Early “Quality” Pioneers:
Frederick Taylor
- “Father of scientific management”
- Inspection
- Gauging
Henry Ford
- Standardization (reduced variation)
- Mass use of interchangeable parts
George Edwards (Director of QA, Bell Labs)
- Coined term “Quality Control”
- 1st president of ASQC
H.G. (Harry) Romig and Harold F. Dodge (Bell Labs)
- Acceptance sampling tables
Walter A. Shewhart (1891-1867)
- Pioneer of Modern Quality Control.
- Recognized the need to separate variation into assignable and unassignable causes.
- Founder of the control chart.
- Originator of the plan-do-check-act cycle.
- Perhaps the first to successfully integrate statistics, engineering, and economics.
- Defined quality in terms of objective and subjective quality.
- Objective quality: quality of a thing independent
- Subjective quality: quality relative to how people perceive it.
W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993)
- Most famous of Quality pioneers.
- Studied under Shewart at Bell Laboratories
- Contributions:
- Well known for helping Japanese companies apply Shewart’s statistical process control.
- Main contribution is his Fourteen Points to Quality.
- The 14 points are:
- Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service.
- Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age.
- Cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve quality.
- Constantly and forever improve the system.
- Remove barriers.
- Drive out fear.
- Break down barriers between departments.
- Eliminate numerical goals.
- Eliminate work standards (quotas).
- Institute modern methods of supervision.
- Institute modern methods of training.
- Institute a program of education and retraining.
- End the practice of awarding business on price tag.
- Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.
Joseph Juran (1904-2008)
- Juran is widely credited for adding the human dimension to quality management
- Contributions:
- Directed most of his work at executives and the field of quality management.
- Developed the “Juran Trilogy” for managing quality: Quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement.
- Enlightened the world on the concept of the “vital few, trivial many” which is
the foundation of Pareto charts. - Transferring quality knowledge between East and West
Philip Crosby (1926 – 2001)
- Quality management
- Four absolutes of quality including:
- Quality is defined by conformance to requirements.
- System for causing quality is prevention not appraisal.
- Performance standards of zero defects, not close enough.
- Measurement of quality is the cost of non-conformance.
Armand Feigenbaum (1922)
- Stressed a systems approach to quality (all organizations must be focused on
quality) - Costs of quality may be separated into costs for prevention, appraisal, and failures (scrap, warranty, etc.)
Kaoru Ishikawa (1915-1989)
- Developed concept of true and substitute quality characteristics
- True characteristics are the customer’s view
- Substitute characteristics are the producer’s view
- Degree of match between true and substitute ultimately determines customer satisfaction
- Advocate of the use of the 7 tools
- Advanced the use of quality circles (worker quality teams)
- Developed the concept of Japanese Total Quality Control
- Quality first – not short term profits.
- Next process is your customer.
- Use facts and data to make presentations.
- Respect for humanity as a management philosophy - full participation
Genichi Taguchi (1924)
- Quality loss function (deviation from target is a loss to society)
- Promoted the use of parameter design (application of Design of experiments) or robust engineering
- Goal: develop products and processes that perform on target with smallest variation that are insensitive to environmental conditions.
- Focus is on “engineering design”robust design/parameter design
