All of the four 1999 Baldrige winners have a lot of good things to say about this process, but none seem be able to quantify the expense or return. I think that's one of the biggest fallacies out there. I cannot even comprehend how we could afford not to be involved in improving quality. I can only say that since this improvement effort has begun, we reduced our employee turnover from 80 percentage points to the middle 20s, and that's in an industry that runs at around 100 percent. And with a labor force of nearly 20,000 employees, you can imagine how much money we now save.
Turnover is very expensive.
We also have considerably fewer defects in the organization than we used to. Defects are very costly. So I can't even comprehend how we could financially survive in our market without being in quality. It's an investment that has to be made. It also costs me to buy bed sheets, but I certainly couldn't live without them.