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The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do
 
 
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The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do [Hardcover]

Subir Chowdhury (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)

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Book Description

October 4, 2005
Innovation, claims quality consultant Subir Chowdhury, is part of America’s DNA. No other country in the world matches America’s creative drive and its ability to turn innovative ideas into revolutionary products–from antilock brakes and steel-belted radial tires to sophisticated software and microprocessors. But as fast as we introduce new products, we lose the markets we establish to countries that know how to manufacture higher quality versions for less money. As Japanese and European firms win market share by concentrating on quality, America is continually forced to rely on innovation to stay ahead.

In The Ice Cream Maker, Chowdhury uses a simple story to illustrate how businesses can instill quality into our culture and into every product we design, build, and market. The protagonist of the story is Peter Delvecchio, the manager of a regional ice cream company, who is determined to sell its ice cream to a flourishing national grocery chain, Natural Foods. In conversations with the Natural Foods manager, Peter learns how the extraordinarily successful retailer achieves its renowned high standard of excellence, both in the services it provides its customers and in the foods it manufactures and sells. Quality, he discovers, must be the mission of every employee; by learning to listen, enrich, and optimize, he can encourage and sustain the highest levels of quality in everything the company does.

Like Fish! and Who Moved My Cheese? The Ice Cream Maker offers an essential and universal lesson about one of industry's foremost challenges in a thoroughly engaging style. For managers and executives, small business owners and entrepreneurs, The Ice Cream Maker is a compelling, eye-opening guide to the most effective ways to achieve excellence and become industry leaders on the global stage.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

TAKING QUALITY TO THE NEXT LEVEL



“Great book! The Ice Cream Maker should be mandatory reading for anyone entering the workforce.”

–Steve Walukas, Vice President, Corporate Quality, DaimlerChrysler Corporation


“This business gem is short in length, but boundless in the depth of its insight and wisdom. If there is only one book and one author I could recommend in the world of quality, it would be The Ice Cream Maker and Subir Chowdhury.”

–Marshall Goldsmith, founding partner of Marshall Goldsmith Partners, and author of The Leader of the Future


“Fabulous! The Ice Cream Maker offers a great illustration of the amazing results that can be achieved by engaging your entire workforce in the efforts to improve quality.” 

– Lee A. Mundy, Executive Director, Strategic Quality Initiative, General Motors Corporation 

"In 115 jargon-free pages, [Chowdhury] boils down most of the wisdom of
modern management theory and practice that is equally relevant to chief
executive and front-line clerk."

---- THE WASHINGTON POST (10-9-2005)

"The Ice Cream Maker becoming a kind of Detroit Bible, at once raising
our expectations and our self-confidence. That's bold self-promotion --
chutzpah -- a quality that our battered region could use right now."

---THE DETROIT NEWS (11/13/2005)

"Subir Chowdhury's mission is to make quality part of America's
corporate DNA. The Ice Cream Maker is a great step on the path to this
end."

--- KEN BLANCHARD, coauthor of The One Minute Manager


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Doubleday Currency; 1st edition (October 4, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385514786
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385514781
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Subir Chowdhury is Chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group, LLC-- a world authority in Quality leadership, strategy and methods. Hailed by The New York Times as a 'leading quality expert', and by Business Week as 'The Quality Prophet', Subir is the author of 12 books, including the international bestseller The Power of Six Sigma, which has been translated into more than 20 languages and has sold more than a million copies worldwide. Subir's Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is the first book on the topic and is credited with popularizing the DFSS philosophy worldwide. His latest book titled The Ice Cream Maker has been praised by leaders and media alike and has been distributed to every member of the U.S. Congress. Subir's latest organizational transformation philosophy, LEO, has been implemented and is being used by various organizations and industries.

