if a drill bit could have nicked the glass during manufacturing of the canopy assembly. If so this could have weakened the glass and caused an implosion during high altitude high speed maneuvers. Since the canopy drilling operation utilized a fixture that determined the location of the holes, all I really needed to do was take a number of readings on where the location of the holes were, in relation to the glass when fitted.

To take the observation samples, we needed to look at some assembled canopies. To measure hole locations required several x-rays of different canopies and then measure the variance in the distance of the hole placement to the glass. This procedure was performed by a senior quality engineer and I received the measurements on a piece of paper. It was really just a matter of cranking the locations into an algorithm to get the variation and then running another computation to determine the probably of actually nicking the glass. Obviously my company was hoping that the probability was zero! On one side of the canopy the probably of nicks were zero. On the other side there was one of the hole locations that showed a probability of nicking. I knew the implications of the findings so I did what I felt anyone would do under the situation. I asked for verification of that holes measurement. I thought it was odd that my request was met with some consternation given the implications of the analysis but alas the locations were confirmed and here I sit with my presentation waiting for the meeting to begin.  At the appointed time the Director of Quality’s assistant walked in to inform me that the meeting was canceled. When I inquired about rescheduling she said there was no need. The Navy had decided that it would be too expensive to retrofit the entire American fleet since most of the aircraft were on carriers in the pacific.

That was my first real taste of economic quality. Oh, I had been trained on the cost benefit analysis and been through all the algorithms of determining “Optimum Quality Costs” but this was the first time I realized the algorithms were not just numbers but represented lives. And the lives were valued at Zero.

I never got the opportunity to ask why the analysis wasn’t performed before production began. After all, it would have been a relatively easy change to the fixture to assure that the hole in question was out of nicking range of the glass. I’m almost certain the answer would have been, “we did”. Meaning it was checked during the computer aided design (CAD) phase and as part of a first article inspection procedure but apparently didn’t take into consideration the overall variability of setting the tool in place to locate the holes. This company had seen the emergence of the quality industry from its infancy. An industry rooted in exceptional craftsmanship and now one focused on reducing variability. However costs are the driving force in business and will always have the tendency to win out in a showdown with quality. After all, we need to remember we live in a capitalistic system where profits are king. That’s one reason it’s vital to eliminate those showdowns!

Some however, have acquiesced to them. Not long ago I was in the office of a Vice President of Quality at a major medical device company, he was not all concerned about the number of recalls and FDA letters his company had received the prior year. He said, “Actually our problem rate is not that bad. When you’re implanting devices in people at the rate of one every 6 minutes you have to expect a few problems.” His comment is not that far from the norm in business today. And like the prior experience, has its roots in the issue of economic quality. The belief when boiled down is essentially this: Doing things correctly is more expensive than doing things incorrectly and giving the impression that you’re trying your best to catch the things done wrong versus preventing them from happening in the first place.

I was fond of saying that the first social responsibility a company had was to make a profit. I always assumed it was with an understanding that the profit was made legally and ethically. I’m not sure my assumptions are in the majority today.

In the typical company the costs of fixing things and assuring things go right is between 20 and 40% of the costs of goods sold. You’d think that amount of wasted profits would move companies to solve the money drain but as it turns out it’s much more complicated than that. For instance, the earlier discussion on making things certain eliminates perceived “flexibility” and therefore is often viewed as an impediment to “getting the work out”. They call it the cost of doing business. I wonder what Captain Storer would say?

A Peddler of Perfection once wrote a book about quality called “I’ll know it when I see it.” That would indicate that he doesn’t actually know “it” before he sees “it”. In the present universe where “trial and error” is the norm, this is rather a typical approach. I would dare say there is a better chance that he would not know it even if he does happen to see it. The fact is, we need to know “it” so we can successfully see it or produce it or decide on it. For example, every counterfeit expert understands that their job is much simpler when they know in detail what genuine money looks like. Instead of looking for counterfeit money they look for the real thing. This plays out more readily in business.

