Business

Jack Welch and the GE Way

Robert Slater
McGray-Hill, 1999

This book details Jack Welch's career at GE as CEO. Under him, GE has gone from a big, slow, traditional manufacturing company to a lean, cutting-edge, modern diversified company. Jack himself has gone through changes as well, leading the way to many of the changes that have been made in the way businesses are run. I read this book primarily because my company is implementing Six Sigma and GE was one of the early adopters. It was interesting to read about all of the programs and changes implemented at GE and watch the evolotion from a big manufacturing company with a long history and tradition to a more diversified company. GE's income now derives more from financial services than it does from making appliances. This book is definitely pro-Jack Welch and you have to read between the lines to see some of his mis-steps as he pushed GE into completely new areas.

Quality Wars: The Triumphs and Defeats of American Business

Jeremy Main
The Free Press, 1994

This is the story of total quality in American business. Total Quality has its roots in WWII, when American companies made many innovations to reduce manufacturing times and increase quality for the war effort. Unfortunately, when the war ended, most businesses went back to business as usual. Meanwhile, the Japanese were rebuilding and many of those helping were proponents of total quality. As the Japanese slowly built themselves back up, American businesses began to realize that the Japanese were doing some very basic things differently and were producing a high quality product at a lower cost. This rude awakening led American businesses to rediscover total quality.

Total Quality is not a process of inspections to verify that parts are made right. It is a whole way of doing business that focuses on doing things right the first time and meeting the customer's needs. There are many different ways to approach total quality and many tools to help. This book discusses many different approaches, giving enough information to understand what's going on but without giving all the details.

This is a Juran Institute report.