Do companies fail because of a lack of a robust quality system? During a recent quality discussion, a quality engineer asked a group of quality professionals if anyone knew of companies who had gone out of business due to quality problems. The group’s first reaction was “absolutely!” When asked to name examples, however, there was no consensus.
Certainly there have been companies who have experienced product or service failures due to poor quality. Most of us have experienced failures of one sort or another traced to poor quality. However, even though there have been some significant issues in recent times, has any entire manufacturing company gone out of business strictly because of a poor quality program?