My wife uses those fancy, high-end Moleskine planners, and they are very nice products. I was reading the little promotional booklet that came with her new one, and it said something that I’ve seldom seen. Each booklet is individually serial numbered, and the consumer is encouraged to contact Moleskine directly (not the retailer they bought it from) if they discover any problems with the product they purchased.
Sure, you have quality control in your manufacturing (or service) process: quality is measured by each downstream activity, any internal work station is empowered to shut down the entire line, blah, blah, blah. Great. But how many of you take it to the ultimate step, and encourage the ultimate “downstream” activity — the final consumer — to chime in on the quality of a particular product?
My bet is: not too many. And my question is: why not? The ability to individually number even items that are produced by the hundreds of thousands a day is pretty inexpensive and technically trivial.
Do you really care about quailty?
Ralph
