Competitive Advantage. Competitive Advantage simply means that your company does something better than the competition-as judged by the cus¬tomers. If you have the lowest priced product, for the customer who seeks quality, you have no advantage. Competitive advantage is driven by being better in customer service, product quality or productivity, as measured in the average unit cost of the product or service. Starting in the early 1980s, American busi¬ness jumped on the quality bandwagon. The goal was to reduce errors or defects in products and, later, services. A secondary goal was to reduce process cycle time, how long it takes to complete the total process. This contributed greatly to the efficiency of American industry and helped our companies win back market share that had been lost to foreign com¬petitors, as well as compete domestically. The only failing of the quality movement was that it forgot about everything else. One of the forgotten “things” was, in some cases, the customer. So, while quality improved, competitive advantage did not always nat¬urally follow.