Quality Check

As of late, I've been thinking a lot about the idea of Quality verses Quantity. Some of this has come about due to my Supply Chain Management class where we examine different type of processes and identifying their corresponding competitive advantages. It makes you look at the world in a different way when you start seeing things as a process with a beginning and an end. The grocery store checkout, the golf shop check-in, the building of a bicycle, etc. All a series of processes and systems.

One hot topic that I have been batting around with a friend of mine is the process of health and well being. It is no big discovery that we eat too much here in the U.S, we want to much here in the U.S and therefore, we consume TOO MUCH here in the U.S. Not unlike the theme of this Dave Matthews Band ditty...Moving on, why? Most would agree that people do things in an excess to try to fill a void. What is it that American's are missing that must make us fill this hole with cheap consumer goods and sub-par "food" and what can we do to stop this process? I'm just going to throw this out there - people say that you can't stop a train that is going this fast...I beg to differ. I have in fact heard of trains derailing. Interestingly enough, here are the most common causes of train derailment according to one Kansas City law firm:

• Failure to perform regular train maintenance
• Failure to properly train employees
• Negligent hiring practices
• Engineer negligence
• Malfunctioning warning signals
• Brake system failure

What I find most interesting about this is that none of them are natural. Deer aren't darting out and getting clapped up sending the caboose spinning, rhinos aren't charging and forcing them off the tracks. It is all user error.

If we go back to the beginning of this process, we must ask ourselves, who is the engineer of the U.S food train and will it ever roll into the station? Or, will it derail due to "engineer negligence?" Clearly, we are no longer in control of our food. If we were, everyone would be fed and we would be eating healthfully. We might actually know what is going into our bodies.

Hmmm, maybe that is the void American's are trying to fill - control. We don't feel we have it. Our great nation of Democracy and putting the power in the hands of the people is filled with people that are over-consuming in every form in an effort to feel in control of something. So the process starts to speed up in an effort to satisfy the pseudo-need of the people and efficiencies are suddenly paramount to quality. So we get processed food to take away variances and keep costs down to satisfy people that think they need more because they don't have any control......and the train speeds up again. Insert Keanu Reeves joke here.


What if we looked at the process from the cost side? It seems that our system efficiencies lie in high volume, low cost. So we produce high volumes of crap to a large amount of large people - which works great in the short run. But what about long term? Seems like our government has engineered a system that will continually shorten the lifespan of it's citizens - while the food companies battle the system by donating profits to disease research so they can keep consumers around longer to ensure future profits. Wow. That sounds like a real bottleneck. In the wealthiest nation in the world...why are we producing the cheapest food? Is cheap food really our competitive advantage? I believe it is time for management to be decentralized and we need to become a more autonomous workforce.


I implore you to take the time to educate yourself about food and to take an interest in your life and your health. Why would you ever let something as inefficient as the government control something as pertinent as your quality of life? You only get one chance...so how will you live - with quantity or quality?


Grow a garden. Eat a carrot. Go for a run.


Peace.Love.Bikes.