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Issue 1, 1991

Viewpoint Arthur D. Little's Experience with TQM

Arthur D. Little's experience with Total Quality Management (TQM) has both emerged from and helped to shape our corporate strategy, which, in turn, is designed to meet a number of goals. Although Arthur D. Little's goals predate our commitment to the specific techniques of TQM, in a sense they have...
Issue 3, 1991

Viewpoint Achieving Environmental Excellence: Ten Tools for...

Achieving environmental excellence means addressing issues of planetary - if not cosmic - importance:How do we make sure that the products and by-products of our industrial society do no harm to our planet?How do we continue industrial growth while preserving the resources our grandchildren and...
Issue 2, 1991

Managing Rapid Technological Development

The introduction of new technology into products is accelerating in industry after industry. Today, the pace at which companies introduce new technology has become a principal determinant of competitive success - or failure. Arthur D. Little has had extensive experience assisting organizations...
Issue 2, 1991

Managing Interfaces: A Key to Rapid Product and Service...

Today, innovation contributes as much to protecting profits as cost containment. Indeed, many companies risk corporate failure unless they produce the right products or services at the right time. To keep up with their innovative competitors, both manufacturing and service industries recognize the...
Issue 4, 1991

The North American Free Trade Area: Impacts and Implications

The North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) - comprising the United States, Canada, and Mexico - will soon come into being as the world's largest trading bloc, directly challenging the growing primacy of the European Community and the Japan-East Asia bloc.
Issue 2, 1991

Viewpoint New Tools, New Rules: Playing to Win in the New...

At temperatures near absolute zero, and now at much higher temperatures for some ceramic materials, superconductivity occurs. The rules that govern the propagation of electricity suddenly change. Resistance disappears and electrical devices become much more efficient. Devices that previously could...
Issue 4, 1991

The Outlook for Central and Eastern Europe

In this fall of 1991, as the former constituents of the Soviet Union struggle to define new political identities and to avert economic disaster, it is worth considering the situations of some of the countries that emerged earlier from behind the Iron Curtain. Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary...
Issue 1, 1991

Implementing Total Quality Management

The key to a successful Total Quality Management (TQM) program is not in understanding it - TQM is, after all, largely common sense - but in actually doing it. At ODI we've observed, in our work with almost 300 companies, that world-class implementations of TQM tend to have certain common elements...
Issue 4, 1991

Japanese Businesses at a Crossroads

In the 1990s, Japanese businesses are being challenged to revise their fundamental approaches to doing business, both domestically and internationally. The practices that are being called into question include both export policies and exclusionary business practices, as well as deeper cultural...
Issue 1, 1991

Soft Measurement: A Vital Ingredient in Quality Improvement

During the early days of the quality revolution, when quality improvement efforts were focused primarily on manufacturing, managers measured hard facts - errors, rejects, and production time - as a way to document tangible improvements in the production process.