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Evolution of the discipline “Quality”

Paradigm of “Quality” was different in different period

Quality paradigms can be divided into 3 main categories:

1. A pre-industrial paradigm of caveat emptor.

2. An industrial paradigm of Quality Control.3. A post-industrial paradigm of Total

Quality Management (TQM). 2

1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 2006 +

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Pre-industrial paradigm

Industrial paradigm

Post-industrial paradigm

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1. Pre-Industrial Paradigm of “caveat emptor”

The first paradigm of quality, starts from ancient times until industrial revolution; and is best described by “caveat emptor.”

Caveat emptor is a principle; “that the buyer is responsible for checking the quality of goods he or she buys.”

Primitive food gatherers learned with time which fruits were edible and which were poisonous.

Primitive hunters learned with time which trees supplied the best wood for making bows or arrows.

The resulting know how was then passed down from generation to generation.

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According to 17th century Economist Nicholas Barbon,

“the qualities of goods are known by their colors, sound, smell, taste, make, or shape. The differences in qualities of goods are very difficultly distinguished; those organs that are proper judges of those differences, do very much disagree; some men have clearer eyes, some more have distinguishable ears, and others have nicer noses and tastes; and every man having a good opinion of his own faculties, it is hard to find a judge to determine which is best.”

Quality was thought of as an instantaneous phenomena, arising from the basic senses.

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Caveat emptor was not feasible in all situations. For more complex products it was not feasible for the consumer to observe quality prior to purchase.

Mechanisms like : Punitive measures, trademarks and guilds were used to extend “caveat emptor” to situations where it was not feasible.

Punitive actions were taken against those craftsmen or workers who produced poor quality work.

For example: In Germany “ bakers who reduced the weight of bread, cakes, and pastry were punished by being locked up in a basket and lowered into the river in front of the whole town.”

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“Mystery of Trade”, became an important element in providing quality products. (Traders serves as an apprenticeship to learn the skills)

The passing down of the procedural knowledge through an apprenticeship became a mainstream component.

In many European countries Guilds were formed that formalized the profession and its embedded expertise.

In China the names/marks of craftsmen, slaves, and officials were inscribed in weapons to ensure traceability of poor product.

These marks became more than just tracers, however, they became a source of pride and when coupled with trades, they quite literally became “Trade marks” and were a source of great professional pride.

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2. Industrial Paradigm of “Quality Control”

Industrial revolution and the factory system gave rise to increased product and process complexity and hence difficulties with the Control of Quality.

All aspects of organizational management evolved like: issues of complexity, control, motivation, separation of labor and management, piece pay compensation schemes, and eventually the system of scientific management system.

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Scientific management

Frederick W. Taylor father of scientific management.

As Engineer with Midvale Steel in late 1800’s, he observed and identified following:

1. Problem of little standardization.2. Unclear responsibilities.3. No incentive/rewards for performance.4. No training.

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By 1911 he had developed these ideas into four key managerial principles:

1. Develop a science for each man’s work,2. Train and develop the workman,3. Heartily cooperate with others, and4. Divide work responsibility between labor and

management.

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Taylor emphasized on : 1. Time study,2. Standardization,3. Compensation schemes, etc.

Organizational structures changed as a result of division of labor and management.

Inspectors worked along with workers under Production Foreman. Since productivity was the first priority of the production

foreman, quality suffered. Blame for poor quality was likely to go from the production

foreman, and back to workers, thus making inspection an enemy of production.

Much unfit material was delivered to military customers during World war I because of this structure, and many firms took the inspectors out of production’s control and put them under inspection foreman and a chief inspector.

This was the beginning of the Quality Control department

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JURAN,1980

These revolutionary changes in the work environment led to a new paradigm of the “Quality discipline”- Paradigm of Quality Control.

And the responsibility for controlling quality characteristics shifted from the consumer back to the producer, and it became systematized and functionalized.

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The inception of Inspection Engineering department at Western Electric’s Bell Telephone Laboratories (Hawthorne Works) in 1924 marked the beginning of a new era in the management of Quality.

Among the department members were Walter Shewhart, Harold Dodge, George Edwards, Joseph Juran, and Harry Romig.

This group gave following contributions to the practice of quality control and management:

1. Acceptance sampling,2. Statistical Process control,3. Responsibility of Management. (Edwards Coined the

term “Quality Assurance” and advocated quality as part of management's responsibility).

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1929 Shewhart began the Joint Committee for the development of Statistical Applications in Engineering and Manufacturing.

1930 American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) formed a committee on “Interpretation and presentation of data.”

1931 British Standards Institution was formed.

1935 British Standards Number 600 entitled “Application of Statistical methods to industrial standardization and Quality Control.”

1938 U.S Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics Act.

1941 Guide for Quality Control (Z1.1-1941), Control Charts methods for analyzing data (Z1.2-1941).

1942 Control Charts methods for controlling quality during production (Z1.3-1942), MIL-STD-105D

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1929 to 1946

1943 Courses were established to teach military suppliers.

A Stanford professor and key instructors in the program, estimated 7553 people for training (409,000 hours of instruction).

31,000 students went through statistical quality control training.

