The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale about Making Quality the Key Ingredient in Everything You Do

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.