Demand Flow manufacturing's emphasis on total-quality focus is unbending in its pursuit of manufacturing excellence. Customer demand leads DFT companies to place a higher priority on quality than on production. DFT's enormous savings in scrap and reworked materials and lower overhead costs make possible this intense quality focus. Companies cannot achieve Demand Flow manufacturing without TQC, and they cannot implement TQC without an effective employee involvement program and a consistent flow process. Who knows the real work content of an operation better than the person performing the work every day? In a world-class Demand Flow process, employees are stimulated and offered incentives to strive toward a goal of total quality and continuous process improvement. An effective employee-involvement program must be responsive to be effective. While it may be impossible to implement all employee suggestions immediately, and while many suggestions may not initially appear to be "mission critical," employees must feel that they are valued members of the team and that their suggestions are receiving due consideration. The greatest cause of failure in employee-involvement programs is the unresponsiveness of management and support teams.