Adopt a Zero Defects Mentality (Principle)

There is an old story about a company that sourced a component from a Lean oriented supplier in Japan, and insisted that the vendor met a 2% failure rate target. The Japanese company balked and resisted that rate, but the purchaser insisted. Finally the Lean company relented and agreed to the 2% target. When the first order of 100 components arrived, there were 98 in the box, and 2 separated with a note saying, “Here are the two bad components you wanted. We still don’t understand why you need them.”

The point of the story is that one company lived by a zero defects mentality and the other followed the traditional path of assuming that there would always be some failure rate. Now, in truth, no process is perfect. But the pursuit of perfection gets you a lot closer to zero defects than accepting that a portion of your work will always be shoddy.

ABOUT CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT TRANSFORMATION PRINCIPLES

CI Transformation Principles are the guiding rules that apply to all companies that are trying to make changes. They are similar to natural laws. Learn more about how principles guide your Lean journey in our entry on ‘Principles and Values.’