The origins of Total Quality Management can be traced back to early 1920s when

statistical theory was first applied to product quality control. Product quality control was
determined through inspections. This involved measuring, examining and testing the
products, processes and services against specific requirements to ensure that each element
adhered to set standards and guidelines. This algorithm worked for quite some time. Over
time, however, businesses began to grow and expand. More and more products were
manufactured throughout the day. The Hawthorne experiments in the late 1920s showed
how worker productivity could be impacted by participation. Also during the 1930s,
Walter Shewhart developed the methods for statistical analysis and control of quality.
If quality is important, so are the people that propose it. It is human nature to
regard great men and women who have contributed to the evolution of human thought
and progress. Improvements in productivity and reductions in cost in manufacturing can
have such an impact that they surpass technical advances. Quality also is motivational
and increasingly concerns us all. This is partly a result of the impact of the Gurus, but
also simplifies their idea.
Dr. William Edwards Deming is the one Quality Guru most people connected
with industry has heard of, regarded by many as the leading quality guru in the United
States. Trained as a statistician, his expertise was used during World War II to assist the
United States in its effort to improve the quality of war materials. Deming found his
quality improvement theories irrelevant to U.S. business leaders. They were interested in
quantity, not quality. Deming found a more appreciative audience in Japan, where he was
conducting post-war census work. He was invited to speak about his views during a nowfamous dinner in the early 1950's. Dr. Deming told the group that if they would follow
his directions, they could achieve the desired outcome in five years. Few of the leaders
believed him. But they were ashamed to say so and would be embarrassed if they failed
to follow his suggestions. As Dr. Deming told it, "They surprised me and did it in four
years." Decades later, the Emperor of Japan awarded Dr. Deming with the highest
Japanese award for a civilian in recognition for his decades of hard work and leadership
he gave to the Japanese people and their government.
Dr. Deming estimated that management was responsible for more than 85% of the
causes of variation. This formed his central message to the Japanese. Deming created 14
points which provide a framework to developing knowledge in the workplace and can be
used to guide long term business plans and aims. He produced his 14 Points for
Management, in order to help people understand and implement the necessary
transformation. Deming said that adoption of, and action on, the 14 points are a signal
that management intend to stay in business. They apply to small or large organisations,
and to service industries as well as to manufacturing. However, the 14 points should not
be seen as the whole of his philosophy, or as a recipe for improvement. They need careful
discussion in the context of one's own organisation. Deming describes the main barriers
faced by management to improving effectiveness and continual improvement known as
Demings Deadly Diseases. He was referring here to US industry and their management

practices. Walter Shewhart originated the concept of the PDCA cycle and introduced it to
Deming. Deming promoted the idea widely in the 1950s and it became known as the
Deming Wheel or the Deming cycle. The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle consists of
four steps or stages which must be gone through to get from `problem-faced' to `problem
solved.
Joseph Juran shared a connection with Deming. Juran was also invited to Japan in
the early 1950s by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). While Japan
was price-competitive with the rest of the world, the quality of product did not measure
up. Like Deming, Juran stressed the importance of total quality management. However,
he summed it up by saying total quality management begins at the top of an organization
and works its way down. He developed 10 steps to quality improvement. The steps bring
down to three main areas of management decision-making known as Jurans Quality
Trilogy. These are Quality Planning, Quality Improvement and Quality Control. He
focused on Quality Control as an integral part of management control in his lectures to
the Japanese in the early 1950s. He believes that quality does not happen by accident, it
must be planned, and that quality planning is part of the trilogy of planning, control and
improvement. He warns that there are no shortcuts to quality.
Philip B. Crosby was a contemporary leader in TQM. He didn't engineer
principles or steps. He simply made TQM easier for the layman to implement by breaking
it down to an understandable ideology that organizations should adopt. Crosby re-defined
quality to mean conformity to standards set by the industry or organization that must
align with customer needs. There are Four Absolutes of Quality Management necessary
for conformity: First, Definition of quality is conformance to requirements, not goodness;
Second, System of quality is prevention; Third, Performance standard is zero defects;
Fourth, Measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance. Crosby advocates a goal
of zero defects. Crosbys Zero Defects philosophy believes in total perfection or to do
the job right the first time. In his view, to have any other goal is essentially a
commitment to producing a certain amount of defective material. Continuous
improvement should be means that management uses to achieve zero defects.
Armand Feigenbaum is the originator of Total Quality Control. He sees quality
control as a business method rather than technically, and believes that quality has become
the single most important force leading to organisational success and growth. The first
edition of his book Total Quality Control was completed whilst he was still a doctoral
student at MIT. His work was discovered by the Japanese in the 1950s at about the same
time as Juran visited Japan. This discovery came about firstly via his role as Head of
Quality at the General Electric Company, where he had extensive contacts with such
companies as Hitachi and Toshiba. Secondly, it was associated with the translation of his
1951 book: Quality Control: Principles, Practices and Administration and his articles on
Total Quality Control.

Feigenbaum argued for a systematic or total approach to quality, requiring the

involvement of all functions in the quality process, not just manufacturing. The idea was
to build in quality at an early stage, rather than inspecting and controlling quality after the
fact. He argues that statistical methods are used in an overall quality control programme
whenever and wherever they may be useful. However such methods are only part of the
overall administrative quality control system, they are not the system itself. The statistical
point of view, however, is seen as having a profound effect upon Modern Quality Control
at the concept level. Particularly, there is the recognition that variation in product quality
must be constantly studied within batches of product, on processing equipment and
between different lots of the same article by monitoring and critical quality
characteristics. Modern Quality Control is seen by Feigenbaum as stimulating and
building up operator responsibility and interest in quality. The need for qualitymindedness throughout all levels is emphasised, as is the need to 'sell' the programme to
the entire plant organisation and the need for the complete support of top management.
Management must recognise that it is not a temporary quality cost-reduction activity.
Kaoru Ishikawa is best known for the development of quality tools called causeand-effect diagrams, also called fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams. These diagrams are used
for quality problem solving, and we will look at them in detail later in the chapter. He
was the first quality guru to emphasize the importance of the internal customer, the
next person in the production process. He was also one of the first to stress the
importance of total company quality control, rather than just focusing on products and
services.
Dr. Ishikawa believed that everyone in the company needed to be united with a
shared vision and a common goal. He stressed that quality initiatives should be pursued at
every level of the organization and that all employees should be involved. He was a
proponent of implementation of quality circles, which are small teams of employees that
volunteer to solve quality problems.