Putting the Quality in Quality Bakers: The Computer Chip and Contemporary Bread-making

Abstract

This paper arises out of work I have been doing for the past two and a half years, now moving towards publication, on a major New Zealand bread baking company, called Quality Bakers New Zealand Ltd. The name itself is probably little known to you though you will be much more aware of the Goodman Fielder empire which grew out of and was in large part originally financed by the baking company.

I am not going to give a potted history of Quality Bakers as a whole, except what is needed to make the story comprehensible, but to look at the gradual adoption over many years of what is these days called Total Quality Management, or as it is within that company, 'the QB Way'. This may seem an odd preoccupation for an historian because it is a subject which still seems to be treated purely as a management technique without much philosophical content.