Pete,
It was unofficial and I think the use of the "zero-defects" term refers to the non-technical meaning.
Much of training and operations in the late 90s and early 00s was based upon quantifiable measures (such as: number of Soldiers who qualify "expert" on a course that has prescribed time limits, specific target sequences at prescribed ranges, with a given weapon and certain number of rounds, etc, etc). There are many downsides to trying to measure everything and standardize everything to make measurements more easily comparable. The two big ones are...
1) You inevitably create a system where the participants focus on meeting the measured criteria.
"If all the boss cares about is APFT average and DUI's then we'll just PT all day and threaten fire and brimstone upon anyone who has a sip of beer!"
Meanwhile, how much emphasis is placed upon dry-fire drills and rehearsing vehicle egress? Here's a hint: how do you quantify those things?
2) You inevitably create a system where defects stick out on the scorecard like the running tally of errors on the scoreboard at a baseball game. That is the unofficial zero-defect mentality that arose in the 1990s. Risk averse leaders and a risk averse homefront resulted in heavy emphasis upon the error column.
When I was in Bosnia, I did not earn many kudos for facilitating what began as a trickle, and then a stream of families to their pre-war homes in one particular valley, for cracking down on a corrupt and lazy municipal employee who was stealing money intended for refugee camps, or for helping to reveal questionable NGO behavior in my sector (none of those were even mentioned on my OER). No, my kudos were earned by my unit's performance in the Brigade's "BCAT" Safety Assessment (I was the company safety officer). That was the big event that defined the rotation. It was also the most glowing line in both my rater and senior rater comments on the OER for that deployment. Why? Because I helped us to avoid a bunch of negative marks in the error column. Contrast this with my OIF OERs that had almost no mention of anything quantifiable with numbers.
Who cares about accomplishments? Risk-aversion, coupled with an obsession with measuring everything, and a professional education which (then) taught "what" rather than "why" resulted in a lot of leaders who were equipped to do little more than figure out what errors would be held against them, and then try like hell to avoid them.
That is my understanding of what "zero defects" refers to, as well as my understanding of where it came from, and why.
I need a drink and shower.
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