My twin grandsons celebrated their first birthday on July 1, 2001. And while the majority of people reading this article don’t know Alex and Austen, there is another set of twins celebrating their fifteenth birthday this year whose names are familiar. Born in 1986, they are Six Sigma and Activity Based Management (ABM). I’m proud to say that I was present for the birth of both of these sets of twins. CTQ
The need for improved quality and costing method confronted most manufacturers during the 1980s. Pressure from Wal-Mart in the consumer sector and the Big Three in the auto sector for lower prices, just-in-time delivery and defect-free products caused manufacturers to heighten their search for process improvements. Customers in all sectors of the economy grew to expect products and services with CTQ—a combination of low cost, quick cycle time and high quality. This was especially true for my employer in 1985, Motorola.

"While it’s great that the Fort Worth factory is meeting its defects and cost per unit goals, how do the best manufacturers in the world measure quality, cost and cycle time?" asked Dick Buetow, Motorola’s director of quality, during a quarterly operations review at our Texas factory. No one on our management team, including me—the division controller—had the answer.

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