The modern manufacturing environment has been responsible for a dramatic loss in product quality in recent years, with a concomitant loss of customer satisfaction. Products are not made as well, do not last as long, and do not have exactly the features that the customer wants. Furthermore, customer serviceùa main key to customer satisfactionùis abysmal, with many manufacturing concerns providing little or no support and refusing to take responsibility for their products. An approach for remedying this problem is the concept of customer-driven quality, where products are tailored to the customerÆs needs and produced in smaller, very high quality batches that are driven by customer orders (Wortmann et al.). Included in a customer-driven environment is the initiative to dramatically improve the quality and accessibility of customer service, as well. Customers and their orders are serviced rapidly, handled courteously and consistently, their orders checked for completenessùand, if a special unforeseen problem arises, it is handled responsively and efficiently (Evans). This approach recognizes the impact of poor quality and poor service on business and seeks to establish both at a high level of quality and responsiveness.
Customer-driven quality is both a competitive strategy and an ethical issue. As a competitive strategy, it seeks to garner customer approval and satisfaction by giving the customer the product he wants, made to precision specifications with high-quality materials, in the timeframe he wants it in, plus treating him like the valued part of the business that he is. Customer-driven quality provides a great competitive advantage over companies that fail to consider the customer, as any customer is more likely to buy from a company that will treat him well and tailor the product to his specifications. As an ethical issue, quality is a matter of producing products that do what they say they wi
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