Minnesota Institute of Public Health

If you’re like us at MIPH, you place a high premium on quality assurance or quality control. Being fast is not good enough; being of high quality takes time.

I learned an important lesson years back from one of our printer vendors. He said many customers want their products fast, high quality and inexpensive. In our world of public health, we need to be all those things: current, compelling and of reasonable cost.

My printer friend  put it bluntly: when it comes to getting your product the variables are High Quality, Quick Turnaround, and Low Cost. Pick two, because that’s all you’re going to get!

I converted it into a visual that we use here:

      
If we want a brochure, we can get it cheaply and fast, but the quality will suffer.
We can get it fast and of high quality, but will pay a lot for that.
We can get it of high quality and lower cost, but that will suffer loss of time.
We then need to decide which resource do we most need or can least afford.

In the Great Noise and Clutter of Life, there is a lot out there: on the Web, in our sights, in our everyday world. Mission would dictate that we MUST pay attention to quality of content, format, and design, as well as usefulness. Quality control is one of the best assets we can offer the world.

What are the best lessons you’ve learned about controlling quality in your work?

-- JJ