About a year ago, I wrote a piece for China Sourcing called “Where Have All the CQO’s Gone?”  CQO is an acronyn for Chief Quality Officer?  Twenty or even 10 years ago, most companies had a head of quality who was a VP or even higher level company officer.  I wrote:

“I’ve been in and around quality for more than 25 years. When, I first started, most organizations didn’t even have a quality department. Then during the explosive growth of quality from 1980 to 2000, the quality function grew in importance to become a critical C-level function.

Quality went from a technical position to a first and second level manager to a director level. Many companies had VP’s of quality and some even developed a position called Chief Quality Officer (CQO). This was the top quality position in our profession.

‘Quality is Job #1’; remember that ad from Ford? It was Ford’s mantra, its marketing tag line. Each company developed similar marketing visions and mission statements. I thought they were inspirational. I was a quality believer and evangelist for years.  I wrote 4 books on quality. I gave a dozen talks on quality each year. It was an exciting and lucrative time to be a quality consulting professional. Quality professionals were at the forefront of national and organizational competitiveness. Quality professionals and consultants were in huge demand to stabilize, lean, and improve internal and supplier processes using the tools that we discussed above. Great and good times.”

Well now, I’m finding that the most senior quality person is a second level manager.

What does this say about the perception of the value of quality?  Very sad…