There are two kinds of people in the world. (Actually there are more than two kinds but for this analysis let’s just imagine two.) Those that go to work thinking, “I wonder what’s going to happen today?” and those that know exactly what’s in store for them during the work day. All too often one is called “management” while the other is called “worker”. It may come as a surprise but in our present universe the person that has no idea what the day holds is usually paid much more than the other. In fact, the knowing others can’t wait to be in the unknowing state, making more money and juggling the stressful chore of overcoming the situations they and their company is thrust into. Essentially making sense out of what appears to be, and usually is, chaos.

Generally speaking, to handle this state of confusion requires additional education. Companies require it and quite a few won’t even allow an interview for one of these positions unless you’ve either been in this unknowing state for many years or have a master’s degree to theoretically prove you have the experience to recognize wrong things. Companies will lavish rich rewards on individuals that appear to thrive in the constant chaos of problem solving that comes with most business days. Heaven forbid that it ever becomes predictable.

It’s really quite amazing to me. The Quality industry heaps all kinds a praise on the Quality GURU’s of the past. But in reality, well, to quote Peter Drucker, “I have been saying for many years that we are using the word ‘guru’ only because ‘charlatan’ is too long to fit into a headline.”  What happened to the Quality Revolution of the 80’s? Why do we still have all these problems, with more appearing on the horizon?

There is only one constant when it comes to problems and a hint of it first appeared right after God had written, “After that God saw everything he had made and, look! [it was] very good.” And then, all hell broke loose, so to speak! That’s right; people were let loose, with free will. In the conflict resolution/problem resolution/corrective action world a tremendous trial and error takes place to determine “root cause” when it’s always the same, PEOPLE. All work is a process, all problems are process related and behind every process lurking in the background somewhere is a person. That means there are no product problems they just manifest themselves there. The world recession beginning in 2009 was caused by people. Mr. Greenspan was on TV saying “This will happen again!” meaning the greed and other characteristics of mankind will raise their ugly heads again sometime in the future; after all we’re only human.

If we want to truly eliminate the problem resolution cycle and all the waste surrounding it, we must first be able to visualize and demonstrate process perfection. Simple, you might be thinking, but wait! In most colleges of higher learning our unknowing are being taught about the “economics of quality” and why expecting perfection is costly and therefore bad. They discuss things like the “indifference zone” where “optimum quality” has been reached and spending anymore money would just increase the costs with very little return on investment. However in reality the discussion is not about QUALITY but aspects of engineering like design, sustainability, maintainability even marketability. It is always less costly to do things right the first time, every time.

It was a beautiful spring morning but the traffic was horrific on HWY101 so I had to hurry. I didn’t have time to enjoy the ride even though I had pulled back the rag top on my little red Miata. The traffic was doing its snaking thing. Moving fast for a half mile then suddenly stopping. I didn’t understand why we all couldn’t just accelerate at the same time all pushing on the pedal at once and stop this infernal snaking. It appeared every hill in the road caused someone up there to brake as they were afraid to top it without first stopping and easing over. I knew just ahead we’d reach the last hill and a valley would put an end to this traffic dance. Not long after topping the hill and getting up to a respectable speed it happened. This car startled me passing on the median going 90 to nothing. I watched it weave through traffic never once seeing its brake lights. All of a sudden it cut off a white van appearing to nick the front bumper. The driver of the van must have been as startled as me because he swerved and the van toppled. As it skidded all hell broke loose. An enormous amount of dust and smoke just blew cars off the road in every direction. I pulled my car to the side of the road jumped out and raced to the scene. That morning I reset three broken bones, performed a tracheotomy, and helped a woman give birth and oh yes among the wreckage I found a nuclear device that I disarmed before HASMAT arrived. I had to, the countdown was almost completed!

At least that’s the excuse I used with the technology group that morning as to why I was a few minutes late. Almost in disbelief they asked how I had accomplished this unbelievable feat. I took out my cell phone, got on the internet and showed them the Automated Reasoning Technology software website. With this software they would be able to perform these same actions flawlessly.

But I told them that they would ultimately face much more dangerous situations. I explained that every day a couple billion people go to work, some performing complicated tasks that will directly affect each of our lives. Decisions will be made by people on our behalf in government, healthcare, pharmaceutical and transportation businesses all requiring faultless work to be performed if we’re to remain healthy. There are plenty of examples of what can happen when things go wrong. How will they be able to accomplish it?

