Chronicles of a Quality Detective - An Excerpt

There was not much for him to do after that. The team was on the right track. They were bound to find the causes of the defect. They were already ignoring our problem-solving expert as their excitement built up with each measurement confirming whether the cause was present or not. The sun was well past its zenith and our problem-solving expert's nimble mind was already winding down on this case. He had a backlog of cases and wanted to move on to the next. Requesting the managing director to inform him of the outcome of the experiments by the group, he sped away to his next destination.

During the drive he was feeling a little uneasy. "Have I missed something? Did I rush? Is it going to be another black spot in gelatin?" Myriad thoughts were surging through his head like a hammer pounding repeatedly. Doing a spot of "sukh pranayama" to drive out his uneasiness, he calmed his mind down and began to contemplate.

Slowly, the fog began to clear – the uneasiness stemmed from the speed of diagnosis. It had been one of his fastest cases; so fast that his mind had flashed back to the other case that he had attempted too fast – black spots in gelatin. But there was no real cause for worry. Soon he realized that the speed came from the data being ready and the team being pre-oriented into the way of thinking, which made it easy to lead them away from blind alleys, towards the right path. Readiness of data, in turn, came from the format that his protégée had given to the team. It was as if a step-by-step technique had been laid down for the team. They had traversed enough of the steps to allow the expert to come in for a rapid, conclusive thrust.

It was a long journey and Dr G had slipped from deep reverie into deep sleep. It was 8:00 p.m. when his mobile phone woke him up with a start. It was the managing director.

"Wonderful news, Doc! I thought you would like to know. Our team continued working on the problem after you left and they have just placed before me a sample of a completely step-free product. I cannot distinguish it from the Japanese product!"

"What was the most important factor causing the step – can you ask them please?"

"It seems the wheel was ok, but the arrangement that held the pieces down as they went under the first grinding wheel was wobbly; it allowed the pieces to move up and down."

"Congratulations! Now you can beat the stuffing out of the world leader!"

"It is fantastic! I can't believe it! My team actually asked me how many pieces I want with the defect! Just state a range from 100 to 0, they said, and we can produce the exact quantity!"

Suffused with a glow of pleasure, Dr G continued to reflect on the case. Gradually the realization emerged that young Payal had indeed done something remarkable – she had elevated his art of brilliant diagnosis into a science, by structuring the questions. The science would take problem diagnosis to a different level.

Dr G recognized that Payal had helped him create a new technique – the technique of Differential Diagnosis.