pat@megatest.UUCP (Patrick Powers) (03/20/91)
The Wall Street Journal had a front-page article last week about the competition between Intel and Motorola for CPU sales. It concluded that Motorola had been soundly trounced by Intel due to Motorola's emphasis on quality. While Motorola delayed shipment until the part was defect free, Intel captured the market with imperfect parts. As compensation, Motorola won the Baldridge quality award. The situation in the software industry is analogous. -- --
bradlee@cg-atla.UUCP (Rob Bradlee) (03/22/91)
In article <15745@megatest.UUCP> pat@megatest.UUCP (Patrick Powers) writes: > >that Motorola had been soundly trounced by Intel due to Motorola's >emphasis on quality. While Motorola delayed shipment until the part >was defect free, Intel captured the market with imperfect parts. As If I read Deming correctly then his total quality approach does NOT mean delaying shipment until zero defects are achieved. Point number 1 of his 14 points is: "Create constatncy of purpose twoard improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs." Obviously if the customer is willing to accept a certain defect rate for earlier shipment then that's what you better give him to maintain market share and stay in business. However, another key point made by Deming is that quality and productivity are NOT tradeoff. The latter comes from the former. If you can generate software in the same time as your competitor but with lower defects then you will most likely win in sales. Similary, since defect correction and testing are a major consumer of "development" time then the organization that creates fewer defects can probably bring products to market much faster than high defect rate groups. In conclusion I would say the Motorola's managers may have deserved the Baldridge prize, but the Japanese probably wouldn't have given them the Deming prize :). Rob -- Rob Bradlee w:(508)-658-5600 X5153 h:(617)-944-5595 AGFA Compugraphic Division. ...!{decvax,samsung}!cg-atla!bradlee 200 Ballardvale St. bradlee@cg-atla.agfa.com Wilmington, Mass. 01887 The Nordic Way: Ski till it hurts!
alan@tivoli.UUCP (Alan R. Weiss) (03/22/91)
In article <15745@megatest.UUCP> pat@megatest.UUCP (Patrick Powers) writes: > >The Wall Street Journal had a front-page article last week about the >competition between Intel and Motorola for CPU sales. It concluded >that Motorola had been soundly trounced by Intel due to Motorola's >emphasis on quality. While Motorola delayed shipment until the part >was defect free, Intel captured the market with imperfect parts. As >compensation, Motorola won the Baldridge quality award. > >The situation in the software industry is analogous. >-- >-- I posted a *very* lengthy rebuttal to this bit of journalistic fluff. If Dave of 88Open is reading this, can you post our discussions so that people can see it (I neglected to save the file :-( To summarize: the subheadline that a focus on quality caused massive schedule delays (dare we say a "fetish for quality") did NOT match the facts presented in the article EXCEPT for POSSIBLY the MC68040 processor, and in that case Murray Goldman, Chief Honcho at Moto-Austin SPECIFICALLY stated that this was NOT the case (it was due to the "leapfrog effect" of dramatically increasing functionality and performance). Note that Motorola has MANY products, and the article did NOT say that the 88K series was delayed due to an obsession with quality. Nor were the DSP's, the specialized ASIC's, etc. BTW, I phoned the Journal and gave them holy hell for this, and the response was this: the headlines and subheadings are written in New York, and the story was written in San Jose .... The implication is as dangerous as it is incorrect: shipping defective software "early" == business success, while waiting to ship stable, high quality software is a market lose? Must we reiterate the market failures associated with that strategy? BTW, the fact that Intel tends to ship (slightly) defective microprocessors early to market and fix them along the way has little to do with their market success. In fact, the RISC market is almost exclusively MIPS, SPARC, Clipper (Intergraph), RIOS (IBM RS/6000), and H-P (Precision). The i860, a screamer, has not had a lot of design wins. Disclaimer: I speak only for myself. I have no connection with Motorola, and am not a stockholder of record. (I admire the firm for its hardware engineering and battle with Japan, and deplore its random drug testing policy, however.) _______________________________________________________________________ Alan R. Weiss TIVOLI Systems, Inc. E-mail: alan@tivoli.com 6034 West Courtyard Drive, E-mail: alan@whitney.tivoli.com Suite 210 Voice : (512) 794-9070 Austin, Texas USA 78730 Fax : (512) 794-0623 _______________________________________________________________________