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November 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 11

Real World

Is your company facing a deadline for ISO 9000 compliance?
Twenty-five percent of companies responding to a Tompkins Associates Inc. study have a deadline for compliance of or registration in ISO-9000 and/or QS-9000 by the end of 1997.

In addition, 33 percent of responding companies are presently registered, and 42 percent have a documented Quality Manual or System in place, with another 38 percent having an interest in using proven templates for system documentation.

Other results show that 86 percent of companies have invested in training in at least one of the following: leadership, team development, continuous improvement, problem-solving techniques and "others" (30 percent have invested in four or more, 12 percent have invested in all of the above). And, 55 percent of these companies report a "return on the investment in the training" with the other 45 percent either not knowing if there was a return on investment or not having an answer.


Sim.Tech offers three new simulation white papers
Sim.Tech, the Simulation Software Vendors Association, has released the "Benefits of Simulation Technology," "Selecting, Justifying & Implementing Simulation Technology," and "Glossary of Simulation Terms" white papers.

These materials have appeal to all companies interested in examining and improving the way their processes operate.

Sim.Tech was formed in December 1995 to expand awareness and use of simulation technology through programs including conference presentations, educational materials, and an Internet Web site.

For more information, contact Bill Hakanson, Executive Director


Emphasis on consumer drives companies into emerging markets
A long-term commitment to new markets, rather than an appetite for low-cost labor and quick profits, is driving U.S. corporate expansion into emerging markets, according to "Cheap Labor or New Customers: What's Driving The Global Strategies of U.S. Companies?," a survey report from The Futures Group, an international consulting firm.

Survey respondents included senior marketing, strategic and business planning executives at 113 U.S. corporations in the consumer products, industrial products, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare and aerospace industries. Eighty-three percent of the respondents have annual sales greater than $1 billion and 30 percent have annual sales greater than $10 billion.

Four out of five respondents say their plans are 'aggressive' or 'moderate,' with 37 percent being 'aggressive.' Long-term market development is the primary objective of 76 percent of the respondents, with the same percentage saying they are willing to wait three to five years to break even.

Among the other survey highlights:

• The Pacific Rim, not surprisingly led by China, is the top target market. Russia and Eastern Europe received relatively low marks, while Mexico scored remarkably high.
• What keeps executives up at night are unanticipated radical policy changes -- more so than corruption and expropriation -- when it comes to choosing new markets.
• Willing to wait for payback. The most important emerging market objective is long-term market development (four or more years) -- 76 percent of the respondents identified this as number one. Only 16 percent said they are looking for "short-term revenue growth," with the balance seeking "access to new sources of raw materials" (2 percent) and "lower cost production" (2 percent).

Why do we do the things that we do?
Despite long-held beliefs involving the advancement of the human race due to its ability to think through problems, size up the odds, identify its best interests, and make good decisions, evidence is now mounting that humans, more often than not, make irrational decisions.

An article in Frontiers, the newsletter of the National Science Foundation, claims that evidence shows that we misjudge risks, are blinded by overconfidence and make unlikely choices.

As an example of the mounting evidence showing our predilection for irrational decision-making, the NSF offers the case of the New York taxi driver. For the driver, his earnings are the difference between what he pays to rent the cab for a 12-hour shift and what he collects in fares. Basic economic theory shows that a rational person will work more hours when wages are high and fewer hours when wages are low, thereby maximizing income and leisure time. However, most taxi drivers do just the opposite. An NSF study has shown that taxi drivers decided how many hours to work by setting a target amount of money they wanted to make each day, and when they reached their target -- they quit work for the day. Thus, on busy days they work fewer hours than on slow days.

Various explanations arose for this kind of decision-making. One explanation had to do with the value to the individual of an hour's wage versus an hour's leisure. A related explanation has to do with how the worker anticipates feeling about that extra hour worked -- or not worked.

At the national level, how workers make tradeoffs between wages and leisure has important implications for labor relations, productivity and competitiveness.

Although no answers are at hand to help us overcome irrational decision-making, the answers culled from such research is helping us to understand the psychological roots of our economic (or uneconomic behavior). The goal of such research is not necessarily to help us become more logical, but to help us behave more successfully -- in spite of ourselves.


For many companies, 'customer focus' is just lip service
An ASQC survey conducted by the Gallup Organization shows that manufacturing firms have a solid awareness of their customers and are involved in a variety of customer-focused activities However, the survey shows that their focus on the customer may be more broad than deep.

Manufacturing employees at all levels were asked to discuss how well they know their customers including the things their companies do to help them better understand the customer and the level on which they interact with their customers.

A majority of employees said they have some knowledge of their companies' customers. Seventy-eight percent of surveyed employees said they could do a pretty good or very good job of describing their companies' customers to a new employee. And 88 percent of surveyed employees said they consider their companies' customers their own customers.

Of those employees who said they received information from their companies at all, nearly 90 percent said the information related to customer satisfaction; eighty-seven percent said they receive information on customer complaints; and 83 percent said they receive reports on their companies' customer satisfaction goals.

However, there is a drop-off on the level of detailed customer satisfaction information that is distributed to employees. Less than 70 percent report receiving information on customer retention or loyalty, and less than half (48 percent) said they receive information about customer needs beyond what they are told about customer satisfaction. Approximately two-thirds of employees said their companies formally measure customer satisfaction.

Manufacturing employees reacted strongly to the statement "Your own work provides value for your company's customers." Nearly eight in 10 (78 percent) said they completely agree; 18 percent said they somewhat agree; and only three percent said they somewhat or completely disagreed.

Free summaries of the report (item number B0693), and complete survey reports (item number T737) are available by contacting ASQC's customer service center at (800) 248-1946.


3-D glasses for robots
The trouble with many robots and other automated systems equipped with artificial vision is that their eyes "see" the world as two-dimensional. As a result, they have great difficulty in assessing the relative positions of objects. Existing ways for robots to reconstruct 3-D images tend to be slow and cumbersome, but two Weizmann Institute physicists have developed a 3-D imaging technique that greatly speeds up and simplifies this process.

The system -- developed by Drs. Daniel Zajfman and Oded Heber of the Particle Physics Department -- uses two regular video cameras, a light source and a transparent fluorescent screen placed between the cameras and the object to be filmed. When light is reflected off the object, it strikes the screen and creates a flash that the cameras record along with the image of the object. One camera films continuously while the other has a shutter that opens for only a billionth of a second at a time, registering just a minute fraction of the light particles emitted by the flashes. Because both the speed of light and the time it takes for the flashes to fade on the screen are known, it is possible to determine the exact distance between the screen and each point on the object's surface. This information, in turn, is combined with data from the 2-D picture of the filmed object to form a 3-D image.