Chase and Stewart (1994) appropriately pursue a more systematic approach to customer server relationship management during its critical 'moments of truth, a relationship that practitioners often view as too nebulous to manage for total quality. Their advocacy of fail-safing as first response represents a pragmatic and parsimonious approach that recognizes the current and significant disparity between manufacturing and service quality. Many of the examples within the article do not represent true poka-yokes; rather than providing assurance or prevention of errors, they tend to merely foster or encourage their minimization. Service process errors often
immediately and irrevocably translate into defective service products, and so require the process goal of zero
first time defects. Such a goal is not attainable through statistical monitoring of the dynamic marketplace; it can
only be assured through the proaction that poka-yoke provides.