Computer, telecommunications and electronics companies are prominent among the 14 founder members of a new European Foundation for Quality Management with a first-year budget of $670,000, formed in the belief that European companies can compete with the Japanese only if they can sharply reduce the consequent costs – in such things as maintenance call-out – of inadequate quality control and design: the brainchild of Philips NV chief C J van der Klugt, who chairs the group’s governing committee, and European Commission president Jacques Delors, the group’s members from the electronic sector with Philips are British Telecommunications Plc (regrettably the only Brit), Companie des Machines Bull, Olivetti SpA and Robert Bosch GmbH; the other nine are Volkswagen AG, Renault SA, Avions Marcel Dassault-Breguet Aviation SA, Gebruder Sulzer AG, Nestle SA, Ciba-Geigy AG, Fiat SpA, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and Electrolux AB.