One example is the reduction of counterfeit materials through the use of UID’s (Universal Identification Databases). Counterfeit materials are being uncovered in precarious places like aircraft landing gears, etc. Today there are various databases being setup by entities such at the Department of Defense in the US, NATO in Europe and others that can identify, catalogue and track all materials and equipment that is worthy of tracing. When finished anyone will have the ability to scan in a traceable item and see immediately what it’s supposed to be, who made it, its genealogy and where it supposedly resides.

Along with this capability, an Automated Reasoning Technology application can use multimedia presentations to explain where this material is used, provide expert step by step guidance on installing it, etc. This guidance will not just be about identifying and using the proper tools and materials. The application will also utilize an expert knowledgebase to provide directions on what to do in real-time, point of activity guidance with feedback, on each step in whatever needs to be accomplished. When equipment or tools are to be used the application will first ascertain that they are the right tools for the job and in proper working order if required. If not the application will explain what tool is required and where the nearest ones are. At the most appropriate steps the application will verify that those steps taken thus far were completed successfully.

If problems arise during verification or during the completion of an activity on an operational step the application will select the best alternative action that should be taken and guide the person through those activities to assure the work is completed successfully and most efficiently.

To accomplish this a change in the traditional approach with traditional technology and methodology is required. By and large technology companies and consultants alike are marketing and promoting solutions that unknowingly perpetuate the problem while incidentally lining their pockets. This statement may sound odd especially given recent history which would indicate that technology has been a positive influence on quality and productivity improvement. Since the 1970s, companies have relied upon information technology to run or assist with key business functions. Older technologies collected data while analysis remained a manual task. Just as these systems were a major improvement over manual data collection methods, the current solutions are light years ahead of previous information technologies. Today’s data warehousing systems provide complex, versatile, multidimensional time series analysis, rather than just data collection and viewing. This has given rise to a couple of major problems.

First, organizations are now drowning in data and will succeed only to the extent that they are able to harness it to make better, more informed decisions (Business Intelligence Portal). The solution proposed by big technology companies? Data warehouse appliances, software designed to handle complex analyses on terabytes of data are a fundamental new way of enabling companies to conduct in-depth analyses of this data and leverage the important trends and information contained within it.  At least that’s the scenario used to promote these latest offerings. Additionally, software is being promoted that supposedly takes the next step of automatically acting on the data analysis. Performance management is just one application that’s based upon managing, motivating, rewarding and developing employees to improve performance and positively impact business results with the analysis. ^{Performance Management – Catching the Wave}

Second, in the CFO magazine article “Burn Down the Data Warehouse” author John Goff reports that about 30% of the data stored in these warehouses is bad. He estimated the resulting costs at over $600 billion.

Even if the data were 100% correct there is a fundamental flaw in approach that thanks to recent technology improvements can be overcome. The traditional approach to improving quality has been CAPA (Corrective Action Preventive Action). CAPA programs are mandated for government contracts and most companies in the private sector develop similar programs. All of these programs have at least one thing in common. They are engaged at the recognition of a problem. This means the problem already exists and a costly solution must be developed to counteract it and its affects. As you might imagine this task can be especially daunting if you’ve never seen the problem before or are unfamiliar with the specific technology associated with the problem. The fact is, most companies spend between 40% to 60% of their resources on efforts aimed at recognizing, collecting, organizing, analyzing, reporting, monitoring and fixing situations…And guess what, a 2009 research study from Axendia says only 6% of problems handled in this manner are successfully eliminated.

While software corporations are promoting Data Warehouses, Intelligence portals, Performance Management applications, etc. the real solution doesn’t lie in this technology. What’s wrong with this structure? It always starts with a problem! In other words, it’s always after the fact. As the flat world approaches, organizations that are able to bypass this structure will have a major competitive advantage.

