In the 70’s, I worked as a quality manager in a small company that produced packaging component for big medical device companies. One of our product lines were polymer closures for the tops of blood collection tubes (pix). We made millions of these components each week. Red closures were a big volume item but a problem area for us. We seemed to consistently have problems getting the proper shade of red. We had a three shift operation with a heavy focus on inspection (in-process and final). We had big differences of opinion on what constituted the proper shade of red in the final product. In a typical week we scrapped about 30% of the product. I was assigned the task of resolving this problem and improving overall consistency. It was a big effort and involved numerous heated meetings with quality inspection and manufacturing. After about four months, we got to the point where the team was at least more consistent in agreeing upon what constituted an acceptable range of color variation in red. Keys in the activity were to define limit samples, take pictures, and communicate, communicate, communicate.

A few weeks after we had completed the above, we were proud to present our efforts to our key customer representative who was in town for an annual supplier review. After our presentation, we were taken aback by the representative’s comments. He basically indicated that they did not care about the red shade variation. He informed us that if the red looked like a black or a green it was a problem but shade variations were of no concern. I learned an important lesson from this activity. Make sure you really understand the customer and their needs. Assuming you have the answer is risky. Had I employed some of the simple, but powerful, market research tools I could have saved the company a great deal of time and money.

Robert G. Launsby is the founder of Launsby Consulting (Colorado Springs, CO). He is also the author of "The High Cost of Outsourcing to China" and "Breaking Out of Silos: Overcoming Organizational Segmentation."