Readings: E & L, Chapter 3
Key Links:
Key Lecture Points:
The importance of quality changed after World War II. A number of key individuals placed their own stamp or spin on how to improve quality or commandments which by organizations should live by. The most important of these were Deming, Crosby, and Juran in the United States, and Ishikawas and Taguchi in Japan. These individuals and what they taught us are the major topics of this weeks discussion. There are a number of interesting links to sites dedicated to the works and important principles of these individuals. We will now look at them one at a time.
Phil Crosby is known as the one who made it up through the ranks. He is for his witty speaking style, and widely like by practitioners because his material is easily understood and implemented. He is widely recognized for two important books available in paperback, Quality is Free and Quality without Tears. The link summarizes some of the major point from his second book.
Joseph Juran was one of the movers and shakers who preached prevention rather than detection of defects. He has coauthored a text entitled Quality Planning and Analysis which is the basis of much of the Quality Certifications offered by ASQC. His major contributions include breakthrough analysis , a technique for improving quality, the Quality Trilogy (planning, control, and improvement) as shown in the article from Chapter 1, and the quality cost function, which is described in Chapter 8, week 7.
Deming is probably the most famous of the quality gurus. He came onto the American scene in 1980 with the airing of the NBC White Paper, If Japan Can, Why Can't We? He is most famous for the 14 points to successful implementation of TQM. This link provides a summary of his 14 points, and possible pitfalls in trying to implement them. The summary is based on a review of one of the many books written about Deming, by Gitlow and Gitlow. He summarizes his philosophy in Out of the Crisis, a book which is easy to read and finds its way onto many Academicians shelves. Deming is widely recognized as a prime time promoter of SPC as a tool which is key to the success of both manufacturing and services industries.
Ishikawa is a contemporary of Deming and Juran. He is of Japanese heritage and is responsible for a number of key concepts in TQM. First, he coined the world CompanyWide Quality Management to differentiate it from TQM (revisited next week). Next, he is the founding father of both quality circles, a very successful tool for employee involvement, and the Ishikawa or fishbone diagram, one of the seven tools of quality management, discusses in detail in the second half of the course. In addition, he describes in an article the differences between Japanese and American cultures as a key to why the Japanese have been more successul in the implementation of TQM.
Genichi Taguchi
Taguchi's major contributions were in the design areas. He preached the ideas of design to make sure the product performed correctly, and the idea of loss away from the optimal value. We will revisit Taguchi later in week 6 when talking about design ideas, and in week 7 when we talk about quality costs. For a sneak preview, look at Taguchi notes .
Arnold Feigenbaum
Feigenbaum coined the term total quality control. He emphasized the importance of the quality assurance function. The Massachusetts Quality Award is named for him. See Feigenbaum for a summary of his ideas.
Assignments:
This document created by David Lewis 6/20/96
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