Any list of "most important" on attitudes is going to be subjective,
but the date you've chosen for quality is seminal.
Post World War II western business practices focused on productivity
and cost-per-unit as the prime drivers for business. It was a lesson
learned from Henry Ford's relentless drive to lower the cost of the
Model T; it was re-learned during World War II when "learning curve"
effects showed that with every doubling of production in aircraft and
shipyards, cost per ship would decline by 20%.
But a little-known American statistician, W. Edwards Deming, had
already influenced a generation of Japanese engineers and managers
with a different emphasis -- on quality. Deming's background as a
statistician had him working with the U.S Bureau of Census after,
WWII, but his real passion was for production applications.
It started with a presentation on statistical quality control to Union
of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in July, 1950. Deming
continued to lecture in Japan, donating royalties from his
presentations to JUSE, which eventually developed the Deming Prize for
leading Japanese manufacturers.
Eventually the Japanese effort in Total Quality Control (TQC) would be
re-imported into the United States as Total Quality Management (TQM)
in the 1980s -- but a lot of things had to happen in the meantime.
Here are five:
1. 1960: W. Edwards Deming is awarded the Second Order Medal of the
Sacred Treasure by the Emperor of Japan for contributions to quality
and dependability in products.
2. Crisis in the auto industry (1979). In late 1979, just as Henry
Ford II was retiring from Ford, the auto industry was in crisis. Ford
and Chrysler were both losing money in the aftershock of the 1970s oil
price hikes. But worse: Hertz Rent-a-Car maintenance reports being
provided to Ford were showing that Japanese cars were having half the
maintenance problems of American cars, according to David Halberstam's
book, "The Reckoning." It prompted new Ford President Philip
Caldwell's campaign, "Quality is Job One."
3. Successful efforts like Ford's didn't go unnoticed in the business
world. After all, they returned the company to profitability.
However, Motorola's development of the Six Sigma program in 1986
program came from another crisis. Motorola, like the auto companies
faced a crisis in its semiconductor operations -- it was losing Far
Eastern customers because of defects in ICs. In 1985-1986 Richard
Buetow, Motorola's VP Quality, took a group of company executives on a
tour of the best Japanese plants producing consumer products like
watches, TV sets, VCRs and calculators. According to Electronic
Business (Oct. 1989) "they found these plants to have process defect
rates 500 to 1,000 times better than ordinary electronics companies: 1
to 2 parts per million"
In the engineering-oriented Motorola organization, it set in motion a
goal for Six Sigma reduction in defects -- down to a target of no more
than 3.4 million defects per million units. It was so successful that
Motorola won the national Baldrige Award in 1988 -- the first year
offered.
4. By the 1980s, the quality imperative was spreading through
business, with TQM becoming a buzzword. It was formalized by
Congress, which instructed the National Institute of Standards and
Technology to establish the Baldrige Award (1987):
http://www.quality.nist.gov/Improvement_Act.htm
In doing so, NIST wisely recognized that simple output and defect
measures couldn't be used, but that quality management had to be
reflected in the company's mission -- and go beyond production, to be
supported by sales, development and other parts of an organization.
Baldrige himself had emphasized quality processes in a construction
company that he founded, as well as during his tenure as Postmaster
General.
5. The earliest specifications for quality had come from military
specifications. The U.S. Department of Defense and later NASA relied
up MIL STD 9858A through the 1960s; and then BS-5750. In 1987,
building on the BS-5750 standards, the International Standards
organization (ISO) released ISO 9000. It was quickly adopted by
European Community standards group and became a leading guide for
international business. In 1994 of extensions from production into
selling and other management organizations were made with ISO 9002,
9003, 9004:
International Standards Organization, "History of ISO" (undated):
http://www.iso9.com/information/over_history.html
Some excellent references include:
Deming Institute
"What is the Deming Prize?" (undated)
http://www.deming.org/demingprize/demingprize.html
And two books are recommended, the first on the start of the process,
the second an analysis written recently on how TQM programs have been
applied:
"Out of the Crisis," W. Edwards Deming, 1982
"The Six Sigma Way: How GE, Motorola, and Other Top Companies are
Honing Their Performance," Neuman, Pande, Cavanagh, 2002
Also, Halberstam's book is interesting for its look at Deming;
contrasting attitudes of Japanese and American auto executives; and
what spurred U.S. auto companies to action:
"The Reckoning," David Halberstam, 1986
Google search strategy:
Deming + quality
Total Quality Management
Baldrige Award
history + ISO 9000
Motorola + "Six Sigma"
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
