Cheers,
Grant Coulson

Cheers
Grant

By Frank Gue

“For a cost reduction of 25 cents per car,” the president of an auto company jocularly assured a meeting of engineers, “You would cheerfully slit your grandmother’s throat.”

More seriously, in Japan we were assured that their famous Quality Circles dealt more than half the time with cost, not quality, improvements. BUT: “Yes, Sakata san, that is a fine quality improvement. Now let us make it also a cost reduction.”

We in Westinghouse Canada learned how to dry 300-ton power transformers in which no trace of water is acceptable, in three days instead of thirty, saving millions of BTU of energy while raising quality by excluding oxygen.

Lest a reader mistakenly think that cost reduction and quality improvement hand in hand applies only to hardware, Westinghouse also halved our million-dollar mountains of work in process, with its big costs, while shipping more on time. We didn’t touch the hardware, simply used our scheduling software better.

Private business lives and dies by reducing cost, raising quality. Why does this thinking never reach the hallowed halls of Queen’s Park? A big enterprise like government should have a permanent, organized, cost and quality improvement program with an objective of a 5-10% yearly cost reduction and measurable quality improvement. Your 4% cost increase would be readily absorbed and more beds served.

Here’s an objective for Finance Minister Duncan: Raise the bed count by 5% while reducing wait times by 20% with no cost increase. Private industry does it all the time: ask them how.

- 30 -

F.

Cheers
Grant