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A quality management consultant was visiting a small and somewhat antiquated English manufacturing company, to advise on improving general operating efficiency.
The advisor was reviewing a particular daily report which dealt with aspects of productivity, absentee rates, machine failure, down-time, etc. The report was completed manually onto a photocopied pro-forma that was several generations away from the original master-copy, so several headings and descriptions were fuzzy and unclear.
The advisor was interested to note that the figure ‘0′ had been written in every daily report for the past year, although the employees filling in the form didn’t actually know what this was for.
Intrigued, the consultant visited the archives to see if he could find a clearer form, to discover what was originally being reported and whether it actually held any significance. When he found the old reports, he saw that the zero return had continued uninterrupted for as far back as the records extended – at least the past thirty years – but none of the forms was any clearer than those presently in use.
As he turned to leave the room, frustrated, something caught his eye. In another box he noticed a folder, promisingly titled ‘master forms’. Sure enough inside it he found the original daily report proforma master-copy, in pristine condition. In the top right corner was the mysterious box, with the heading clearly shown… ‘Number of Air Raids Today’.