Subir has received numerous international awards for his leadership in quality management and his major contributions to various industries worldwide. He is an honorary member of the World Innovation Foundation (WIF) and has been inducted into the Hall of Fame for Engineering, Science and Technology and Automotive Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers' Gold Medal, the Society of Automotive Engineers'(SAE) Henry Ford II Distinguished Award for excellence in Automotive Engineering and the American Society of Quality's first Philip Crosby Medal for authoring the most influential book on Quality. Subir has been twice honored by the U.S. Congress on the Floor of House of Representatives and the U.S. government presented him the 'Outstanding American by Choice Award' for his enormous contributions in the field of quality and management.

Subir received an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India, a graduate degree from Central Michigan University (CMU), and an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Michigan Technological University (MTU). Both IIT and CMU honored Subir with their Distinguished Alumnus Award.

The London School of Economics (LSE) has established the 'Subir Chowdhury Fellowship on Quality and Economics' to be given to a post doctoral Fellow each year to study the impact of poor quality in the advancement of economics of a nation, which is the first of its kind in the world. The SAE International has established the 'Subir Chowdhury Medal of Quality Leadership' to be given each year who bring forth innovation and broaden the impact of quality in mobility engineering, design and manufacturing. His philanthropic interest is evidenced through the Subir & Malini Chowdhury Foundation, which brings focus on the needs of society and those less fortunate in the world. Subir lives with his family in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.


Please visit - www.subirchowdhury.com

 

Customer Reviews

27 Reviews
5 star:
 (18)
4 star:
 (9)
3 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A good inspirational work/starting point., October 5, 2005
By 
Scott L. DO (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do (Hardcover)
I'm sure that this book will get some very enthusiastic reviews (which I've already seen), as well as some reviews saying, essentially, "Where's the beef?" And, in the end, both are going to be right.

This book is 100 pages, double-spaced, and about the size of my outstretched hand. Obviously, it can't be a definitive textbook on how to make dramatic changes in the workplace. What it does (quite successfully in my opinion) is to open one's eyes, and inspire the reader to see where change is needed. Basically, it advocates the opinion that many US companies have focused on their own "bottom line", or on "making a splash", without actually going to the consumer, finding what their very BASIC needs are, and focusing on meeting the need. (A prime example from the book - a dealership, for the first time, gathered disgruntled former customers in a focus group. They asked the customers about all of the "perks" they offered - pickup/dropoff service, fancy keychains, donuts/coffee... and the customers all liked the changes. In exasperation, the owners asked why they didn't return -- and finally heard that they had brought their car to the dealership several times, and the car wasn't fixed.)

Of course, this book can't answer every question. For example, the primary "story" focuses on an ice cream company who needs to get their product into a "Natural Foods" chain - If the "target" was getting into Wal-Mart, would the definition of "quality" change? What do you do with employees who don't "catch the spirit" in light of employment law/unemployment insurance? However, it is a great inspirational piece - and I look forward to reading other books in order to answer those remaining questions.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very vanilla -- not that there's anything wrong with that!, October 20, 2005
By 
This review is from: The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do (Hardcover)
This is a story about a guy who doesn't really exist -- but he might be you. He's worried about his job. He thinks he understands why people buy from some companies and not from others. He's wrong.

Ice cream isn't really essential to the story. It's really about finding out what your customers want and then making sure you give it to them consistently so that they're never disappointed. But as metaphorical products go, ice cream is a lot more fun at a business meeting than throwing fish around or wondering where your cheese has gone.

While the author's message could have been put more simply without a tale about ice cream, the message still shines through. Just having the book on your shelf can remind you that every customer matters and every unit shipped matters. And it's even a pretty fast read.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Quality is everyone's business!, October 4, 2005
This review is from: The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality The Key Ingredient in Everything You Do (Hardcover)
Subir Chowdhury has done it again! This book will become a classic like "Fish!", "Who Moved My Cheese" and "The One Minute Manager". The timeless lessons in this book will take your quality to a new level by adopting the simple but powerful concept of LEO - Listen, Enrich and Optimize and these lessons can be applied to self, small business, large corporations, schools and even government. Quality truly is everyone's business.
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