In the traditional quality approach the methodology assumes we know nothing about the problem and need to gather information, usually starting with the customer. Only after the problem becomes frequent enough to be costly and worth the time to expend the resources needed to research a root cause will an attempt be made to fix it. While the traditional approach assumes ignorance the new approach assumes, if you will, WISDOM (the ability to use knowledge and understanding successfully to solve problems, avoid or avert dangers, attain certain goals, or counsel others in doing so. It is the opposite of foolishness, stupidity, and madness, with which it is often contrasted).

Are most quality problems difficult to resolve? No, the vast majority of problems are caused by omissions or mistakes at the point of activity. These problems can be avoided by locking down the work process and verifying work activities to business rules, regulations, specifications, etc. in real-time at the point of activity. What about problems caused by suppliers or generated in other parts of the supply chain? No matter where the problem is created there is almost always someone in the extended supply chain that understands the problem and knows the solution. Harnessing that knowledge and making it available to the worker in real-time is the solution I’m proposing. Fortunately the technology now exists that allows the prevention of problems.

Turns out I’m living longer than I was supposed to and I can’t help but notice that something is peculiar. It seems that every so often a repeating of events, philosophies, etc. occurs… and it’s really starting to bug me. Anyway as I was saying, it would appear I’ve seen all this before! The names have changed but the problems that seem to continually give birth to these “solutions” are still running rampant. We have had GURU’s rise in the Quality Revolution of the 80’s with no known survivors… At any rate we have a new generation that seem to be replowing the field of knowledge for some unknown reason. Take for example the definition of Quality. 

Some time ago Quality Digest spent several weeks asking their readers to define quality. Their readership is from the Quality profession and below are some of the definitions they received:

1. Error-free, value-added care and service that meets and/or exceeds both the needs and legitimate expectations of those served as well as those within the Medical Center.
2. Quality is the customers’ perception of the value of the suppliers’ work output
3. You cannot separate the process and the human factor; therefore I believe that Quality, when built into a product, generates emotions and feelings within those who have taken part in its creation. When you have made something that you are proud of, when you have produced a product that brings smiles to your customers, then you have achieved Quality. You’ll know it, they’ll know it, and each of you will prosper from it.
4. The word “Quality” represents the properties of products and/or services that are valued by the consumer.
5. Quality is a momentary perception that occurs when something in our environment interacts with us, in the pre-intellectual awareness that comes before rational thought takes over and begins establishing order. Judgment of the resulting order is then reported as good or bad quality value.
6. Quality is doing the right things right and is uniquely defined by each individual.
7. The degree to which something meets or exceeds the expectations of its consumers.
8. “Quality is nothing more or less than the perception the customer has of you, your products, and your services”!
9. When the customer returns and the product doesn’t
10. Quality is in the eyes of the beholder. And in a business environment, the beholder is always the customer or client. In other words, quality is whatever the customer says it is.
11. Suppose you were with your *soul mate*, *significant other*, *spouse* etc. and after a relationship that person looked longingly into your eyes and said “That met the requirements!” or “There were no defects there!” or “That had all the value I wanted!” or “The degree of excellence was acceptable! Wouldn’t you rather have that person look into your eyes and say “WOW!”?

While the editor of that magazine felt all the definitions were valid I would disagree that they’re even definitions! To define is “to describe exactly; to state the meaning”. Most of these definitions are subjective (expectations, perceptions, emotions, values) and therefore perceived and based on personal preference. Why even Webster’s defines quality as excellence and then defines excellence as virtue and virtue as quality, excellence and worth.

Well, what about the Quality consulting Guru’s? Surely they’ll state the meaning and describe exactly what quality is so it can be obtained and maintained. Listed below are definitions used by the some of the foremost experts in Quality past and present.

•  ”The efficient production of the quality that the market expects” (Deming)
•  ”Fitness for use“; “product performance and freedom from deficiencies” (Juran)
•  ”The total composite product and service characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and maintenance through which the product and service in use will meet the expectations of the customer” (Felgenbaum)
• “Anything that can be improved” (Imal)
• “Meeting or exceeding customer expectations at a cost that represents value to them” (Harrington)
• “Does not impart loss to society” (Taguchi)
• “The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy a given need” (American Society for Quality Control)
•  ”Degree of excellence” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary)

I took the liberty to bold and italicize those subjective words that render the definition useless. No wonder Quality is difficult to achieve much less maintain!

