Quality in Practice: Building Trust Through Quality at Gerber

The Gerber baby picture -- which accompanies everything from strained carrots andbanana cookies to teething rings and diapers -- has developed into one of the mostrecognizable brand images in the world. According to Gerber, the company received thehighest customer loyalty rating out of 3,500 U.S. corporate and product brands, toppingcompanies such as Nike and Coca-Cola. To parents around the world, the Gerber babymeans quality, and the Gerber company has long been a leader in using quality tools touphold its reputation. While Gerber's quality programs have gone through various stagesover the years, their goal has remained the same: to make sure consumers continue to see

the Gerber baby, which has gone through periodic updating of its own, as an emblem ofexcellence.

Gerber is the leader in the development, manufacturing and marketing of foods andproducts for children from birth through age 3. The company dominates the U.S. retailbaby food market with a 70% share against competitors Heinz and Beechnut, and ringsup about $1 billion in annual sales. Gerber employs 6,200 people altogether at itsheadquarters and main processing plant in Fremont, MI, and its plants in Fort Smith, AR;Costa Rica; Mexico; Venezuela; and Poland.Together these facilities produce 190 foodproducts -- which are labeled in 16 languages and distributed to more then 80 countries.Gerber's Baby Care product line (featuring items such as rattles, bottles and eatingutensils) was launched in 1960 and currently features some 300 products. This line islargely manufactured in Reedsburg, WI, and China. In 1994, Sandoz Ltd., apharmaceutical manufacturer, purchased Gerber. The 1996 merger of Sandoz and Ciba

Geigy, also known for producing pharmaceuticals, established the Novartis company.Located in Basle, Switzerland, Novartis positions Gerber as a primary member of itsconsumer health division.

The company began in the Gerber family kitchen in 1927. After watching herhusband's messy attempt at straining peas for their daughter, Dorothy Gerber suggestedthat the task would be better accomplished at the family-owned canning plant. DanielGerber agreed and was so taken by the idea that within a year he had manufacturedenough of five baby food flavors to begin national distribution. Understanding theconcern parents have for what their babies consume, Gerber paid close attention to whatwent into the food and the processes involved in manufacturing it. This was one of thecompany's first steps toward committing to quality.While Gerber's quality systems have undergone several improvements over the years,teamwork was "one of the biggest things to hit quality at Gerber," says George Sheffier, aretired, 35-year Gerber veteran. He believes that fostering a team atmosphere taughtGerber how to help employees adjust to change, gave the company 'a head start on thediversity issues of the '90s and was critical when Gerber began spreading qualitytechniques throughout its plants.

Gerber experimented with teams in the '70s but by the end of the decade felt thecompany still lacked the benefits a solid team atmosphere provided. An attempt toimplement the concept to a more intense degree in 1983 was met by employeeskepticism. Realizing that management and supervisors were themselves having adifficult time adjusting to the team methodology, Gerber hired consultants to teachfacilitation skills. Soon supervisors were holding meetings not only to familiarizeworkers with the team concept but to discuss change -- how employees felt about it andwhat the company could do to help make it easier. As employees began feeling morecomfortable working in teams, they voiced concerns about trouble spots in systems andprocesses. Gerber also learned that the team atmosphere was a necessity in linking qualityto every process in the company.

Once employees recognized the value of teamwork, the company began takingquality functions out of the quality department and spreading them throughout the plant.The goal of integrating quality into manufacturing was to build quality into the producton a more consistent basis. By expanding quality responsibilities to frontline operations,Gerber hoped to increase process control and reduce line inspections. To accomplish thispurpose, Gerber teamed QA staff with front-line operators in 1988 to establishprocedures for each process. While hesitant at first, front-line employees liked the factthat they were involved in the process from the start and were able to determine their ownauditing criteria. Within 18 months, Gerber was able to cut its number of line inspectorsand increase its quality auditing functions.

As quality became more widespread through the organization, Gerber needed to teachbasic quality tools to its front-fine operators. As with the team concept, however,employees accepted the new responsibilities once they realized the values of the tools.Employees came to prefer the use of these techniques, which enabled them to becamemore directly involved with the quality of the final product. The company alsoestablished management incentives for integrating quality into its manufacturing process.Many senior managers, for example, began to be compensated for maintaining a highlevel of consumer trust through the quality of the final product. Today, the companycontinues to improve the quality techniques it applies to each part of the manufacturingprocess. Its most recent project has been to install new software from SAS Institute Inc.The software gives employees instant access to data regarding the impact on the final

product of each station in each process.

