The Power of quality June 24, 2007
We talk about quality, but few of us, especially in the ephemeral wold of
software, have any idea what quality really is. Today I received a very
practical example of what quality is and what happens when it isn’t there.
You see, this morning I had a conversation about motorcycles with one of the
local dog people. When it comes to engines, especially motorcycles you’ll
frequently hear that the engine is a
motorcycle engine is pretty big. The cc stands for cubic centimeters and
indicates how many cubic centimeters of fuel can be in the engine at any given
time. Obviously, the more fuel you can ignite the more energy you can release at
any given moment. So, the common misconception is that the more cc’s the engine
is the faster it can go. Today I leared just how big of a misconception that
was.
A little while ago Harley Davidson decided they wanted a piece of the sport bike
market, so they created the
Buell
motorcycle company. Buell builds affordable but cool looking bikes. The
problem is that anyone who has done any research, or worked on one, knows that
Buell bikes are some of the poorest quality bikes on the market. On the other
hand you’ve got Aprilia
motorbike. Since then they have been driven to build the best bikes in the
world, and some would argue that they’ve which was started in the late 60’s when
Ivano Beggio joined his father’s company and built the first Aprillia succeeded.
I am fortunate to own a 150cc
Aprilia
Scarabeo, but I’ve only recently started to realize just what an incredible
machine I have sitting outside my door and this morning it was driven home by
that conversation. You see, my fellow dog person took a 500cc Buell out for a
spin not too long ago. According to him it not only felt like the poorly made
bike they’re known to be but he really had to push it to get it to 60mph and it
took a while to get there. When he said this, my brain locked up, because my
little 150cc Scarabeo, built to comfortably hold two riders, can hit 60 without
issue. My top speed is only 80 but…
Being largely ignorant of what makes one engine better than another I started
trying to figure this out with him, and what we basically figured out was that
it comes down to quality. He explained it this way. His 1000cc
Harley can rev up
to 16,000 rpm, at which speed the forces within the engine are so significant
that you just can’t afford to have low tolerances wherever the engine’s pieces
fit together. The same force in a Buell would most likely find flaws invisible
to the naked eye, exploit them, and blow the seals. But my little Aprilia is
made to such a higher level of quality than the Buell that even though it starts
with 1/4 as much potential energy (fuel) it can match it for speed, and be
constantly reviewed as one of the best made scooters on the market. Aprilia
doesn’t make a 500cc motorcycle but they have
a
500cc scooter, built for two people (the Atlantic Sprint), with a reported top
speed of about 103mph.
And that, is what quality is all about. It’s about doing something so much
better than your competition that it takes them four times the resources to even
approach the power of your product and even then their’s is still shoddily made
and likely to break.
People may not know quality when they see it. They may not know it when they use
it on a daily basis, but the quality of your product will always show up when
your customers try to use something else. Yes, they may leave your product for
something cheaper. It’s your job to make sure they remember just how much better
things were when they used yours. There’s another very significant side effect
of having a high quality product, one that
Guy
Kawasaki is very familiar with. Quality products engender evangelism.
Evangelest are what made Apple computer what it is today. It’s why
37signals is doing so
well in the world of business webapps and it’s why the iPod can’t be touched
even though it’s got a 1/3 as many features and four times the price of some of
it’s competitors. I wrote this article not just because I wanted to share a
lesson in quality, but because I finally realized just how amazing my Aprilia
is.
P.S. For anyone who thinks comparing scooters and motorcycles is like apples an
oranges you should know that the only difference is the position of the seat,
and scooters frequently, but not always, have an automatic transmission. Also,
Harely’s used to be known for crap quality, but fortunately that’s no longer the
case. Most motorcyclists will agree that Harley’s are generally very well made
these days.
P.P.S. Think your company could use a good grounding in the idea of quality?
Check out
The
Deming Management Method. Deming is why the Japanese ended up kicking so
much economic ass after WWII.
P.P.P.S. The evidence of just how awesome Aprilias are has been mounting for me
for years as I’ve researched other scooters and motorcycles online, in the
stores, and through talking to others. They’ve got a customer for life in me
even though they are frequently four times the cost of the low end competitors.
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