The human factor frequently plays a critical role when complaints occur. Therefore a company must do its utmost to make products and perform processes which people can handle safely. The situation must not be as in many aircraft where I get the feeling I am being subjected to a not insignificant risk for reasons of cost. The human factor has been discussed in detail by Blaut and I would like to remind you of this important paper.

One must differentiate between the subjective and the objective complaints. Let me explain: People have a wide variety of views on quality. One person is very "fussy" (this often causes us to make progress) and someone else simply looks at the functioning of an object whilst the aesthetic appearance or design are irrelevant to him. Frequently one of the reasons why no complaint is made is that the remedying of complaints involves a great deal of fuss (transaction costs). These are subjective reasons. This situation is different for the quality standards at our company. Our floor-laying contractors perform a craft, which brings about significant discrepancies compared with a factory-made standard product. Nevertheless we must supply neat work by making good preparations and insisting on good workmanship. And all this has to be documented properly. That is why we recently appointed a Quality Management Officer who visits the customers irrespective of the responsibility for floor-laying and comes back with a filled-in questionnaire, which we proceed to evaluate by computer.