A Chronology of Quality, Part 3

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Published on Quality Digest (http://www.qualitydigest.com) Home > A Chronology of Quality, Part 3

A Chronology of Quality, Part 3

Quality in crisis
Matthew Barsalou

Published: 02/20/2013 Editors note: This is part three of a four-part series about the history of quality. For a description of the earlier years in the quality movement, see part one and part two. While Japan was organizing quality circles, the United States started the zero defects movement based on the writings of Philip B. Crosby. In his book, Quality Is Free (Mentor, second ed. 1980), Crosby explains that mistakes are caused by lack of knowledge and lack of attention. He believed that lack of knowledge can be corrected through proven methods, but lack of attention requires a person to reappraise his morals because he has an attitude problem. [ad:23024] Crosby proposed that simply paying attention is a major step on the way to achieving a zero defect rate. He also said that management must inform workers of the need for a zero defects mindset and claimed that 85 percent of all problems can be solved by the immediate supervisor. Of the remaining 15 percent, 13 percent can be solved within the next two levels of supervisors or departments.

In search of zero defects

In 1965, in his book What Is Total Quality Control (Prentice Hall, 1988), Kaoru Ishikawa recalls observing the zero defect movement first-hand. He predicted that it would fail because it was a movement without tools and became a movement of mere will that emphasized that if everybody did his best, there would be no defects. Ishikawa added that the United States was heavily influenced by Taylorisim, where workers are regarded as machines and their humanity is ignored. Joseph Juran argued against zero defects programs as early as 1966, when he did a study showing those programs were primarily in defense and aerospace companies. He believed that zero defects programs were typically implemented at the request of the customer, which was the U.S. government. Juran visited companies that claimed to have been successful in reducing defects through the use of zero defects programs, but his visits failed to find any evidence of positive results. During the early 1960s, Shigeo Shingo proposed a method of dropping the defect rate down close to zero using his successive check method. This method calls for workers to inspect each item they receive when they receive it. This would allow for the work of the person in the previous operation to be checked, and mistakes would be caught much more quickly than by using inspections or statistical process control at the end of the manufacturing process. In Zero Quality Control (Productivity Press, 1986), Shingo gives the example of one television manufacturing company that had a 15-percent

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defect rate. The company was able to reduce that to 6.5 percent by using quality circles and statistical process control. When the company began to use Shingos successive check method, the defect rate dropped to 0.016 percent. Shingo explains that people forget things, and urging production workers to simply pay more attention is as good as asking workers to become god. He recommends poka-yoke, which means mistake-proofingthe use of a method or device that prevents a mistake from being made or makes the mistake obvious at a glancetherefore attaining zero defects. In 1961, Shingo was observing a manufacturing operation at Yamada Electric and watched a worker consistently forgetting to install one of the springs in a switch. He suggested a modification to the operation so that the worker would take the required springs out of a box and place them in a holder before they were assembled into the switch. If any springs were still in the holder after the switch was assembled, the worker would know that a spring had been forgotten. In one of his articles, Juran claimed that most quality-related mistakes could be controlled by management, and that the remaining errors are caused by situations such as lack of worker skill or conflicting standards. He also reviewed the state of quality in different parts of the world and found that although U.S companies often had a quality department, quality-related training was lacking for supervisors, and it was often difficult for quality professionals to work with other departments within an organization. Juran thought that Taylorism made sense at a time when workers and line supervisors didnt have the skills or education for making decisions, but now planning and performing should be recombined in the United States. He found that Western European companies often had line supervisors with more authority than U.S. supervisors as well as workers with more skills than their U.S. counterparts, but he believed that Eastern European quality was hampered by central planning that protected companies from the demands of the market and a lack of competition. This protection made it difficult for them to solve quality-related problems. In 1969, Juran stated that Japans quality revolution showed considerable promise for taking Japan to world leadership in the quality arena.

Beginning of the quality crisis

During the 1970s and early 1980s, U.S. automakers could not compete with the quality of their Japanese counterparts. Automotive components are designed with a tolerance range, and even when U.S. manufacturers were producing parts to specification, they couldnt compete with Japanese parts. For example, Ford Motor Co. was producing transmissions but was also ordering the exact same transmission from Japan. Transmissions made in the United States were failing far more often than the Japanese transmissions, so Ford engineers disassembled the two types of units to determine what the differences were. The Ford-built transmissions were all within the specification limits, but the measurements were all at different points within the tolerance range. The Japanese transmissions were built exactly the same, which eliminated variability and resulted in a better transmission. In 1980, Ford finally realized something was afoot in Japan, so members of Ford visited a Japanese assembly plant to see what was going on. The Ford people observed that Mazda could assemble a car comparable to Fords with only 60 percent of the effort and far fewer quality problems. Chrysler spent part of the 1980s being supported by the U.S. government but failed to implement lean methods. Ford and General Motors were both in severe financial trouble too, but adopted lean methods to help save themselves, according to Daniel Roos, Daniel T. Jones, and James P. Womack in The Machine That Changed the World (Free Press, 2007). During the 1970s and early 1980s, the auto industry wasnt the only manufacturing arena in which the United States had trouble competing with Japan. The quality of U.S. consumer goods was terrible compared to Japanese goods, so many Americans were buying Japanese products, which resulted in U.S. manufacturing companies losing market share and workers losing jobs.

