One of the many business trends in the 1990s was “three nines“, i.e. businesses should strive for 99.9% accuracy, 99.9% customer satisfaction, 99.9% quality, etc.
But is 99.9% good enough? If so…
- 268,500 defective tires will be shipped each year.
- 132,412,800 cans of soft drinks produced in the next 12 months will be flatter than one of the 268,500 defective tires.
- 2,488,200 books will be shipped with the wrong cover in the next 12 months.
- 880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.
- $761,900 will be spent on tapes and CDs that won’t play.
- 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped each year.
- 22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next 60 minutes.
- 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written in the next 12 months.
- 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled in the next hour.
- 14,208 defective personal computers will be shipped each year.
- $9,690 will be spent every day on defective, often unsafe sporting equipment.
- 3,056 copies of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections.
- 1,314 phone calls will be misdirected by telecommunication services every minute.
- 315 entries in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of English Language will be misspelled.
- 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly each year.
- 107 incorrect medical procedures will be performed each day.
- 55 malfunctioning automatic teller machines will be installed in the next 12 months.
- 12 babies will be given to the wrong parents each day.
- Two plane landings daily at O’Hare International Airport will be unsafe.
Suddenly, the quest for zero defects makes a lot of sense. Time for new rules?
