Book excerpt: With C. Martin Hinckley's new book Make No Mistake! An Outcome Based Approach to Mistake-Proofing, that vision can become a reality. If you work for a company that emphasizes traditional quality control methods, it's unlikely that you've seen defects eliminated despite your substantial efforts. Make No Mistake! clarifies the reasons why such traditional methods fail and shows how world-class quality can be achieved at a minimal cost through mistake-proofing — the practice of controlling virtually every source of potential errors. As the author states, "The great value of mistake-proofing is that, independent of the cause, psychological factor, production stage, or potential consequences, it blocks or warns about an undesired outcome at a point in the process when the consequences can be minimized." Truly the first of its kind, Make No Mistake! is a compendium of the best methods for reducing complexity, variation, confusion and the other root causes of defects — but the centerpiece of this powerful mistake-proofing tool is an outcome-based classification system that focuses on preventing rather than detecting defects. Even more importantly, Hinckley's mistake-proofing documentation forms will help you adapt this methodology to your own defect prevention efforts. Make No Mistake! is an amazing compilation of mistake-proofing tools that is encyclopedic in scope. Because mistake-proofing is a skill that improves through familiarity with previous solutions, Hinckley's new classification systems is the key to rapidly finding outstanding solutions to current problems on the shop floor. Make No Mistake! is one book that will be invaluable in your company's quest for quality. Make No Mistake! includes: Over 200 mistake-proofing examples from varied industries Easy-to-use mistake-proofing documentation forms you can use on the job Introduction to principles of mistake-proofing and design for assembly A quick, step-by-step methodology for developing superior mistake-proofing concepts Listing of select suppliers of mistake-proofing devices