October 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 10

Real World

Time Savers Don't

Clothes dryers, microwaves, computers and fax machines are all examples of machines designed to save us time in our hectic work-a-day lives. So where is all the time we are supposed to have saved?

An NSF-funded research project revolving around our use of time shows that none of the devices mentioned above has ever saved us any time, and never will. However, they may change the way we spend the time we have.

One finding of the study is that women who use a microwave to prepare dinner spend an average of 55 minutes cooking. Women who use a conventional oven spend 59 minutes. For men, those figures were 13 and 15 minutes, respectively.

The gist of the study seems to be that Americans seem to be intent on working. Even when they have time-saving devices, they find extra work.

The cost of quality

As U.S. companies strive for quality in their products and services, who is keeping the cost of quality in check?

While 82 percent of companies are currently involved in quality programs, only one third (33 percent) calculate the cost of quality, and 40 percent believe that knowing the cost of their quality programs may be a good idea, according to a survey of the Cost Management Group (CMG) of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA).

Of the CMG members who do calculate the cost of their quality programs, 41 percent said the quality programs were worth the costs, 46 percent said it is still too early to tell, and only 13 percent said the quality programs were not worth the implementation costs.

For those CMG members who do calculate the costs, what is the approximate current cost of quality as a percentage of revenues? According to CMG members, quality costs can average 6 to 10 percent.

Quality programs have met the desired results they were first intended to achieve, said 44 percent of the CMG members. Twenty-seven percent said it is too early to tell if the programs achieved their intended purpose, and 29 percent said their programs did not obtain their goals.

Asked to rate their company's quality program, 74 percent of CMG members said they would rate their programs adequate to excellent, 20 percent less than adequate, and 6 percent poor.

Do the companies of CMG members employ benchmarking to support quality programs? According to CMG members, 38 percent said they do, 38 percent said they do not, and 24 percent said they plan to use benchmarking to support quality programs.