There are two theories of quality: (1) quality is conformance to a specification and (2) quality is conformance to customer requirements.
The answer to type (1) quality is to reduce variance. One response to type (1) quality is to say something like "you can't get good help today", e.g. blame the worker, which has elements such as "they come to the factory drunk somedays", "they are smoking pot all the time", "they don't care". Crosby says management should take responsibility because management hires the workers, trains the workers, supervises the workers, designs the work process, fires the workers, etc.
There's a dark side to type (1) quality thinking in that reducing variance lets you reduce the mean. For instance, a metal pail needs a certain thickness of metal on the bottom, if you go under a threshold the bottom fails. Because of variance you can't make a pail with exactly that thickness, you have to be several standard deviations above the threshold. Get that variation down and you can reduce the mean, use less metal. (Saves money at the factory, costs less to ship, less global warming, etc.) Now you have a system with less reserve, if a new source of variation shows up you are making crap pails again.
Thinking about type (2) quality involves a conversation with customers to understand what their requirements are. The Toyota Corolla and Cadillac Escalade are both excellent vehicles from the perspective of customers who have different values. If customers aren't being heard, you have problems in the type (2) department -- in Doctorow's "enshittification" scenario the voice of neither end users nor advertisers or vendors are being heard. In cases such as Meta, even ordinary shareholders are unheard and the inevitable consequence of that is "it sucks." See also
Sometimes the specification is no good, and sometimes the customer requirements are different for many customers, in some cases being something which is less common (or that they try to make it appear less common (even to the customers) in order to try to be dishonest).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/145212225-by-marvin-harr...
and there were a lot of books offering answers such as
https://www.amazon.com/Quality-Free-Certain-Becomes-Business...
There are two theories of quality: (1) quality is conformance to a specification and (2) quality is conformance to customer requirements.
The answer to type (1) quality is to reduce variance. One response to type (1) quality is to say something like "you can't get good help today", e.g. blame the worker, which has elements such as "they come to the factory drunk somedays", "they are smoking pot all the time", "they don't care". Crosby says management should take responsibility because management hires the workers, trains the workers, supervises the workers, designs the work process, fires the workers, etc.
There's a dark side to type (1) quality thinking in that reducing variance lets you reduce the mean. For instance, a metal pail needs a certain thickness of metal on the bottom, if you go under a threshold the bottom fails. Because of variance you can't make a pail with exactly that thickness, you have to be several standard deviations above the threshold. Get that variation down and you can reduce the mean, use less metal. (Saves money at the factory, costs less to ship, less global warming, etc.) Now you have a system with less reserve, if a new source of variation shows up you are making crap pails again.
Thinking about type (2) quality involves a conversation with customers to understand what their requirements are. The Toyota Corolla and Cadillac Escalade are both excellent vehicles from the perspective of customers who have different values. If customers aren't being heard, you have problems in the type (2) department -- in Doctorow's "enshittification" scenario the voice of neither end users nor advertisers or vendors are being heard. In cases such as Meta, even ordinary shareholders are unheard and the inevitable consequence of that is "it sucks." See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty