Why Redundant Quality Systems Do Not Work

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Several months ago, I went to the movies and tried to pay with a $20 bill. The clerk looked at it skeptically and refused to accept it claiming it was counterfeit because the lettering was uneven. Shocked, I held the bill up to the light and saw the plastic filament within the bill clearly labeling it as an authentic twenty. My date also seized the bill and flashed it in the light finding the watermark of Andrew Jackson again confirming it as a legitimate bill. The clerk, however, was not convinced claiming his visual perception of the lettering was infallible and refused to accept the undoubtedly genuine currency.

Many times quality personnel develop redundant systems to ensure product quality. Multiple inspections, check forms, and automated systems are established to prevent errors. Our own government also subscribes to this theory with their controls on counterfeiting. Through hand-engraving, security fibers, and watermarked paper one can validate a bill through three separate, independent inspections; however, that is not how people work. Instead of using all of the redundant systems, individuals focus on only one and use it for verification. In the above example, the clerk felt a failure of one check meant the bill was fake. This is very common in redundant quality systems. Although organizations claim superior quality, in fact they have enormous waste as the amount of good product scrapped is greater with the numerous opportunities for rejection.

The US government is now experiencing this first hand. With the development of the orange-colored $20 bills, counterfeiters have issued numerous orange look-alikes. While they lack the security fibers and watermarks, people seem more ready to accept the bill because of the new color coding. Only time will tell how successful these new anti-counterfeiting initiatives will be, but I doubt they will work.