The Ice Cream Maker

The most concise book emphasizing on the importance of quality I have read so far. The Ice Cream Maker as the name suggests is the story about the Plant manager Pete of an ice cream manufacturer named Dairy Cream. The book starts with a urgent situation where by the ice creams are not selling in the market as expected inspite of being good as per the thinking of management. The owner gives an ultimatum of shape up or shift out. Pete finds a mentor in Mike who had been his neighbour for a long time and works in firm called Natural Foods which happens to be potential customer of Dairy Cream as well. A crisp and to the point narrative elaborating on the various facets of quality is wonderfully captured by the author Subir Chowdhary. The book has a site to its name as well.  One can find some tools of quality like Kano's model clearly elaborated as part of the solution for the troubled firm Dairy Cream. The book has some takeaways highlighted as the story is being told. Other reviews can be found here.

Some Notes:

1. American firms are usually good at innovating but fall behind to Japanese in consistency and continual improvement.

2.Profits are a result, the by product of a great service, great quality and great teamwork- not an end in themselves.

3.Turn what you do everyday out of necessity into something you love to do. ( seems very hard to implement as per my view )

4. The better you treat your employees , the better they treat your customers.

5. LEO - Listen, Enrich and Optimize

6. Focus on what you do, not just the results

7. Quality is defined by the customer

8. Most companies in America are better at delivering "excitement" than they are at providing customers "basic" needs.

9.Great companies are built on a thousand great ideas. To get the best ideas, you have got to ask your employees.

10. You need to think about how to improve your product or service every day.

11. To Achieve perfection:

-First : recognize the price of failure

-Second: do it right the first time

-Third: get dogged on the details

-Fourth: develop productive paranoia 

- Fifth: need to instill passion for perfection, every minute of the day

12. Pay attention to the details- your customers do

13. Everyone is responsible for quality

14. The real measure of performance is not how you do at your best, but how you do at your worst

15. Quality is cheaper in the long run than good enough