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U.S. television manufacturers accused Japan of using low wages and government subsidies to help Japanese television manufacturers. Zenith Radio Corp. even filed a dumping petition against Japan. However, Japanese manufacturers were using lean manufacturing methods to produce televisions, and this helped them to produce higher quality products at lower prices. Although lean manufacturing isnt the same as quality assurance, it does contribute to quality. Defective parts are identified more quickly because the parts are used soon after they are produced. During the mid-1970s, the failure rate for U.S. televisions was five times higher than for those made in Japan. Most consumers dont purchase televisions frequently so may not have realized the quality difference between Japanese and U.S. televisions, but as Juran noted, bulk buyers, like hotels, did. During this time, nearly one-third of U.S. workers in the television manufacturing industry lost their jobs.

U.S. discovers quality and quality gurus

Crosby published Quality Is Free in 1979, which helped increase awareness of the need for quality. This was followed in 1980 by a wake-up call for U.S. industry when the documentary If Japan Can, Why Cant We? from the series NBC White Paper aired on NBC. This documentary was created by Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason and introduced U.S. executives to W. Edwards Deming and the Japanese quality movement. Jurans 1969 prediction that Japan would lead the world in quality had come true. U.S. manufacturers were still producing as though they were in a sellers market, but the documentary clearly illustrated that things had changed, and U.S. manufacturers would have to change how they did business. If Japan Can, Why Cant We? was the tipping point that launched U.S. industries interest in quality; however, John Butman in Juran: A Lifetime of Influence (Wiley, 1997) reports that Juran thought the documentary set the quality movement back by five years and disagreed with the credit it gave to Deming and himself for bringing quality to Japan. There are men known as gurus in the field of quality. Although they arent the only ones who helped spread the word about quality, they are the most famous. In the United States, Deming, Juran, and Crosby are honored with guru status as are Armand Feigenbaum and Walter Shewhart. Among the quality gurus in Japan are Ishikawa, Shingo, Genichi Taguchi, and Taiichi Ohno. In a 1990 article in Training magazine, writer Joseph Oberle is quoted as saying, You can send your top managers to Crosbys college, order Jurans videotapes and materials from his institute, or join a waiting list to pay Deming to tell you, in person, what a fool youve been. In his book, Architect of Quality (McGraw-Hill 2003), Juran said that Deming believed statistics alone could solve quality problems, and that total quality control was unnecessary because statistical quality control is already total. Each of the gurus had a different method and didnt always agree with each other. In Quality or Else (Mariner Books, 1993), Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason provide several examples of the gurus attitudes toward each other, including Deming making fun of Crosbys concept of zero defects by sarcastically asking, How about do it right the next time? Makes just as much sense. In another vignette, Crosby describes the statistics expert Taguchi as an OK person, but one must have a doctorate in math or economics to understand him; that most American quality professionals wouldnt understand him, yet theyd say if its incomprehensible in Japanese, it must be good for you. In Quality and Me (Jossey Bass, 1999), Crosby writes that he respected the work of Deming and Juran but they were in different businesses: Deming an expert in statistics, and Juran an expert in quality control and quality engineering. But he was dealing with quality management, which is not quality control or statistics. He considered their ideas irrelevant to his work.

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The increased interest in quality during the 1980s had a big effect on the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC). At the end of the 1970s, ASQC only had 32,000 members. Most managers seemed to view the society as an organization for low-level technical people. Most members were in the manufacturing sector, and few were in positions higher than supervisor or engineer. By the end of the 1990s, however, service-sector membership had grown significantly, and many of the people in the ASQC were in high-level management positions. During the early 1980s, the papers presented at ASQC conferences were primarily of a technical nature, but by the middle of the 1990s, nearly half of the papers were management-oriented. In 1997 the ASQC changed its name to the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and focused on training for quality professionals, spreading the news about new ideas for quality improvement.

About The Author

Matthew Barsalou
Matthew Barsalou is a quality manager with experience working in the automotive industry in Germany, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, England, and China. He is an ASQ-certified Six Sigma Black Belt, quality engineer, and quality technician, and a TV-certified quality manager, quality management representative, and auditor. He has a bachelor of science in industrial sciences, a master of liberal studies with emphasis in international business, and is completing a master of science in industrial engineering from the Wilhelm Bchner Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany. 2013 Quality Digest Magazine. Copyright on content held by Quality Digest or by individual authors. Contact Quality Digest for reprint information. Source URL (retrieved on 03/04/2013): http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insiderarticle/chronology-quality-part-3.html Links: [1] http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/chronology-quality-part-1.html [2] http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-article/chronology-quality-part-2.html [3] http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Is-Free-Making-Certain/dp/0451625854 [4] http://www.amazon.com/What-Total-Quality-Control-Japanese/dp/0139524339 [5] http://www.juran.com/elifeline/elifefiles/2009/11/Quality-Problems-RemediesNostrums_JMJuran-94.pdf [6] http://books.google.com/books/about/Zero_Quality_Control.html?id=gkE8K7axQbYC [7] http://www.juran.com/elifeline/elifefiles/2009/11/Mobilizing-for-the-1970s_JMJuran-94.pdf [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management [9] http://www.juran.com/elifeline/elifefiles/2009/11/Taylor-System-and-Quality-Control_JMJuran94.pdf [11] http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.uk/operations/honsqm/articles/Robust.pdf [12] http://www.amazon.com/Machine-That-Changed-World-Revolutionizing/dp/0743299795 [13] http://asq.org/qic/display-item/index.html?item=12878 [15] http://www.amazon.com/Juran-Lifetime-Influence-John-Butman/dp/0471172103 [16] http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Quality-J-M-Juran/dp/0071589783 [17] http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Else-Lloyd-Dobyns/dp/039563749X [18] http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Me-Lessons-EvolvingLife/dp/0787947024#reader_0787947024

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