After having emptied its contents of baked beans into the saucepan, of course. In the act of
throwing the emptied can away without a second thought, these housewives are collectively
paying a daily million tributes to the quality of the tin can which brought them something
to go with their breakfast bacon – by ignoring it. The quality of these cans (which is to say
the way they fulfil their intended purpose) is so superlatively good that it may safely be
taken for granted – not once, not twice, but a million times a day. Now that is real quality!
An invisible input. Achieved by a succession of invisible people, employed in the oncedespised
but lately respected calling of quality control, right back up the supply chain which
ends when the emptied can is tossed absent-mindedly into the garbage bin. Achieved by the
men and women in the cannery who control torrents of output streaming along the
production lines at hundreds of cans per minute. At these vast output rates it is not possible
to make a little mistake. So, very few mistakes are made. Achieved by their counterparts in
the can-making plant; by those upstream in the tinplate mill; by those further back in the
steel casting and rolling mill … an unremitting application of statistical method and quality
skill which culminates in an emptied can, its purpose fulfilled, being casually tossed onto
the rubbish dump – by the million, and rarely does a dud appear. (When did you last see a
can with its ends domed-out, blown?) The rare defectives are not counted even in parts per
million; they occur as one per several million, if at all.