"This is really where the quality perspective starts off. We were making instruments but we were using other people's computers to drive and control them. We reached the point where the products weren't good enough so we began to develop our own. Today, a lot of our tapes and disc drives are bought by other manufacturers so it's gone full circle."

"Even today, when you're trying to encapsulate the mission it's very difficult to get away from that collection of words. That's really what you want. So back in '57 when Hewlett and Packard put that down, I think they were well ahead of the game."

"You can see the importance of quality to HP in '57 but it's nothing like on the scale that it is today - the people, the tools and the methodologies we have in the company. This hasn't happened overnight, it's been evolving ever since, either in leaps and bounds or more slowly."

YHP decided to go for the Deming Award and they got it in '82. Here are some of the award winning results: profit up 244%, market share up 193%, productivity up 120%...

"In '81, the whole executive committee under John Young, HP's CEO at the time, went out to Japan to see what the heck had happened. As a result, the company was set the target of a 10x Hardware Quality Improvement Goal. From '81 to '91 we pretty much achieved that."

This company-wide, CEO-led programme to drive down hardware unreliability - quite apart from playing a major role in establishing HP's leadership in terms of reliability, price performance and cost of ownership - provoked various quality initiative spin-offs.

"About that time we had our first wave of Total Quality Control (TQC) projects - we were trained on the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle. It was a wave: it came, it peaked, it died down. I remember thinking this was good but somehow business was more important."

Grand old man
In '89, Steve went to see Deming, the grand old man of quality. As old as the century, difficult to hear, and far from a slick presenter - by the end of the three days Deming had Steve under his spell. "What he was saying made sense. You could immediately see circumstances in your own business and think, crumbs, that's why!"

One of the main lessons Steve has learned from Deming is that the individual's power is minimal compared to the power of the system and the environment they operate in. "If you look at HP, we have an environment where quality is nurtured and grown. If you try and put quality into a company that doesn't have the right environment or culture it's never going to work. You have to change the culture and environment."

This is not to discount the role of the individual but to place it in its rightful context. "You still need people to be innovative within the system. Where it really works is that we all work within the system and the processes that we have and the good people innovate on the process - change it, improve it."

One example: waste. "The guy started by asking how much waste people thought there was in their company. People volunteered: 5%, 6%... He said if I told you it was 30% would you believe me? No, we replied! He proved it! I came back and asked John Golding, our MD, the same question. He said 10%, maybe a bit more. I set out the 30% proof. A couple of weeks later John came back and said let's talk about this waste thing. Do you realise that if it is 30%, I'm not saying it is, but if it is, we could double the operating profit of the company! Nowadays, he asks the same question of others but gives a different reply - there's anything between 30 and 100%! He's come to realise, as we all have, that if you don't constantly look at your processes you end up doing things that you don't need to do any more - things that are repetitive, unnecessary, or maybe even harmful. There's 100% waste in some of the things that you do."

This enlightened approach to quality took hold in HP's UK operations in about 1990. "Different business units took the challenge at different rates. I would say our Support and Test and Measurement units were the leaders in the early days."

"When we first introduced it, the goal was to reduce the time by 50%. Everybody achieved it. But by accident on one occasion somebody didn't set a target. People went way below 50%! So when you set a goal, that can be a limiting factor if you're not careful." On the other hand you still need a quality output, it's not just a case of how low you can go. The seminar has been refined and most people now get down to 30 seconds without sacrificing quality.

Do the right thing
What's the process for someone to set up a TQC within their own bit of HP?

"In support, it's slightly different. The normal way is you need management buy-in.

In the last year or so I've said look, there are going to be projects that I need doing, usually across functions, and we will sponsor those. But don't wait to be involved in one. If you're in an area that doesn't affect anyone else and you know that something needs to be done, set up your own team to improve the process."

"I have to believe that people are doing the right thing, but I've realised there is one issue with that. Sometimes people work on projects that I'd definitely invest more in if only I knew about them. As an example, there were three engineers in the field working on a problem with 'no trouble founds' on a laserjet board. I was driving along with one of the engineers and I casually asked him what was happening. He outlined this project and I got him to present the work at a management team meeting. Basically they didn't know what they had, but we recognised great cost savings and customer satisfaction improvements."

The engineers developed a confidence test for the customer - a bootable disc that demonstrates in 15 minutes that everything the customer wants to print can be printed. QED. The result? 'No trouble founds' have dropped below 10%. Plus, whereas the engineer used to be on site for an hour or more changing the board, now it only takes 15 minutes to give the proof.

Managing the white space
Alongside Deming, Steve mentions a second guru, or rather two rolled into one:

Geary A Rummler and Alan P Brache, authors of IMPROVING PERFORMANCE

How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. "The whole vogue at the time was how to manage the white space - he who manages the white space is going to have the competitive edge. The theory - and the practice - is that you have organisations but the links between them tend not to be all there. The white space is the gaps between the organisations in terms of total process."

"Deming is great on process improvement - don't tamper unless you've got the data. Rummler-Brache came along and said that's great but across organisations you need to have a relationship map to see how the process flows. It gives you an overview of the whole process. You document the current process - the 'is' process - and you identify all the 'disconnects'. The goal is to get rid of them. So you develop the 'should' process. In so doing you virtually design the organisation back on top of it. At the least, you get a lot of job changes, at the most, whole departments are redesigned."

One process that has been re-engineered is the delivery of next day on-site hardware service. In the past, the Response Centre would take the call and pass it out to the field. The on-site engineer would arrange with the customer a visit for some time the next day and then get hold of the parts. They were probably doing three calls a day on average. Now, the call comes in and is qualified by a central team. This team closes up to 40% of calls satisfactorily with the customer, depending on the hardware. The other 60% of calls are allocated to engineers based on factors such as site location, type of problem - the idea is to pack as many site visits as possible into the engineer's day. In parallel with this scheduling of engineers' workload, all the necessary parts are picked and packed ready for delivery to the engineer's home between 6.30 and 7.30 the next day. Because the engineer doesn't have to source parts, the average start time is earlier than before. On average, engineers are doing five site visits a day - some are doing even more.

Unending improvement
"We've been picking up tools and methodologies and merging them all together." One other rich source for Steve has been Kaizen guru, Masaaki Imai. "Kaizen means 'gradual, unending improvement, doing little things better' and that's what he's all about. He reinforced the idea that the people who really know what needs to be done are the people up front at the sharp end. Managers taking decisions without actually talking to people at the front end aren't really doing a good job."

Onwards and upwards
Steve's fourth quality guru is Sarv Singh Soin, the main figure behind HP's Quality Maturity System. An integral part of the system is the Quality Maturity Review (QMR). "We've had three in the UK and we've used Sarv Singh Soin to be the reviewer each time. The whole thing about quality is that if you're aiming for a 5 and you're only at 1.5, you need to recognise the areas that you've achieved and identify the areas you can improve on next."

As Deming says: 'The timid and the fainthearted, and people that expect quick results are doomed to disappointment.' By setting practical, realistic goals for the year you move steadily up, rather than give up in the face of impossible objectives. The UK sales region's overall quality maturity score in '89 was 1.52. In '93 it had reached 3.5 - in so doing earning them the President's Award for quality.