. . . our ultimate quality control is based on customer
satisfaction that our product meets the specifications.

Quality

Customer Focus and a Commitment to Quality

When Larry Comer was appointed as the first chairman of the State Board of Postsecondary Vocational Education, he was already a successful businessman. He had started a small business manufacturing fluorescent light fixtures in the mid 1960s, and by the time he sold the business in the 1980s, it was grossing more than $140 million per year and employed more than 1,000 people.

When he became involved with technical education, he brought with him an understanding of fundamental values that have proven essential to the success of the technical college system. To Larry Comer, the fundamental value that gave his business—or any endeavor—a strategic advantage was quality. It was he who helped define the basic philosophy of applying the value of “quality” even to the design of instructional and training programs at Georgia’s technical colleges.

“Quality is not an abstract term,” Comer once said. “It is a simple, measurable term. Quality simply means meeting your customer–driven specifications.”

Coming from the light fixture business, Comer cast his wisdom in the metaphor of his own industry. “You can have quality in a $5 fluorescent light fixture to the same degree that you can have quality in a $1,000 chandelier.

You can have quality in a 500–student technical school to the same degree that you can have quality in a 30,000–student university.”

He then posed the question: “How do we apply this to our business of training people for jobs?”

The answer provided one key element that makes up the philosophy that underlies Georgia’s Technical College System: we find out what a customer needs, and we provide the solution. If a business or industry needs a certain set of skills, the system will design an instructional program to meet those specifications. To guarantee customer satisfaction, there is consistent and ongoing review and evaluation to ensure those specifications are met.

This strategy for creating quality and achieving customer satisfaction is one of the unique virtues of Georgia’s Technical College System. By being customer focused, Georgia’s Technical College System produces a level of quality that it could otherwise not achieve. And those customers include both the students and the businesses of Georgia.

But quality is not an intangible. Georgia’s Technical College System is based on the principle that quality can be measured. For example, using the ASSET test (Assessment of Skills for Successful Educational Transfer), guarantees that a student meets certain skill levels at the beginning of his or her training program. Then, skill and performance tests measure success during a training program that has been designed according to state–approved standards. This approach provides assurance that not only are the students receiving the training they will need to successfully perform on the job, but it also guarantees that the needs and requirements of specific areas of business and industry are being met. That is quality: giving the student the skills specified for the job.

Vigilant oversight of program design and instructional strategies helps to ensure these quality standards. The programs at Georgia’s technical colleges are designed in close partnership with the business community and are consistent with the needs of these customers. These customer–driven program standards are applied uniformly to all programs, and this allows us to provide the ultimate in quality assurance: our guarantee. Just as an automobile manufacturer provides a written warranty with any new car, asserting that the product meets the specifications, Georgia’s technical colleges promise that if a graduate does not meet the customer–driven specifications, that student will be retrained at no cost to anyone.

We make this promise of quality to our customers. And we guarantee it.