HISTORY OF QUALITY

Revised: July 2015

Quality Through the Ages

2

What is Quality?
Quality has evolved over the many years
Focuses on perspective of the producer
customer
Perfection
Consistency
Eliminating

waste
Speedy delivery
Providing good, usable product
Pleasing customers

Good for the business and good for the

Quality Through the Ages

3

Throughout history quality assurance has been part of production

operations

Babylonia (3000B.C.) Code of Hammurabi: The mason who builds a

house which falls down and kills the inmate shall be put to death

The Egyptians success in constructing pyramids was due to

consistent, well developed methods and procedures and precise
measuring devices

Egyptian wall paintings from 1450 B.C. show evidence of inspection

and measurement

Fact
Stones from the pyramids were cut so precisely that even today it
is impossible to put a knife blade between the blocks.

Quality Through the Ages

4

Age of Craftsmanship (Middle Ages)

Skilled craftsmen served both as

manufacturer and inspector
Craftsmen were organized into guilds
strict advancement through apprenticeship,
journeyman and finally master
Considerable pride in workmanship since
the manufacturer dealt directly with the
customer

Quality - Industrial
Revolution

The Factory System (late 1700s 1800s)

Concept rose out of the Industrial

Revolution in Europe
1798 Eli Whitney expanded the use of
interchangeable parts
Began to divide the craftsmen trades into
specialized tasks
Forced craftsmen to become factory
workers and shop owners to become
production supervisors

Quality - Industrial Revolution

6

The Early 20th Century

Early 1900s Frederick W. Taylor Father of Scientific

Management
Production philosophy driven by specific work tasks
Managers/Engineers performed planning function
Supervisors performed execution function
Focused on increase efficiency (Taylor System)
Quality became the inspectors function
Pros
Manufactures shipped good quality products
Plants employed hundreds to thousands of inspectors
Cons
Defects were still present but removed by inspection
Costly

Quality - Industrial Revolution

7

Led to separating quality from

production

Conflicts and indifference amongst both

workers and their managers
Attitude of Quality was the responsibility of
the quality department
Management focused on production output
and efficiency but delegated quality to the
others

Quality - WWII
8

Post-WWII 1940s to 1950

Production focused due to shortage of goods

Management showed little interest in quality improvement,
preventing defects and errors
Quality was defined by mass inspection

Made in Japan meant inferior products US consumers

purchased domestic goods without question
Dr. Joseph Juran and Dr. W. Edwards Deming

Introduced statistical process control techniques to aid Japanese

manufacturing
Significant focus to educate upper management
With the support of upper management the Japanese were able to
develop a culture of continuous improvement

Japanese Quality

Slow and steady, by the 1970s Japanese products had significantly

penetrated Western markets due to better quality

Dr. Demings 14 Points

9

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of

product and service, with the aim to become competitive,
to stay in business and to provide jobs.
Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age.
Western management must awaken to the challenge,
must accept responsibilities and must create leadership
for change.
Cease dependency on inspection to achieve quality.
Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by
building quality into the product in the first place.
End the practice of awarding business on the basis of
price tag. Instead, minimize the total cost.
Improve constantly and forever the system of production
and service to improve quality and productivity and
thus constantly decrease costs.

14 Points Cont.
10

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Institute leadership. The aim of leadership should be to help people,

machines and gadgets to do a better job.
Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the
company.
Break down barriers between departments. People in research,
design, sales and production must work as a team to foresee
problems of production and application that may be encountered with
the product or service.
Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce asking
for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only
create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low
quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond
the power of the workforce.
(a) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute
leadership. (b) Eliminate management by objectives. Eliminate
management by numbers and numerical goals. Substitute leadership.

14 Points Cont.
11

12.

13.

14.

(a) Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right
to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors
must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. (b)
Remove barriers that rob people in management and in
engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This
means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit
rating and of management by objectives.
Institute a vigorous program of education and self
improvement.
Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the
transformation. The transformation is everybodys job.

Quality - WWII
12

Fact Reported by Hewlett-Packard

In testing 300,000 16K RAM chips HP found

that the Japanese chips incoming failure
rate of 0 defects per 1000 vs 11 and 19 for
U.S. chips.
After 1 000 hrs. of use the failure rate of
the U.S. chips was 27times higher!

