1 Power and its Impact on Customer Supplier Relation;Introduction; The role of power in dictating demands; The Vendor-Vendee Relationship within the Automotive Sector: U.S. vs. Japan; Dual Economy in the World of International Standards; 2 On Registrars and Bureaucratic Power; Constraints and absurdity; Types of Organizations; Registrars as a mixture of Craft and Procedural bureaucracies; Virtual ISO Certification: Guaranteed, Cheap and E-Z; Part III: The Limits of Quality: Essays on a Separate Reality; 3 Thoughts on the Relativity of Quality; The Zen of Quality; Is there a universal approach to management?; Are there universal principals of quality?; Can Quality be Translated?; Quality: Absolute or relative?; When a smile is a sign of inferiority; Conclusion; 4 How Old Can a Company Hope to be?; 5 Built to Last for a While: The Age of Flexibility; Flexibility and Competitiveness; Economic Success of the Firm: Is it solely based on quality issues?; Quality: one small element to economic viability; G.H. Bass vs Vita Needle Co.; The Dilemma of Responsiveness; Conclusion; 6 On Servicing the Customer; Who is the customer?; Who is the Customer? The Case of ISO 9001:2000; Should all customers be treated like Kings?; 7 Fads, Incompetence, Ignorance and Stupidity; Introduction; On Stupidity; Federal Nonsense; The Case of the Truck rental agency; Partial Quality and the French Public Transportation System; Can You Sell Less Quality?; Are benchmarks always conducted to better serve the customer?; On Quality Fads; Ignorance: The leading cause of absurd behavior; On Incompetence; On the limitations of Mission Statements; Side effects of Exceeding Expectations; When Too Much Quality Leads to Ludicrous Scenarios?; The Routine of Quality; Conclusion; PART III Colbertism and the Dawn of Power in Customer-Supplier Relations; 8 Colbertism: The Dawn of Regulatory Practices; Colbertism: The Dawn of Modern Government Regulation; Overview of the French Economic System During the 17th Century; The Colbert System; Colbert's Rules for Inspectors of August 13, 1669; Problems with Colbert's System of Regulation; 9 The Quest for Repeatability: The Emergence of Factory Organization and Standardization; Military Mass-Production; The Managerial Revolution (1840-1880): Regulation from Within; Adoption of the Armory System for Private Production; Controlling the Means of Production prior to WWI: The Age of Taylorism; Controlling the Means of Production: The inter war years (1915-1939); The Emergence of the Government as Customer; The Role and Influence of the Military as Customer of Last Resort; 10 Military as Customer and Controller of Subcontractors; Origins of MIL-Q-5923; Justification for 5923; Early Resistance to 5923; The Omnipresent Customer; Bureaucratic Authority vs Heavenly Power; Introduction to Part IV; Part IV The Age of Standardization; 11 The Value of Standardization: Point Counterpoint; Introduction; The Value of Standards; Origins of the International Organization for Standardization; Regulations: Who are the interested parties?; The Economics of Standardization; The Limits of Standardization; Standards and the Law: Powerful Combination; Standards Proliferation in an Age of Regulation; Will it Ever End?; Conclusion; 12 The ISO 9000 Phenomenon and The Privatization of Military Standards; Was There Quality Before ISO 9000? Antecedents to the ISO 9000 Movement; The Need for Quick Fixes; The ISO 9000 Phenomenon: A Case Study in the Manufacturing of Consent; The ISO 9000 Series; Origins of the ISO 9000 Standards; 5923, 9858 and ISO 9000: Deja vu!; Evolution of the ISO 9000 Movement in the U.S.; The Universal Language of quality 190; What Others Have Said About the Series; Evolution of the ISO 9000 Series; Was ISO 9000 a Fad?; Is ISO 9000 a legitimate paradigm for the 21st Century?; 13 Quality Professionalism and the Ideology of Control; What is professionalism?; The Ideology of Quality; Influence of the Military and the Ideology of Quality Control; Influence of the Military on the Perception of Quality; The Role of the ASQ(C) in Promoting Supplier Regulations; Recent Trends: The Ideology of Management (soft quality); The Quality Function and the Economy of the Firm; Conclusion; Part V: Consequences of Standardization; 14 On The Origin of Procedures; Procedures during the dawn of Industrialization; Heritage of the American System; Procedures: anathema, panacea or placebo; On Working Knowledge; 15 Writing Procedures; Introduction; Frederick Winslow Taylor on Procedures; Herbert Simon on Decisions; Some Examples of Dubious Procedures; Should you never deviate from a procedure?; Should all processes be repeatable?; What is the best way to document a process?; Can (should?) procedures be written for all possible scenarios? Procedures vs. "show me"?; Types of procedures; What to Do?; Do we need special software packages to document our processes?; Are procedures required for all industries?; Should procedures be written like a computer program?; Summary and Conclusion to Parts III-V; PART VI: Conclusion; Introduction; 16 By Way of Conclusion: Dos and Don'ts; Challenges of the 21st Century: General conclusions; For the quality professional; Need to integrate many methods; For companies; Final Thoughts on Don'ts; What to do; How to Simplify?; ISO 9000 Software: No panacea; On quality speak; Teamwork: Another view; Smaller would be better