Feigenbaum's Hidden Factory Greeting Card

Not available in stores.

Make someone's day with a hand written greeting card.

Celebrate Val Feigenbaum’s timeless quality wisdom with this cute cartoon by American artist Alton Johnson. Your recipients are sure to smile back when they see Feigenbaum’s infectious grin.

Industrial engineers, quality improvement professionals, op-ex experts, lean thinkers, and six sigma black belts will immediately recognize the hidden factory.

#IYKYK

If you don't know, Armand “Val” Feigenbaum’s hidden factory is a cornerstone of modern industrial engineering. It’s the phenomenon of energy lost to wasteful activities in a factory. They are hidden inasmuch as they are unplanned, do nothing to create value, and appear on no metrics.

Feigenbaum’s greatest contribution to industry is the framework of Total Quality Control, which he described as, “an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance, and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organization so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels which allow full customer satisfaction.” Total quality control later evolved into the more palatable Total Quality Management.

Feigenbaum was one of the great minds of American industry. He graduated from MIT, served as president of the American Society for Quality, wrote several books, and founded a charitable foundation with his brother to promote education in technology.

Feigenbaum once said, “You have to understand that quality problems, like bananas, come in bunches. And if you try to go at them a banana at a time rather than at the stalk, you're going to wind up with a lot of sour fruit.” Okay, so it’s far from the greatest analogy.

It is Edwards Deming who is most strongly associated with the foundational concept that quality is everybody’s job. Fine. No argument. But Feigenbaum is credited with identifying the risk that anything that’s everyone’s job is a risk of becoming nobody's job. We think there’s safety in numbers, but sometimes there’s danger in numbers. Val therefore emphasized as a central practice active quality management and visibility from the shop floor to the executive suite. It’s hard to imagine that this notion, now ubiquitous, was once novel.

LIMITED TIME ONLY!

Like all of our greeting cards, our fun cartoon is offered exclusively to QI Curiosities customers. And it pays to buy in batches.

• Buy 2-3 for 5% off.
• Buy 4-5 for 10 % off.
• Buy 6-7 for 15 % off.
• Buy 8-9 for 20 % off.
• Buy 10-11 for 25 % off.
• Buy 12+ for 30 % off.

• Material: 14.77 oz/yd² (350 g/m²) paperboard
• Size: 4″ × 6″ (101 × 152 mm)
• Comes with an envelope.
• Buyer must supply his/her own pen and thoughtful sentiments. 

This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!