Quality 1970s -1980s

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1970s

Global competition increased and higher quality foreign products led

consumers to consider purchasing decision more carefully

1980s

Period of change and awareness of quality consumers, industry and

government
Consumers notice the difference in quality and price Japanese products vs
U.S. made products
Consumers expected products to function and be reliable at a fair price,
U.S. courts supported consumers
The

Consumer Product Safety Commission mandated recalls, government safety

regulations, and rapid increase in product-reliability judgments
The media coverage of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986 further increased
awareness of the importance of quality
Magazines like consumer reports brought attention to product quality standards to
the consumer

Societys attitude changed from the let the buyer beware to let the
producer beware

Quality 1970s -1980s

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Fact

Xerox discovered its Japanese competitors were

selling small copiers for what it cost Xerox to make
them

In 1980 NBC televised Deming in a special

program If Japan CanWhy Cant We?

The program revealed Demings role in transforming

Japanese industry 30 years prior
US companies began to ask for his help
From 1980 until his death in 1993 Demings
leadership and expertise helped companies such as
Ford, GM, Proctor & Gamble to revolution there
approach to quality

Quality 1980s -1990s

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U.S. government recognized quality is

critical to overall economic health

1984 US designated October as National

Quality Month
1985 NASA announced a excellence
award for quality and production
1987 Congress established the Malcom
Baldrige National Quality Award

Quality 1980s -1990s

16

Fact

Chrysler, GM, and Ford reduced the number

of problems reported per 1000 domestic
cars in the first 60 to 90 days of ownership
from 170 in 1987 to 136 in 1991
Japanese manufactures had reduced their
average from 129 to 105 during the same
period; and held 7 of the top 10 spots in the
J.D. Power and Associates Survey

Quality 1980s -1990s

17

The gaps continue to narrow; U.S. firms

have regained much of their global
competitiveness
Total Quality Management (TQM) took
hold in the early 1980s
Fact

By 1989 Florida Power and Light was the

first non Japanese company to be awarded
Deming Prize for quality

18

Total Quality Management

(TQM)

What today is impossible to do in your business, but if it could be

done would fundamentally change what you do? **See the world
anew**
If our factories, through careful work, assure the quality of our
products, it will be to the foreigners interest to get supplies from
us and their money will flow into the kingdom. (French Finance
Minister 1664)
TQM Concepts

Quality is built into products and services

Systems are continuously improved to prevent errors
Conformance to customer requirements is the driving philosophy of
improvement.

With TQM, there are only two possibilities:

It conforms to the requirements and is quality.

It fails to conform to the requirements and is not quality.

1990 2000
19

By the end of the 1990s TQM was considered a fad by

many business leaders.
New quality systems evolved beyond Deming and Juran

ISO 9000 standards introduced (revised in 2000 and 2008 to

increase customer satisfaction)
1995 the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award added a
business results criterion
Six Sigma, developed by Motorola to decrease defects,
Motorola won the Baldrige Award in 1988, and shared its
practices
Quality moved beyond manufacturing into service,
healthcare, education, and government
Advocates are working on a nonprofit category

1990 2000
20

Business Excellence Models

Designed to guide and help organizations to improve

performance and achieve world-class performance
levels
Used to identify opportunities for improvement, build on
areas of strength and implement progressive actions
Companies that adopt these modes base performance
goals on past winners of Baldrige, Deming, European
and other national quality awards
Criteria include:
Leadership
Customer

focus
Innovation and improvement
Results (people, customer, society, performance)
Planning, policy and strategy

2000 Today
21

The concept of quality has evolved to mean far

more than the integrity of a manufactured product
Quality now represents a philosophy, a system of
methodologies and practices, and an ongoing
commitment to business excellence that
encompasses all issues and engages all
individuals within an organization
New ISO standards were implemented in 2000,
emphasizing improvement and meeting customer
needs

Specifies the requirements for a QMS

Provides tools and a philosophical basis

2000 Today
22

The benefits of building an ISO 9001-based QMS include:

Documenting processes forces an organization to focus on how they do

business
Documented processes create repetition, eliminate variation, improve
efficiency and reduce costs
Corrective and preventative measures are developed and become
permanent company-wide solutions
Employee morale is increased as theyre empowered to take control of
their work
Customer satisfaction/loyalty grows as the company delivers proactive
rather than reactive solutions
Better products and services arise from continuous improvement process
Improved profit levels as productivity improves and rework costs are
reduced
Improved internal/external communications employees, customers and
suppliers are assured a voice
Verification by 3rd party auditor builds credibility with customer, supplier
and competitive organizations

Challenges Today
23

Despite widespread awareness of the

importance of quality there are still
challenges today

In 1991 (Ernst & Young) found that 55

percent of U.S. firms were using quality
information to evaluate their performance
at least monthly compared with 70 percent
of Japanese firms
Financial and sales reviews tend to occur
much more frequently than do quality
reviews in the United States

24

Deming 5 Deadly Sins

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPDw
_o3qkT4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2
Wb8SVGMo
2 minutes
http://wn.com/w._edwards_deming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQpY
3lnljBE