For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Galations 6:7

The fight started out on the production floor, the manufacturing manager got so mad he put his fist through a wall after accosting my Quality Engineering manager. I’ll be the first to admit it; I started it.  But it couldn’t compare with the time I was sitting at the Number 10 across from my brand new employer Datapoint in San Antonio when a wine glass flew overhead and smashed into the plate glass mirror behind the bar.  I turned to see the director of personnel with female employees under each arm yelling at the owner that he positively was not going to throw him out of the place.  I looked at Larry, my boss and said, “What have you gotten me into.”

At a company in Arizona almost my entire quality inspection group came from the local Holiday Inn’s weekly underwear modeling show, seems my predecessor liked to frequent the place.

Doing a walk through at Compaq Computer’s brand new factory one day, I asked my Quality manager who the new inspector was.  Looking puzzled, he walked over to find out that our “new employee” had been working for the past two weeks. Apparently she just walked in off the street from the local watering hole after hearing that we needed people.

I arrived at the supplier’s facility just in time to see the daily ritual of selecting which of the wino’s lined against the wall would be used to stuff electronic components into printed circuit boards that day.

The Manufacturing Director I worked for at ITT Courier Terminal Systems suggested I follow in the footsteps of his previous Quality Manager who used to dress up as an SS Officer with hip boots and a crop to give the workers a little levity. “Relieves the stress” he said. “Everyone knows a happy worker is a productive worker”! I think he became a college professor at Arizona State soon thereafter.

Silvia was a fast-talking, street savvy statistical data clerk that didn’t have a clue how to add two and two and get four consistently. A random number generator could solve it faster.  But she was the top mans pimp and prized labor informer. So she became Quality’s Master Statistician and my responsibility to manage.  So it goes in the confessions of a Quality manager.

These are just a few of the incidents that go with 20 years experience in business. Everyone has them but it does appear, from talking to others, that a profession in the quality industry is kind of unique. It seems that the best and the worst are accentuated when you’re focused on the quality of products, services, work, decisions and relationships. People are naturally averse to being monitored but they seem to get really incensed when you’re thought to be insinuating that their ability to perform work correctly is lacking. As you might imagine it tends to generate an adversarial relationship up and down the chain of command very quickly. Overcoming that natural tendency was what I thought implementing quality was all about. After all a happy person is a productive person and quality minded one at that, Right?

“There are no accidents, just premeditated carelessness!”
Brother Dave Gardner

We are taught from a young age that we are the product of years of trial and error. And only those stronger, more observant, intelligent and lucky survive to procreate and build. We came out of the caves to hunt and gather eventually moving into production by mastering the art of farming. I’m not debating the point just building a case. This concept of trial and error is reinforced because each of us from infancy on, to some extent, learned from trial and error. Even though we were told from experienced elders to never stick a wire in an electrical socket, some of us had to test it. As if the laws of electrical current were different for us than for all preceding mankind. Our jails are full of testers. But yet again that’s another book. Anyway my point is that this historical approach results in an overall continuing attitude of “everything is trial and error.” My experience is that most companies, products, services and decisions are a result of trial and error and it continues unabated with every new product, service and employee. There are a lot of reasons for this. Most often it is centered on technology improvements and knowledge transfer issues however; it no longer needs to be this way. To explain, what if we create a parallel universe for ourselves where quality reigns and call it “EDEN”. We will have the ability to step from one universe to the other at will, let’s say 7:00am and leave no earlier than 6:00pm at least four days a week.

Since it is a foregone conclusion that EDEN will have people associated with it we won’t have to worry about creating and applying the laws of physics we’ll just borrow those that already exist in our native universe. Now that we have a duplicate to our universe what needs to change in the EDEN universe to ensure that products, services, decisions and actions are always correct?

