>>Did you know that Toyota is the 3rd best seller in the United States? They talk about "the big three" American car manufacturers. We have a backlog and this plant has not laid off one person since it opened it's doors. Very unlike the rest of the industry. There are hundreds of models of automobiles manufactured and sold in the United States. Toyota has 6 of the top 16 models produced in this country, according to J.D. Powers, who rates this industries quality.
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>PMFJI, but J.D. Powers is about as thorough as the Gartner Group is. When they first started, they were excellent in what they did. Consumer Reports has fallen down the same path as well.

Mark;

Demming introduced quality into manufacturing in Japan. No one in America was interested in quality. Even today American manufacturing in many areas is learning from the Japanese. Granted the entities you cited are not what they once were and removing them will not help quality. Our company thinks very highly of the J.D. Powers group as does the automobile industry as a whole.

It just seems like the software industry needs a more standardized approach to quality. Look over the history of this topic. The concepts concerning SQA have changed twice in the last five years. There are many models that have been tried – some better than others. We are still learning but the concept of a “Standards Committee” comes to mind as we had in the field of electronic manufacturing.

The IEEE is of great assistance in such matters for the electronics industry. Standards exist for many disciplines such as for audio and video. I mention this as I was an electronics engineer for Ampex and involved with the international standards community. Once agreement is achieved amongst the various participants the industry as a whole (manufacturing, employees, investors, customers and service organizations) will benefit.

The introduction of ISO 9000 can be a positive step for any business to understand and control its process. Anyone who works with software knows how complex it can be. There is no “magic bullet” that will make software “perfect”, but perhaps more thought has to go into the process of development and testing. Almost anyone can produce software. What controls are available to the public to insure a quality product is delivered? Is such a thought even desirable? Should it apply to various products at different levels?

I have worked with some sophisticated systems while in the United States Air Force. One was a Data Link computer (GKA-5), which controlled a fighter aircraft. It could cause the aircraft to take off without the aid of a pilot, intercept a “boggie”, fire it’s weapons system, and return to base. The pilot was an observer and there for backup in case of system failure. I would suggest there was great concern for the quality of the software (and hardware) of this system. We used a methodology that worked well.

One thing that one computer company does to test its software is to use a Super Computer for analysis. I have seen this in action on several occasions. The company is located in Cupertino, California, and is about 2 miles from my house. They are very strict about software and hardware compliance. The company is called Apple computer. The approach Apple has taken is just one of the available concepts but seems to work for them.

Tom