OK, so the missus and I were shopping (again). This time for a new washing machine as ours just stopped working and left us with quarts of water to scoop out by hand.<\/p>\n
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So, just like we did\/do in our corporate purchasing lives, we developed our list of selection criteria: capacity, warranty, features, supplier quality reputation, and price. Warranty is a big one \u2013 we don\u2019t want to buy the same major appliance every year.<\/p>\n
One of the washers we liked was made by GE. GE, of course, is reknowned for its mastery of Six Sigma.<\/p>\n
So, the quality is definitely there, right? GE will be able to offer a warranty that blows their competition out of the water, right?<\/p>\n
Wrong.<\/p>\n
GE\u2019s warranty was one year for this higher-end washer. The same as the cheap washers made by the no-name manufacturers.<\/p>\n
So does Six Sigma really have benefits for the consumer?<\/p>\n
Sure, the Six Sigma quality standard of 3.4 defects per million opportunities sounds great. But what is a defect? Failure within 5 years? Or failure in less than a year?<\/p>\n
See, Six Sigma is tricky because there\u2019s a lot of latitude in the definition of a defect.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, any appliance component that fails within, let\u2019s say, 18 months is defective. But it seems like that is not consistent with GE\u2019s definition.<\/p>\n
A failure in 367 days? That may not count towards the 3.4 defects.<\/p>\n
So, in reality, Six Sigma may not guarantee long-term quality.<\/p>\n
Now, perhaps GE\u2019s components and suppliers are in fact of higher quality than their competitors. But that\u2019s not obvious to the consumer with that limp-wristed one-year warranty.<\/p>\n
If GE\u2019s quality is indeed better, and Six Sigma is a part of that, why not offer the consumer some benefit in the form of a longer warranty? If the product is truly of high quality, they wouldn\u2019t have to worry about many warranty claims in months 13-24 right?<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t they realize how that would differentiate their product in the marketplace?<\/p>\n
That would have made our purchase decision so much easier. A two-year warranty vs. a store full of one-year warranties? I\u2019d buy that washer without much thought or comparison.<\/p>\n
So if Six Sigma improves quality, why not utilize it to boost the top line in the form of more sales?<\/p>\n
Does GE\u2019s own marketing team not buy in to the fact that GE has better quality?<\/p>\n
And, if they don\u2019t, should consumers believe that GE\u2019s products are of high quality?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK, so the missus and I were shopping (again). This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n