MEXICO : Progress and Promise : Viewpoints: Comment on the Emerging Mexico : Quality Control

Julia Bertha Gonzalez, in her 20s, from Ciudad Juarez, is a second-year graduate student in business administration at Monterrey Technical Institute. She has an undergraduate degree in nutritional chemistry.

As a research assistant at the institute’s quality control center, she is helping a Monterrey department store chain improve its customer service record. She and a team of other researchers hold weekly meetings with the company’s middle managers and employees to monitor progress.

“Here we are immersed in the search for quality. My way of thinking has changed a lot. I am going to look for a job in the quality control center of a food company in Ciudad Juarez. . . .

“People can make a difference. . . .

“Mexico is facing many challenges. In Monterrey, there is an emphasis on quality and improvement, which is not felt much in the rest of the country. They have not had to face competition. But that is going to have to change. . . .

“The period of adjustment (from a protected economy to a market economy) is short, and businesses are barely getting started. We have to redefine our whole business culture. Businesses have to become more focused on the customer. . . .

“Attitudes toward workers must also change. When Cydsa, one of the big Monterrey companies, opened a factory in San Luis Potosi, they put in sports fields and offered workers transportation, which no other company provided. Soon, all the other companies offered those benefits.”

* ABOUT THIS SECTION

The principal writers for this special report on Mexico were Marjorie Miller and Juanita Darling of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau, and Richard Boudreaux of The Times’ Managua Bureau. Don Bartletti, of The Times’ San Diego Edition, took the photographs.