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can anyone help identify these please (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter DBOYD
- Start date
This was used in the waning days of the DDR as a marketing gimmick.
It purportedly identifies the glass as being of first quality, 'erste Qualitaet', a German figure of speech meaning top notch. That Zeiss itself had been founded on the premise of nothing but the best, enforced by old Carl's ball peen hammer quality control, was not relevant to the apparatchiks running the shop.
In the event, the entire output was so labeled, so the symbol lost any meaning very quickly. If this reminds some readers of 'zero defects', 'six sigma' or similar management spleens of recent years, the thought process leading to this is quite identical.
It purportedly identifies the glass as being of first quality, 'erste Qualitaet', a German figure of speech meaning top notch. That Zeiss itself had been founded on the premise of nothing but the best, enforced by old Carl's ball peen hammer quality control, was not relevant to the apparatchiks running the shop.
In the event, the entire output was so labeled, so the symbol lost any meaning very quickly. If this reminds some readers of 'zero defects', 'six sigma' or similar management spleens of recent years, the thought process leading to this is quite identical.
WJC
Well-known member
Six Sigma sure made a lot of money for a couple of guys in Texas. But, if you go back to Deming's "14 points," you will learn all you need to know about the concept. But then, that wouldn't give you the opportunity to sell study courses, would it?
Bill
WJC
Well-known member
The forerunner of Six Sigma had a lot to do with optics, especially Asian optics!
Deming was send to Japan to help MacArthur with the census after WW2. But he was also an efficiency expert. He taught the Japanese that if a tolerance of .001" was good, .0005" could be so much better and, with certain quality steps in place, could be reproduced every time.
Our people wouldn't listen; the Japanese did; they were humble. And that eventually brought the American auto industry to its knees!
It's now called the Toyota method or the Honda method, and everyone has to play the game, or loose contracts—you know, ISO 9001:XXXX. However, while the concept goes back to Francis Bacon in 1620—and has been known by other names—it was Deming who brought it to the fore in the last century.
All the bull that has blossomed from it, and has created classes and expensive text books from it, could be narrowed to a pamphlet of Deming’s “14 points”—at least for those capable of making decisions on their own. But then, some people just have an unquenchable thirst for solving those non-existent problems, especially if there is money to be made. And with gullibility running so deep in some circles, those non-existent problems can loom as large as the profits to be made! :t:
Bill
Thank you all! I happen to have a pal in Jena now retired from Zeiss / Jenoptik, so I asked him too. He says it was the DDR QA system from c the 1960s
He referred me to some German Wiki pages 'Gutezeichen der DDR' (umlaut to the 'u')
I have just finished an email to him more or less trying to explain all the ISO 9001 etc fallacies which currently abound - nothing much changes!
Before he retired, I had the privilege of visiting Jena on many occasions and many visits and conducted tours of the post-Wende Zeiss factories, which formerly had been a Russian centre of excellence for military etc optics, so had been crawling with Russian soldiers guarding the site and the workers. But it always spooked me a bit, when I interacted with the senior managers there, that most of these people had not long ago been serving their Russian masters and in many other countries undergoing regime change would have been removed from office pronto.
I was delighted once to get presented by my colleagues boss with a replica original zeiss microscope under a glass dome - scratch made as an 'apprentice piece' by the Jenoptik apprentices. Pre-Wende, the apprentice training centre alone extended to ten acres and employed about 200 instructor etc staff and about 2000 apprentices. Many of the workers (about 100000 including families ) were housed in concrete blockhouses of flats in the suburb of Lobeds, but unlike social housing in the UK, there was no sign of petty crime or vandalism or even rubbish strewn about. There was a BMW showroom in the middle of Lobeda where brand new BMWs were lined up night and day outside with little security protection.
Happy memories!
He referred me to some German Wiki pages 'Gutezeichen der DDR' (umlaut to the 'u')
I have just finished an email to him more or less trying to explain all the ISO 9001 etc fallacies which currently abound - nothing much changes!
Before he retired, I had the privilege of visiting Jena on many occasions and many visits and conducted tours of the post-Wende Zeiss factories, which formerly had been a Russian centre of excellence for military etc optics, so had been crawling with Russian soldiers guarding the site and the workers. But it always spooked me a bit, when I interacted with the senior managers there, that most of these people had not long ago been serving their Russian masters and in many other countries undergoing regime change would have been removed from office pronto.
I was delighted once to get presented by my colleagues boss with a replica original zeiss microscope under a glass dome - scratch made as an 'apprentice piece' by the Jenoptik apprentices. Pre-Wende, the apprentice training centre alone extended to ten acres and employed about 200 instructor etc staff and about 2000 apprentices. Many of the workers (about 100000 including families ) were housed in concrete blockhouses of flats in the suburb of Lobeds, but unlike social housing in the UK, there was no sign of petty crime or vandalism or even rubbish strewn about. There was a BMW showroom in the middle of Lobeda where brand new BMWs were lined up night and day outside with little security protection.
Happy memories!
PS
Forgot to mention - the Optical Museum in Jena is a very special place and so is the old showpiece Planetarium. Nearby places such as Erfurt, Weimar and all along the Saale Valley are most interesting too. Much grimmer, but the site of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, overlooking Weimar, is worth a chilling visit ( there is a touching memorial plaque inside Jena West rail station in memory of all who passed through the junction there from all over the Reich, to their deaths mainly from forced labour at Buchenwald. Immediately post war, the Russians ran Buchenwald to incarcerate dissidents and political prisoners, so essentially little changed.
Forgot to mention - the Optical Museum in Jena is a very special place and so is the old showpiece Planetarium. Nearby places such as Erfurt, Weimar and all along the Saale Valley are most interesting too. Much grimmer, but the site of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, overlooking Weimar, is worth a chilling visit ( there is a touching memorial plaque inside Jena West rail station in memory of all who passed through the junction there from all over the Reich, to their deaths mainly from forced labour at Buchenwald. Immediately post war, the Russians ran Buchenwald to incarcerate dissidents and political prisoners, so essentially little changed.