FALL 2019

48 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S

48 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK Jim Truesdell James Truesdell is President of Brauer Supply Company, a distributor of specialty fasteners, insulation, air filtration, and air conditioning with headquarters in St. Louis. Mr. Truesdell is adjunct professor at Saint Louis University and Webster University. An attorney and frequently published writer, he is the author of “Total Quality Management: Reports From the Front Lines”. THE QUALITY MOVEMENT OVER 30 YEARS Management fads arise every few years and give birth to buzz words and the appearance of consultants basing their programs on the latest best-selling management books. Some of these ideas have a short shelf-life. Some are incorporated into business school curriculums. A few continue to develop and become far more systematic and “scientific” in their application to functioning businesses. Some give rise to software programs to track their implementation. An example of a new method of management which has grown over time is the concept of Total Quality Management, based on the theories of W Edwards Deming, adopted widely in Japan in the 1960’s and 1970’s, exported to the United States, and then eventually codified into a system of metrics and documentation which has become a worldwide measurement of quality control recognized in international business under the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) program. Fastener and hardware distributors are increasingly being asked by their large manufacturer customers to provide evidence they are compliant and, in fact, registered under the ISO 2015 standard. It is an undertaking that is doable, but one that requires a good deal of commitment from the distributor. In the 1970’s United States businesses, particularly in the auto industry, were experiencing problems of substandard quality products, particularly in relation to the products coming into our domestic marketplace from Japan. As that country recovered from the destruction of World War II it built new plants and established workforces and facilities that matched up strongly against a US CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLE industry that had largely operated without competition as the rest of the world recovered from the desolation of the War. There were ready markets for American goods with rising prices that could be used to cover costs from workforces overstaffed with middle managers and plants where union work rules were allowed to impede logic and efficient operations. Consumers began to prefer products made in Japan. Literature of the period began to refer to the 21st Century as the “Japanese Century”. There was a feeling that Japanese domination of the Pacific rim was inevitable. China was still emerging from the bizarre years of Mao’s cultural revolution and it was hard to perceive that country as a threat to the booming capitalist economies. Of course, things would change as Japan encountered banking crises and stagnation and Deng Tsia Ping turned China toward free markets. But that was still to come. Deming had found little enthusiasm or interest in his native America for his philosophy of focusing on continuous improvement, zero defects, and obsessive concentration on meeting customer needs. The Japanese, however, embraced his ideas and he became a celebrated management guru in that country. When these principles began to give Japanese products a quality edge American companies started to investigate their applicability to manufacturing and distribution in the US markets. The 1990’s saw widespread adoption of the techniques here. Built into this was the beginning of metrics and documentation that was evolving into the TQM (Total Quality Management) discipline. CONTINUED ON PAGE 126