Consequently, having a focus on quality and quality improvement should be a part of every business organization, whether the organization’s business is manufacturing products; selling products or providing services. Broadly defined, quality refers to the ability of a product or service to consistently meet or exceed customer requirements or expectations. However, different customers will have different requirements, so a working definition of quality is customer-dependent. For some decades or so, quality was an important focal point in business. But after a while, the emphasis on quality began to fade, and quality took a backseat to other concerns. However, there has been an upsurge recently in the need for attention to quality. Much of this has been driven by recent experience with costs and adverse publicity associated with wide-ranging recalls that have involved automobiles; and pharmaceuticals just to mention a few.
Quality is more than just a statistical analysis tool for manufacturing lines. When done right, quality should encompass the entire enterprise. Some 50 years after the advent of the Total Quality Management (TQM) drive championed by W. Edwards Deming, manufacturers of all different sizes and stripes are still being dogged by high profile manufacturing quality defects. The list is long, and getting longer every week, and crosses every manufacturing vertically, but many are still at lip-service level agreement with the means required to reach the necessary ends. However, TALK is cheap-RECALLS are not.
Talk to the manufacturing community about quality’s place in today’s environment and a clear pattern emerge – companies are finally grasping the “shared responsibility” aspect of Deming’s teachings. If quality is truly everyone’s responsibility, then the idea goes beyond the shop floor and into the front office, the service department and everywhere else that provides value to customers and shareholders. Ron Atkinson, Chairman of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), has been watching this trend unfold. He describes the path that the idea of quality management in manufacturing has taken over the years. According to Atkinson, concepts crucial to establishing a top-quality manufacturing line have been driven upstream, and expanded to become part of an overall continuous improvement strategy. “Quality has become a systems approach, rather than focusing on one part at a time and whether it’s dimensionally correct. Quality is continuous improvement.”
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, skilled craftsmen performed all stages of production. Pride of workmanship and reputation often provided the motivation to see that the job was done right. One person or a small group of people were responsible for an entire product. A division of labor accompanied the Industrial Revolution; each worker was then responsible for only a small portion of each product. Pride of workmanship became less meaningful because workers could no longer identify readily with the final product. The responsibility for quality then shifted to the foremen. Inspection was either nonexistent or haphazard, although in some instances 100 percent inspection was used.
Frederick Winslow Taylor, the “Father of Scientific Management,” gave new emphasis to quality by including product inspection and gauging in his list of fundamental areas of manufacturing management. G.S. Radford improved Taylor’s methods. Two of his most significant contributions were the notions of involving quality considerations early in the product design stage and making connections among high quality, increased productivity, and lower costs. A core of quality pioneers has shaped current thinking and practice and their key contributions to the field are immensely being appreciated. Walter Shewhart was a genuine pioneer in the field of quality control, and he became known as the “Father of Statistical Quality Control.” He developed control charts for analyzing the output of processes to determine when corrective action was necessary. Shewhart had a strong influence on the thinking of two other gurus, W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran.
W. Edwards Deming. Deming, a statistics professor at New York University in the 1940s, went to Japan after World War II to assist the Japanese in improving quality and productivity. The Union of Japanese Scientists, who had invited Deming, were so impressed that in 1951, after a series of lectures presented by Deming, they established the Deming Prize, which is awarded annually to firms that distinguish themselves with quality management programs. Although the Japanese revered Deming, he was largely unknown to business leaders in the United States. In fact, he worked with the Japanese for almost 30 years before he gained recognition in his own country. Before his death in 1993, U.S. companies turned their attention to Deming, embraced his philosophy, and requested his assistance in setting up quality improvement programs.
Deming compiled a famous list of 14 points he believed were the prescription needed to achieve quality in any organization. His message was that the cause of inefficiency and poor quality is the SYSTEM, not the EMPLOYEES. Deming felt that it was management’s responsibility to correct the system to achieve the desired results. In addition to the 14 points, Deming stressed the need to reduce variation in output (deviation from a standard), which can be accomplished by distinguishing between special causes of variation (i.e., correctable) and common causes of variation (i.e., random). Deming’s concept of profound knowledge incorporates the beliefs and values about learning that guided Japan’s rise to a world economic power.
Don’t miss out and lose out as we discuss W. Edwards Deming’s 14 points DOSAGE in our next Publication.