We need to diverge for a moment and examine the importance of the underlying concept of right and wrong. You see there is another aspect to existence in our present universe that hinders our ability to produce quality. Quite a few people believe the concept of “quality” actually springs from it. It is, for lack of better words, a spiritual or moral aspect. It is the concept of conscience or the ability to understand right from wrong and the degrees thereto. Regardless, it is interesting to me that some of these rights and wrongs seem to be universal or innate to mankind’s existence. Murder, adultery, stealing, etc are pretty universal no no’s. The adherence to contracts whether in marriage or some other oath is preferred and expected. There is some part of the human psyche that understands that truthfulness is preferred over lies. Someone that always did right used to be referred to as “righteous”.

In our native universe this concept of freedom to do wrong is often referred to as “free will”. We all have the free will to do what we want but there are always limitations given the laws that govern our existence. Step off a ten story building just because you’re free to make that decision. The result is immediate banishment from this universe. Likewise in some cultures if you break moral laws, say murder, you may also be banished from the universe. Breaking moral laws that carry the known penalty of banishment for some reason don’t seem to carry the same weight or responsibility as breaking physical laws. There are always those people that will look at a fence and see restriction while others see protection. Stepping off the building is viewed as self banishment while murdering someone is viewed by some as trial and error. Lying is another example. If we define lying as a statement designed to mislead, even though it is frowned upon today, lying is pretty much an excepted practice. Over time that practice may well have the same result as murder for products, services, individuals, governments and societies. It is interesting to contemplate the effect of duration, the time taken from incident to result and what effect it has on the human psyche. I think it only logical to believe that if the duration for actions taken were immediate then wrong choices would be eliminated. Unfortunately immediacy is not always possible, after-all the situation must be investigated and the perpetrator must be caught. Then there is a trial and always a chance that some technicality will taint the evidence. So it really comes down to how much risk the perpetrator is willing to take before he acts and oddly how much risk is the employer or business owner willing to give the perpetrator (worker). For example, it just makes common sense that someone is less likely to steal items that are known to have RFID tags attached. To some extent the business owner has eliminated free will for his patrons.

So, what if we just take away free will in the EDEN universe, what results? Animals don’t have free will they have instinct that assures their survival. This is another concept hard to understand even with years of trial and error behind it. Animals are endowed with programmed actions and reactions to specific stimuli or circumstances. And it would appear that not all activities of animals are programmed as in robotics. What if we take away free will and replace it with programmed action? In actuality isn’t that exactly what all the training, seminars and webinars are trying to accomplish?

Now, just what does all of this have to do with quality? Well, in the preceding chapter we learned that quality is conformance to requirements. Conformance to requirements just means “doing it right”. If we say quality is “do it right” then the requirement is the “it”. Not conforming to the requirement would generate mistakes, faults, blunders, oversights, errors, omissions, gaffes, goofs, sins, etc. Let’s take sin for instance, it actually just means to “miss,” in the sense of missing the mark or not reaching a goal, way, or right point. This insinuates a known requirement whether physical or moral.

Therefore, if one knows how to do what is right and yet does not do it, it is a sin for him. (James 4:17)

Now the term sin would never be used in the workplace but the rest certainly are. In the EDEN universe none of these terms will exist. Why? Because the choice to do wrong, will be eliminated.

This brings up another important issue for discussion. Does it really matter whether the worker wants to do his job correctly if he has no alternative? Seems to me it will just come down to how long it takes him to perform. We will not take free will away from the EDEN universe it’s just that the available choices will already be selected and they will always be correct. The EDEN universe will have all the knowledge accumulated in the present universe to utilize and determine what is right. Therefore the EDEN universe will not have “trial and error” as its basis but wisdom. Righteousness will reign in the EDEN universe because there will only be right choices.

To demonstrate, who of us has gone to an ATM machine that’s working and not come away with the $20 bucks that we intended to get? Did it ever cross the mind that this machine is robbing us of our free will? Do we demand to have the ability to make a mistake and perhaps ruin our finances costing us time and money to resolve? No. So why do we tolerate it in other situations especially work?

Why is it that we’ll tolerate “the equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people… dying each year due to likely preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the leading killers in the U.S.,” said Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades vice president of medical affairs.

In the EDEN universe it won’t be possible.