Engagement qualité de Rhône‐Poulenc

When two plants manufacturing much the same product show a great discrepancy in performance, something somewhere is obviously very badly wrong. This was certainly the case at the Fibre division of Rhône‐Poulenc, the French chemical company whose headquarters is in Lyon. Two factories in Switzerland and Germany were giving much better results than the six factories in France where similar products were produced, says Pierre Gandilhon, director of communications and quality at the division. Not only was the quality of product higher but the costs and manpower required were lower. It was this realisation that motivated the 10‐man board of directors for the eight French sites to take a look at TQM in 1986.