1946 Formation of the American Society of Quality Control. (gathering of quality professionals)

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1929 to 1946

The great influx of newly trained quality practitioners changed once again the organization structure designed to managed quality.

New procedures, quality control manuals, in house statistical trainings, quality data systems, formal problem solving approaches, measurement standards, quality audits and quality reports.

The carrying out of these new functions became the task of the “Quality Engineer”, and associated quality control department.

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The Quality control department eventually gave way to the Quality Assurance department, which typically had elevated status and reported directly to the Vice President of manufacturing.

One must certainly question why such wide-spread training and application of modern statistical methods did not have more impact on industry?

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“The Top Executives could usually not afford to attend an

Eight day course on Statistics…”Wareham and Stratton, 1991

W.Edwards Deming; student of Walter Shewhart, also observed the relative ineffectiveness of wartime training, and this became a theme in his later trainings.

Juran states several reasons for the decline of Statistical quality Control in the 1950`s:

The Control Chart applications were not appealing to upper management.

When recession came, companies down sized their quality Control groups, which had been previously funded.

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When the discipline began to evolve beyond the paradigm of Quality Control,

the business Environment was not supportive of or ready for such

development.

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JURAN

Unfortunately,

It's most important that top-management be statistics minded.

In the absence of sincere manifestations of interest at the top, little will happen below……

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JURAN

There was also realization that the management of Quality of manufactured products require Quality Control of all functional areas of the organization.

This gave Concept of “Total Quality Control” or TQC i.e.,

“QUALITY IS EVERYBODY`S JOB IN A BUSSINESS”

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3. Post-Industrial Paradigm of “TQM”

It was in Japan, where the seeds of the next paradigm were sewn most strongly.

After World War II ,Japan's industry had to be built from the ground up.

In 1950, JUSE(Japanese Union of Statistics and Engineer's) Managing Director “Kenichi Koyanagi” requested Deming, who had been in Japan several years, to deliver lectures concerning quality control methods and Statistical techniques.

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Deming's Courses included:

1. Training of Q.C Engineers and Statisticians in industry.

2. Several lectures for Top Management on the importance of Decision Making based on factual data.

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“… You could Capture markets of the world over within 5 years”.

And as a result

“they beat that prediction; and with in 4 years, buyers

all over the world were screaming for Japanese products”.

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WALTON,1986

It was here that Deming told them:

Deming donated the royalties from publications of his Japanese lectures back to JUSE,where they were used to initiate the Deming prize in 1951.

The purpose of Deming prize was to recognize thoseCompanies that have successfully applied TQC based on Statistical Quality Control.

JURAN was subsequently invited to Japan in 1954, where he taught Managers, Engineers and Professors; the organizational structures and functions for management of quality.

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In 1962,the phenomena of “Quality Circles”

which began in Japan is considered as an important step in the revolution towards a

new “Paradigm of Quality”

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The purpose of “Quality Circles” was to gather a small

group of departmental workers together to spend time

solving departmental Quality problems.

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In Japan, by 1966 there were 8000 registered Quality

Circles (QC) and some 200,000 by 1984

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JUSE;1985

Japanese TQC was responsible for innovations like:

Kanban system Just in time (JIT) manufacturing Zero Defects (ZD). Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Management By Objectives (MBO)

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Japanese TQC represents the third Paradigm of quality discipline.

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The rise of consumerism, and thus higher quality

requirements, began in the late 1960`s and had a profound

impact on the management of quality from the customer

Perspective.

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JURAN,1970

Many companies found competitive success when quality dimensions were brought into consideration during the strategic planning process.

Example in 1970`s, Xerox's share of the U.S copier market fell from 96% to 46 % due to Japanese Competitors.

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A new emphasis on benchmarking Competitors performance, attending to customer satisfaction, and focus on new product development helped regain Xerox's status as an industry leader.

Thus, the new emphasis on “Strategic Quality Management” placed new demands on the organization in terms of:

Market research Bench marking Life cycle costing Measurement of customer satisfaction.

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As a nation we are just beginning to understand the power of “Quality as a competitive weapon”.

We are just beginning to fully realize that we are faced with never-ending spiral of increased competition and heightened customer expectation.

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DAVID KEARNS (XEROX)

An important event which crystallized Quality as a organizational strategy was the inception of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in USA and the subsequent development of National awards in Australia,France,Canada,Great Britain & Mexico.

In 1988,the MBNQA has had several hundred corporate applicants, tens of thousands of companies have requested the application guidelines.

Organizational “Quality Practices” become the benchmark requirement for supplier certification, started by Ford with the Q101 program and made famous by Motorola's request that all supplier's make plans for pursuing the MBNQA.

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European Economic Community set forth organizational Quality system Standards which must be met in order for firms to access EEC’s markets.

The ISO 9000 Series embodied comprehensive Quality Management concepts and guidance

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The constant improvement of Quality in a particular market segment makes it increasingly difficult for a firm to create new value with its products. In order to enhance competitive stance, companies have to focus on getting better at understanding the unarticulated needs of their customers, and develop solutions aimed at total value creation.

Another way is “to broaden its scope and focus on the community/Society i.e., Green manufacturing efforts, and other Environmental health and safety programs/standards.”

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Future of QUALITY? …What's Next??