the search for quality / secure knowledge

„Those are things, I do not wish to know about” The song from the band „Die Ärzte“ possibly befitted in advance those responsible in the management of the car manufacturers as a strategy for their actions in the diesel scandal.Now the pawn sacrificed in the development departments can be chosen. Who really believes, that development engineers would have manipulated engine control software without knowledge by the management. But what is this scandal to do with quality?

Expression of quality needs to be fully valid for a product. Official statements for and about a product are also a part of quality.

A problem for the actors arises in a field in the aisles where half-truths and lies are socially tolerated in the advertisement of a product. Truthful information is no longer visible to many. In our communities that are mostly based on the division of labour it is easily textable into little knowledge of detail and more gravely, even with a clear conscience.Statements about products can be formulated that have nothing at all to do with reality. Without knowledge of details life is more carefree. In today’s management, knowledge about details is even discredited as detail infatuation. But how can knowledge on detail quality form in a product world where a tiny component determines function or misfunction. Actually there is rather a need for more knowledge of detail than less.

In the antiquity knowledge was devided in two categories, ‘knowledge’ and ‘secured knowledge’. Knowledge was attainable from books and through study, secured knowledge only ever through additional personal practise and own experiences. Nowadays this devision is no longer made. Philosophical ideas have phased these categories of knowledge out from the Middle Ages onward. Partly justifiably so, than to base decisions on one’s own understanding only is hardly possible. The aknowledgement, that secured knowledge should be qualified more highly as common knowledge, should however reenter in today’s thinking. We see the consequences when lacking knowledge of details is at the base of taken decisions. The airport of Berlin is my prime example of incompetent decision making on a basis of unsecured knowledge.

Wolfgang Fünfgeld