TO: All Employees
FROM: The President
SUBJECT: Quality Processes

My Fellow Employees:

All of us here at the Schenectady Small Arms & Biscuit Co. are doing our best to ensure that our work proceeds according to a quality process that is measurable and accountable. Gone are the days when it was enough to turn out a good, reliable product that people wanted to buy—and good riddance, I say, to that benighted time. Today, in order to be competitive, we must manage our processes scientifically. We must measure, measure, measure at every step of the way, and only when our processes measure up to our numerical goals will we have achieved true quality. The important thing to remember is that the process is what we measure. It is not too much  to say, in fact, that the product itself is irrelevant. I myself have no idea what we manufacture these days.

It goes without saying, however, that a quality process is only as good as the quality of the work put into it by quality team members. It may be true that some of our quality processes are mildly cumbersome, and that the maintenance of them consumes more than 50% of the average working day; but you may be assured that these processes have been established for good reasons, even if no one remembers what the reasons are.

In regard to these processes, therefore, it is important to keep in mind that the quality of the process is only as good as the quality of the form by which it is measured. It has come to my attention that some team members have been filling out their Quality Process Tracking Sheets with irregular times, measuring the exact time it took them to complete a given task instead of filling in quarter-hour increments as it is clearly indicated on the form. Those quarter-hour increments are there for a reason, though it will do you no good to ask me what the reason was because the consultant who designed the forms is now living in Albuquerque under an assumed name. I probably should not have told you that. At any rate, the principle to remember is that, whatever task you need to accomplish, it must be made to fit the quarter-hour time increments on your Quality Process Tracking Sheet. In particular, I expect to see one quarter hour set aside for reading this memorandum on every single Quality Process Tracking Sheet turned in today. Thank you very much for your prompt attention in this matter.

With Warmest Regards,
J. Rutherford Pinckney, President