"Synchroservice!: The Innovative Way To Build A Dynasty Of Customers", Richard J. Schonberger & Edward M. Knod, Jr., published by IRWIN Professional Publishing (1333 Burr Ridge Parkway, Burr Ridge, IL 60521), 1994, 279 pp, $25.00 (list) A Book Review by Norman C. Frank, PE, CQE, CQA CER Corporation, Washington, DC This book provides the details for developing a streamlined efficient service to your customers, whether a public or private sector, in-house or commercial service. It provides an overview of the many tools and techniques that already exist to help you design and establish your service process. The authors illustrate their use through examples that cover many industries (both in-house and commercial)and both public and private sectors. It is aimed for the permanent recovery and comprehensive leader of the service, not the quick-fix manager. The book stresses teaming up for continually improving service to next and final customers. The book consists of five parts and fourteen chapters. Part I provides an overview of "synchroservice" and quality. Chapter 1 provides a brief history of service concepts along with a discussion of the service customer. The "short list" of basic customer wants are: 1. High levels of quality. 2. A high degree of flexibility by the servicer. 3. High levels of service. 4. Low costs. 5. Short response times, including time to market for new services. 6. Little or no variability. The authors caution that these are not potential trade-offs. Customers expect them all. Sixteen principles form the backbone of the book. These are referred to throughout the book whenever the topic exemplifies or discusses one of these principles. Part II discusses the need for quality, the need to design quality into the service, and the need for quality control and continuous improvement. The authors use the various tools of quality and those developed specifically for the service industry to show how to develop better service for your customers. Tools used include cost of quality, benchmarking, quality circles/teams, concurrent design, quality function deployment, and the seven tools of quality. Part III provides a good overview of the many tools already available to the service industry. It serves to illustrate the use of the tools and to provide the reader with a bibliography for additional information. Demand forecasting, forecasting error, capacity strategies, flow control techniques, quick response, purchasing priorities, and material and supply management are some of the tools and techniques illustrated. Part IV discusses how to handle services that involve a lot of variety, but with low volume, and services that are complex, called service projects. Part V covers the human side of services (e.g., pay and recognition), service facility management, and the future of the service industry. "Synchroservice" is well written and covers more than just the quality aspects of a service. The authors recognize the great contributions that have come before. This book is appropriate for people in both public and private sector services, including in-house service groups. ---------------- Mr. Frank has over 25 years experience in the field of quality, in the areas of nuclear quality assurance, research and development, and consulting. He is currently in Washington, D.C., with CER Corporation out of Las Vegas, Nevada. 16 Principles of Synchroservice 1. Get to know and team up with the next and final customer. 2. Become dedicated to continual, rapid improvement in quality, cost, response time, flexibility, variability, and service. 3. Achieve unified purpose via shared information and rewards, and team involvement in planning and implementation of change. 4. Get to know the competition and world-class leaders. 5. Cut the number of service operations and number of suppliers to a few good ones. 6. Organize resources into multiple chains of customers, each focused on service or customer family; create multifunctional service centers. 7. Continually invest in human resources through cross-training (for mastery of multiple skills), education, job and career-path rotation, and improved health, safety, and security. 8. Automate incrementally when process variability cannot otherwise be reduced. 9. Look for simple, flexible, movable, low-cost equipment that can be acquired in multiple copies -- each assignable to multi-functional service centers. 10. Make it easier to provide services without error or process variation. 11. Cut flow time (wait time) and distance all along the chain of customers. 12. Cut setup, get-ready, and startup times. 13. Operate at the customer's rate; provide services just in time. 14. Record and own quality, process, and problem data at the workplace. 15. Ensure that frontline improvement teams get the first chance at problem solving -- before staff experts. 16. Cut transactions and reporting to control causes, not symptoms.