Although Gerber has always tried to create systems that meet the expectations ofparents, the company didn't always utilize feedback from its customers. It wasnt until thecompany faced its largest crisis to date that Gerber realized the need to link thecustomer's voice with the quality system. This period, in the 1980s, was a defining pointfor Gerber, according to Gerber senior QA manager, Jim Fisher. The company lost sometrust in the eye of the consumer, stemming from an instance of consumer tampering thatbrought Gerber unwanted national attention. Before the company had the opportunity toprove itself, the case snowballed into a media frenzy, leaving consumers questioningGerber's quality. Gerber's history of continuous improvement and its well documentedmanufacturing processes paid off, however. The investigation put the company under amicroscope, with Fisher flying across the country to inspect bottles of food and the Foodand Drug Administration (FDA) spending three weeks reviewing Gerber's systems andrecords. In the end, the FDA gave the company a clean bill of health, and any claimsagainst Gerber dissipated once the FDRs report became avail able to the public.What Gerber found was that it needed a system allowing consumers to contact itdirectly with suggestions, complaints and questions pertaining to Gerber products orinfant care in general. Gerber's consumer relations department, established and operatedby Dorothy Gerber in 1938, continued to receive a steady flow of letters, but the systemwasnt timely and the feedback wasn't closely tied to either the quality or the safetydepartment. Consequently, Gerber opened its telephone information service(800-4-GERBER) in 1986. The system provided a notable change for the company'squality discipline as it allowed telephone operators to log customer information into adatabase. In turn, trend analysis could be conducted and consumer demands could beintegrated into the product development process. Because parents are up with theirinfants throughout the night, the company extended the department's operating hours in1991, capturing information 24 hours a day. Gerber takes a daily average of 2,400 calls,accommodating all languages, and employs a team of letter correspondents to answer the45,000 letters it receives yearly.

The company has often demonstrated innovative and creative thinking, notably in itsplan to eliminate pesticides from its foods. By thinking outside the box, Gerber was ableto outshine its competition, exceed customer expectations and prepare itself for futuregovernment requirements. In 1996, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)reconsidered the methods traditionally used to ensure food safety -- spot checks ofmanufacturing conditions and random sampling of final products -- and released itsHazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) program. The program enforcesprinciples such as analyzing all potential hazards associated with foods, identifyingcritical control points where hazards can be eliminated, and establishing procedures tomonitor control points and verify properly working systems. The FDA and the USDAbelieved such guidelines would be proactive in stopping contaminated products fromgetting into the market.Gerber came to the same conclusion--49 years earlier. In 1947 Gerber managementcame to believe that the best way to ensure the safety of its product was to control asmuch of the food-making process as possible. At that time the company began formingalliances with its growers, giving Gerber better control of produce cultivation andallowing it to keep track of the pesticides growers used. By the 1950s, Gerber hadimplemented a HACCP-like approach to its manufacturing process identifying criticalcontrol points and thus making its processes preventive rather than reactive. The Gerberproduct analysis laboratories were formed in 1963 to provide data on the composition ofingredients, monitor the quality of internal and external water sources and provide theanalytical information needed to establish food formulations. The company also createdprocedures to monitor potential hazards and ensured correctly functioning processes byemploying a thermal processing staff. The staff was to determine the amount of time aproduct needs to be cooked to become commercially sterile, conduct audits of productionfacilities to ensure that processing equipment was operating correctly, and review andimprove thermal processing systems. The thermal processing staff grew so large that itbecame its own department in 1994, and it continues to work closely with Gerber'squality and safety departments today.

Gerber's dedication to performance excellence continues to serve the company well.Thinking beyond quality trends in pesticide control continues to put the company aheadof others as Gerber investigates what it calls environmental quality -- examiningenvironmental factors not traditionally considered, such as pollutants carried into theplant by a supplier. This enabled Gerber to introduce sugar less and starch freeformulations less than a year after a 1995 report criticized the baby food industry for itsuse of fillers. By linking quality practices throughout its processes and making statisticalinformation available to all employees, Gerber continues to enhance its quality.

(Question):

1. How does Gerber exhibit the fundamental principles of total quality customer andstakeholder focus, participation and teamwork, and a process focus and continuousimprovement?

2. How did quality help Gerber overcome the crisis it faced in the consumer-tamperingsituation? What lessons does this have for other companies?