The Fifth Fitness, a New Quality Dimension©
by
Arthur M. Schneiderman
What exactly is “Quality”? Ask this question to a group of TQM practitioners and you're sure to trigger one of those endless and often heated debates. Visit the misc.industry.quality newsgroup and give it a try. You may be accused of "trolling," but it will provide you with all of the proof you need. It's not that it's a bad question, but one for which we have no agreed upon answer. The problem is that the definition is not static, it depends on where you are in the Quality journey.
A good place to look for the answer is in Japan where this notion has continuously evolved over the past 50 years. There it is defined in terms of the “4-fitnesses.”*
 |
The first is fitness to specification. That means that the product (or service) does exactly what the specification sheet says it will do. I sometimes refer to this as "little q" quality. |
|
The second, is fitness for use. Here, we move above the first requirement to assure that the product not only performs to specification but also satisfies the customer’s need for any reasonable use. My favorite, although somewhat extreme, example of this is the Japanese dish washing machine manufacturer who noted a high concentration of field failures in a particular geographical area. Further investigation showed that local potato farmers were using the washing machines to wash their crop of newly harvested potatoes. When challenged by the field engineers with "You can't use them for that," the farmers responded "Show us where it says that in the manual." One solution would be to change the wording in the manual to specifically prohibit that kind of use. A second was to redesign the washer so that it could be used for that purpose. The manufacturer chose the latter; thus creating fitness for use. |
|
The third fitness is fitness for cost. This concept is tightly linked to a central dynamic of competition: all other things being equal (i.e. the first two fitnesses are met), the lower the cost, the better. |
|
The final one, the 4th fitness,
is called fitness for latent needs. It recognizes the opportunity to innovate, with all its
rewards, by producing a product that meets a previously unidentified customer
need. |
The
4-fitnesses mirror the historical evolution of quality in post-war Japan. They contain a repeated pattern of movement between a product
(1 and 3) and a market (2 and 4) focus. In
today’s world, where many consumers take fitnesses 1 thru 3 as a given, real profit
can only be found in the short window of life of a latent need.
But, what about the future?
Today
we hear thought leaders in Japan talking about “fitness for the
environment” and “fitness for future generations”.
Here, the product and market merge and are expanded in both time and
space. Out of this is emerging a 5th
fitness or quality dimension: fitness for society.
The
5th-fitness is reflective of a growing worldwide concern over the effect of
what we do today, not only on our environment, but also on the people who will
come after us. For the first time in
history, we have the power to knowingly or unknowingly make irreversible changes
in our physical environment. Too few
companies worry today about the impact of their factories on global warming or
the recyclability of their products. Even
service organizations, such as consumer credit companies, don't appear to worry
about their impact on the long-term financial viability of their customer's
economies. Instead,
it is left to government regulators. But
just as excellence in the 4-fitnesses has proven profitable when companies
“own” them, so it will likely be when they embrace the 5th
fitness.