The End Product
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ORGANIZATION AND METHOD are essential to the continuing success of both public and private enterprises. The very term implies efficiency actively pursued.
Yet in such strivings for efficiency, woods can be mistaken for,trees. Even efficiency, though obviously desirable, is not an end in itself. The real issue is whether the resulting end product is thereby improved to the benefit of producer or consumer, or both.
Transport's end product is a serviCe—and there's the rub in this context. Measuring standards of service is, at best, a matter of considered opinion whereas efficiency, in isolation, is easier to quantify. Hence its greater publicity.
The Hospital 0 and M Service Report entitled "Planning and Control of Hospital External Transport" is a typical example of such evaluation of transport. One appendix included in the report, on the loading of vehicles, contains around 500 statistics—and there are a 'dozen such tabular appendices. Significantly, no appendix is included summarizing the satisfaction—or dissatisfaction—of those for whom the transport service was provided.
Similar " efficiency" surveys have been conducted for other services and industries. Too frequently they have had this common fault, of ignoring the most important factor of all—the customer. If his requirements have not been met a satisfactory transport service has not been provided. Until they have been met, comparisons of effiCiency are exercises in self delusion as meanful as comparison of commodity prices without reference to quality or quantity. The difficulty of quantifying standards of service is not a valid reason for relegating customer requirements to a secondary role in efficiency surveys