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开 本: 32开纸 张: 胶版纸包 装: 精装是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9780385514781
From Publishers Weekly
Pete, hero of this
rapturous business novella, manages an ice cream factory where “the
low hum of mediocrity filled the air…like an offensive odor.”
Desperate to boost margins, Pete makes a sales call to the local
Natural Foods grocery store, where he is amazed by “how clean and
fresh, warm and welcoming the store was,” by the cheerfulness of
the employees, and by charismatic store manager Mike, who expounds
legendary Natural Foods founder Glen Goodwill’s philosophy of
putting quality before profit. “Mike…I need help,” Pete sobs, in
the throes of a conversion experience, “tell me what I can do to
make quality a part of our culture.” He learns to empower his
workers, listen to customers and obsessively measure every detail
of production processes with an eye to continuous improvement. Soon
lumpy texture and leaky cartons are a thing of the past, profits
soar, Pete is promoted to company president and he even applies
Mike’s teachings to enhance the quality of his marriage and
parenting. Chowdhury, author of The Power of Six Sigma, extends
Total Quality Management from a managerial program into a journey
toward spiritual redemption. He conveys its principles through a
smattering of process-engineering argot (“we reduced tolerance of
variables on our mix-ins to .1 grams and the depth of each tub to
two millimeters”), golf and football parables, and cultic
incantations like “you have tilled the soil, to prepare it for the
seed of quality.” Although less than convincing as a motivational
tract, this book provides a readable, if sketchy, introduction to
TQM precepts.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Innovation, claims quality consultant Subir Chowdhury, is part
of America’s DNA. No other country in the world matches America’s
creative drive and its ability to turn innovative ideas into
revolutionary products–from antilock brakes and steel-belted radial
tires to sophisticated software and microprocessors. But as fast as
we introduce new products, we lose the markets we establish to
countries that know how to manufacture higher quality versions for
less money. As Japanese and European firms win market share by
concentrating on quality, America is continually forced to
rely on innovation to stay ahead.
In The Ice Cream Maker, Chowdhury uses a simple story to
illustrate how businesses can instill quality into our culture and
into every product we design, build, and market. The protagonist of
the story is Peter Delvecchio, the manager of a regional ice cream
company, who is determined to sell its ice cream to a flourishing
national grocery chain, Natural Foods. In conversations with the
Natural Foods manager, Peter learns how the extraordinarily
successful retailer achieves its renowned high standard of
excellence, both in the services it provides its customers and in
the foods it manufactures and sells. Quality, he discovers, must be
the mission of every employee; by learning to listen,
enrich, and optimize, he can encourage and sustain
the highest levels of quality in everything the company does.
Like Fish! and Who Moved My Cheese? The Ice Cream
Maker offers an essential and universal lesson about one of
industry’s foremost challenges in a thoroughly engaging style. For
managers and executives, small business owners and entrepreneurs,
The Ice Cream Maker is a compelling, eye-opening guide to
the most effective ways to achieve excellence and become industry
leaders on the global stage.
TAKING QUALITY TO THE NEXT LEVEL
“Great book! The Ice Cream Maker should be mandatory reading
for anyone entering the workforce.”
–Steve Walukas, Vice President, Corporate Quality, DaimlerChrysler
Corporation
“This business gem is short in length, but boundless in the depth
of its insight and wisdom. If there is only one book and one author
I could recommend in the world of quality, it would be The Ice
Cream Maker and Subir Chowdhury.”
–Marshall Goldsmith, founding partner of Marshall Goldsmith
Partners, and author of The Leader of the Future
“Fabulous! The Ice Cream Maker offers a great
illustration of the amazing results that can be achieved by
engaging your entire workforce in the efforts to improve
quality.”
– Lee A. Mundy, Executive Director, Strategic
Quality Initiative, General Motors Corporation
“In 115 jargon-free pages, [Chowdhury] boils down most of
the wisdom of
modern management theory and practice that is equally relevant to
chief
executive and front-line clerk.”
—- THE WASHINGTON POST (10-9-2005)
“The Ice Cream Maker becoming a kind of Detroit Bible, at once
raising
our expectations and our self-confidence. That’s bold
self-promotion —
chutzpah — a quality that our battered region could use right
now.”
—THE DETROIT NEWS (11/13/2005)
“Subir Chowdhury’s mission is to make quality part of
America’s
corporate DNA. The Ice Cream Maker is a great step on the path to
this
end.”
— KEN BLANCHARD, coauthor of The One Minute Manager
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