Quality in Practice: Building Trust Through Quality at Gerberi
The Gerber baby picture — which accompanies everything from strained carrots and
banana cookies to teething rings and diapers — has developed into one of the most
recognizable brand images in the world. According to Gerber, the company received the
highest customer loyalty rating out of 3,500 U.S. corporate and product brands, topping
companies such as Nike and Coca-Cola. To parents around the world, the Gerber baby
means quality, and the Gerber company has long been a leader in using quality tools to
uphold its reputation. While Gerber’s quality programs have gone through various stages
over the years, their goal has remained the same: to make sure consumers continue to see
the Gerber baby, which has gone through periodic updatings of its own, as an emblem of
excellence.
Gerber is the leader in the development, manufacturing and marketing of foods and
products for children from birth through age 3. The company dominates the U.S. retail
baby food market with a 70% share against competitors Heinz and Beechnut, and rings
up about $1 billion in annual sales. Gerber employs 6,200 people altogether at its
headquarters and main processing plant in Fremont, MI, and its plants in Fort Smith, AR;
Costa Rica; Mexico; Venezuela; and Poland. Together these facilities produce 190 food
products — which are labeled in 16 languages and distributed to more then 80 countries.
went into the food and the processes involved in manufacturing it. This was one of the
company’s first steps toward committing to quality.
While Gerber’s quality systems have undergone several improvements over the years,
teamwork was “one of the biggest things to hit quality at Gerber,” says George Sheffier, a
retired, 35-year Gerber veteran. He believes that fostering a team atmosphere taught
Gerber how to help employees adjust to change, gave the company ‘a head start on the
diversity issues of the ’90s and was critical when Gerber began spreading quality
techniques throughout its plants.
Once employees recognized the value of teamwork, the company began taking
quality functions out of the quality department and spreading them throughout the plant.
The goal of integrating quality into manufacturing was to build quality into the product
on a more consistent basis. By expanding quality responsibilities to frontline operations,
Gerber hoped to increase process control and reduce line inspections. To accomplish this
purpose, Gerber teamed QA staff with front-line operators in 1988 to establish
procedures for each process. While hesitant at first, front-line employees liked the fact
that they were involved in the process from the start and were able to determine their own
auditing criteria. Within 18 months, Gerber was able to cut its number of line inspectors
and increase its quality auditing functions.
Although Gerber has always tried to create systems that meet the expectations of
parents, the company didn’t always utilize feedback from its customers. It wasn’t until the
company faced its largest crisis to date that Gerber realized the need to link the
customer’s voice with the quality system. This period, in the 1980s, was a defining point
for Gerber, according to Gerber senior QA manager, Jim Fisher. The company lost some
trust in the eye of the consumer, stemming from an instance of consumer tampering that
brought Gerber unwanted national attention. Before the company had the opportunity to
prove itself, the case snowballed into a media frenzy, leaving consumers questioning
Gerber’s quality. Gerber’s history of continuous improvement and its well documented
manufacturing processes paid off, however. The investigation put the company under a
quality discipline as it allowed telephone operators to log customer information into a
database. In turn, trend analysis could be conducted and consumer demands could be
integrated into the product development process. Because parents are up with their
infants throughout the night, the company extended the department’s operating hours in
1991, capturing information 24 hours a day. Gerber takes a daily average of 2,400 calls,
accommodating all languages, and employs a team of letter correspondents to answer the
45,000 letters it receives yearly.
Gerber came to the same conclusion–49 years earlier. In 1947 Gerber management
came to believe that the best way to ensure the safety of its product was to control as
much of the food-making process as possible. At that time the company began forming
alliances with its growers, giving Gerber better control of produce cultivation and
allowing it to keep track of the pesticides growers used. By the 1950s, Gerber had
product needs to be cooked to become commercially sterile, conduct audits of production
facilities to ensure that processing equipment was operating correctly, and review and
improve thermal processing systems. The thermal processing staff grew so large that it
became its own department in 1994, and it continues to work closely with Gerber’s
quality and safety departments today.
Gerber’s dedication to performance excellence continues to serve the company well.
Thinking beyond quality trends in pesticide control continues to put the company ahead
Key Issues for Discussion
1. How do the various definitions of quality discussed in Chapter 1 relate to the quality
practices at Gerber?
2. How does Gerber exhibit the fundamental principles of total quality – customer and
stakeholder focus, participation and teamwork, and a process focus and continuous
improvement?