This paper is based on the results of experience working with a small firm, which experienced loss of key customers due to quality problems. One another large customer threatened to take their business somewhere else. These customers had been doing business with the firm for at least 10 years. It is at this point in time, i.e., Summer of 1986, the author was brought in to help the management develop a quality assurance program. After initial discussion, it became clear that the clamor for quality as found in popular and professional media did not permeate the management thinking. The expectation was to have someone install SPC charts and initiate Quality Circle Activities. Ultimately, the responsibility for maintenance of these black boxes would be assigned to their Quality Supervisor. It was clear that if the plant manager and the production supervisor did not assume the responsibility by making serious efforts to develop the quality perspective and did not involve in the learning process, the probability of successful implementation would be close to zero. The paper discusses how system dynamics symbols were used to map the mental models and to provide focus for generating dialogue. There was never any need to build a full scale model.

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Date created

• 1990

Type

• Document

Processing Activity

• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
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ITEM CONTEXT

Part of

386b7d5fcd17a644199db727913a7a7a

Scope and Contents

Part of

e3ebd4855fa658877b17f518e29a6ac9

Scope and Contents

Part of

23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8

Scope and Contents

Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

Scope and Contents

Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives