The History of Quality Management
The roots of quality management can be traced back to the middle ages where skilled workers were responsible for evaluating and inspecting work completed by apprentices and journeymen to ensure the set quality standards were achieved in all aspects of the final product. This was done to ensure that customers were always satisfied with the product quality. Since that time the history of quality management has undergone several changes and this research paper seeks to give a sketch of the history of quality management, from its materialization in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries through to modern day. Specific emphasis is sited on activities in Japan right after the conclusion of the Second World War and ensuing developments in other parts of the worlds.
Using management to ensure product quality can be traced back to thousands of years. By late thirteenth century, medieval craftsmen had started to systemize themselves in associations that formulated formal processes for product and service quality which were then implemented with strictness. There was regular inspection of goods and high quality products were labeled with exceptional symbols. This process was utilized in manufacturing in the industrialized world up until the early nineteenth century in the industrial revolution. After the industrial revolution, mass production led to factory system, where craftsmen upgraded to factory workers and their jobs categorized into specialized responsibilities. At the end of the line, inspection was used to ensure that end products were of reasonable quality and acceptable to the customer.
The twentieth century saw the inclusion of quality processes in quality practices by manufacturers. The entry of the United States to the World War two made quality a significant element of the war. For instance, bullets manufactures in one country had to work constantly with guns and rifles manufactured in another country. Initially, the military scrutinized every element of the product, but to make this process easier and faster without compromising the security, they started utilizing the sampling method of inspection. This was facilitated by the publication of the military-specification standards and training courses in statistical process control techniques.
Predominant production methods shaped the evolution of the American quality practices. These methods include: craftsmanship, the factory system and the Taylor system.
Craftsmanship
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the united states manufacturing industry tended to adopt the craftsmanship system that was had originated from the European states. This system involved young boys learning specific skills as apprentices to masters which mostly took many years. Since most goods were sold in the local market, each craftsman had a personal responsibility in meeting the client’s demands in terms of quality. If the goods did not meet the quality expectations of the customer, the craftsman was at a risk of losing the customers who were not easy to replace. This forced the craftsman to maintain quality control by inspecting the products before sale.
The Factory System
The factory system was a result of the industrial revolution. It began to break up craftsmen’s trades into specialized responsibilities. This pushed craftsmen to suit to factory workers and store owners to become supervisors. This also led to the decline in the worker’s sense of independence and empowerment in the workplace. In this system, product quality was guaranteed through the laborers skill complemented by inspections and audits. Substandard products were redone or discarded.
The Taylor System
The late nineteenth century saw the United States break from the European system and assumed a new management system formulated by Frederick W. Taylor. Taylor main objective was to increase production devoid of increasing skilled craftsmen. He was able to accomplish this by allocating factory planning to expert engineers and by making use of craftsmen men and supervisors, who had been put out of place by the development of factories, as overseers and managers who implemented the plans of the engineers.
Though Taylor’s system led to a significant increase in productivity, it also had remarkable shortcomings. Workers were lost their already diminishing power and the new stress on productivity had negative implications on the quality. To create a solution for this problem, the managers developed inspection departments to ensure that substandard goods did not reach the customers.
In the early twentieth century there was an inclusion of processes in quality control practices. A “process” is delineated as a cluster of actions that takes an effort, adds value to it and presents a yield, for instance when a cook converts a mass of ingredients into a meal. A statistician known as Walter Shewhart stated to put interest on controlling processes in the mid nineteen twenties, making quality appropriate for both the finished product and the processes used to create it.
Shewhart documented that manufacturing practices capitulate data. For instance, a procedure in which metal is cut into sheets acquiesce specific dimensions, for example every sheet’s length, height and heaviness. Shewhart established this data may well be analyzed using statistical methods to distinguish whether a procedure is constant and in control, or if it is being influenced by particular causes that ought to be predetermined. By doing that, Shewhart put down the base for control charts, a contemporary quality tool.
This concept is referred to as the statistical quality control. The difference between this concept and product orientation is that quality is pertinent in both the final product and the manufacturing process. A statistician known as W Edwards Deming became a promoter of the Shewhart’s statistical quality control techniques and afterwards became a leader of the quality movement in the United States and in Japan.
The United States entered the World War Two in December the year nineteen forty one, and enacted legislation to assist gear the civilian economy to martial production. In that era, military tenders were in general awarded to the companies that provided the lowest bid. The products were then scrutinized on delivery to guarantee that they met required standards. At this time, quality turned out to be a significant safety concern. Unsafe military paraphernalia was absolutely intolerable and the military official scrutinized practically all units produced to make sure that is was secure for operation. This process called for recruiting and retaining a large number of inspection workforce hence posing a huge problem.
Though the training had positive impact on quality in some organizations, many organizations had slight motivation to actually incorporate the methods. Given that the government contracts settled the bills, companies’ most important priority was meeting the production deadlines. More over nearly all statistical quality control programs were concluded as soon as the government contracts ended.
The origin of total quality in the United States was in direct reaction to a quality insurrection in Japan after the World War Two, as key Japanese manufacturers changed from producing martial goods for domestic use to producing civilian merchandise for trade. Initially, Japan had a generally held reputation of producing substandard goods for export and their products were rejected by the global markets. This pushed the Japanese manufacturers to search for innovative ways of thinking concerning quality.
The Japanese manufacturers accepted contribution from foreign organizations and lecturers as well as quality experts from America. These experts include: Joseph M. Juran who made a forecast that the quality of Japanese products would surpass the quality of United States products by mid nineteen seventies as a result of Japan’s innovative tempo of quality development. W. Edwards Deming had been aggravated by American managers when majority of programs for statistical quality control were stopped as soon as the war and the government contracts came to a conclusion.
Japan’s stratagem marked the new ‘total quality’ approach. Instead of depending solely on inspection of goods, Japanese manufacturers’ main objective was making better all organizational processes through the individuals who utilized them. As a consequence, Japan was capable of producing higher-quality goods for export at lower costs and these benefited consumers from all parts of the world.
American managers were in general ignorant of this inclination and imagined that any opposition from the Japanese would eventually approach in form of cost and not quality. Meanwhile, the manufacturers from Japan started elevating their share in the American markets. This had a remarkable impact on the on the United States economy; manufacturers started getting smaller market shares, organizations started distributing jobs abroad and the economy experienced inauspicious trade balances. Generally, the effect on the American business pushed the United States to take action.
Initially, the United States manufacturers depended on the imagination the Japanese achievement was related to the reduced good’s prices hence reacted to the competition from the Japanese with stratagems intended to reduce the local production costs and controlling imports. Certainly, this did not work and there was no improvement in American competitiveness in quality. With time, price-based competition declined as quality-based competition kept on augmenting.
The American quality catastrophe got to major extents, magnetizing attention from national administrators, legislators and the media. The United States started to listen when the media highlighted how Japan had gained control over the world electronic and auto markets. The leaders of key United States organizations came forward to grant personal leadership in the quality revolution. The United States reaction, accentuating both statistics and approaches that appreciated the entire organization, turned into what is now known as the Total Quality Management (TQM).
There has been a n uncertainty on the definition of Total Quality Management. There is not agreement on what comprises total quality management. Different organizations have different definitions for total quality management or have different names for it. In the United States, it is frequently used to denote the management approaches being formulated in the present age of strategic quality management while the new prototype is emerging. Preferably, managers in the current era of strategic quality management denote total quality management as more than just a program and define it beyond all the insufficiencies of other quality management programs.
The word “Total “communicates the idea that the entire work force throughout all functions and ranks of an organization, practices quality. The word “quality” advocates excellence in all aspects of the organization. “Management” denotes the search for quality outcomes throughout the quality management process. This commences by means of strategic management processes and expands in the course of product design, marketing, manufacturing, finance etc. It includes, and still goes further than, all of the earlier descriptions of quality by compacting them into an inexhaustible process of development.
Consequently, total quality management is a lot about the quality procedure as it is about the quality outcomes or quality products. It started with individuals, specifically managers. The current quality age, Strategic quality management, integrates the aspects of each of the previous eras, especially the contributions of Deming, Shewhart, Juran and Feigenbaum. Numerous aspects of the preceding eras are integrated into Strategic Quality management that the past two decades may initially appear to be just a combination of the old ideas. However, there are remarkable discrepancies from earlier eras.
For once, top organizational leaders stated viewing quality optimistically as a competitive advantage, and addressed it in the organizations strategic planning processes, whose focal point is the customer value. The management throughout the organization was impacted by the ability of quality to attract the attention of the top managers. Quality was no longer for just inspectors and individuals in the quality control department but for the entire organization management. The total quality management marks the beginning of a new prototype for management. Several improvements were brought together and reconstructed into a fresh approach to management in all branches and specialties.
Several external forces made the top managers give attention to quality. They started to see a connection between poor quality and losses of profitability. The forces that made this connection clear to the top managers included an expanding surge of multimillion-dollar product responsibility suits for substandard products and continuous demands from the government on numerous facades, as well as closer policing of faulty product recalls. Conceivably, the most prominent external force was the rising market share invasion from foreign competitors especially the Japanese.
The start of the twenty first century marks the maturity of quality management movement. Innovative quality management approaches have advanced further than the foundations laid by Juran, Deming and the first Japanese quality Practitioners. Examples of these developments include:
- The revision of the ISO 9000 series of quality management standards in the year two thousand to stress on the importance of customer satisfaction.
- The addition of business outcomes criterion to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award measures of applicant success in the year nineteen ninety five.
- Six Sigma, a technique formulated by Motorola to advance its business practices, by decreasing imperfections, progressed into a managerial approach that accomplished breakthroughs and noteworthy bottom-line outcomes. Motorola shared these quality practices with other organizations after receiving the Baldrige Award in the year nineteen eighty eight.
- Development of the Quality function deployment by Yoji Akao as a practice for focusing on consumer desires or wants in the blueprint or revamp of a product or service.
- Development of Sector-specific edition s of ISO-9000 series of quality management standards were put in place for industries aerospace, automotive, telecommunications and environmental management.
- Apart from the manufacturing sector, quality management has been adopted in health care, service, government and education sectors.
- The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has also included healthcare and education to its initial categories. Nonprofit organizations are also pushing to be included in the categories.
In conclusion, the history of quality management can be traced back to ancient Europe when craftsmen started forming associations near the end of the thirteenth century. The industrialized world followed this craftsmanship approach until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The factory system then followed in the seventeen fifties and put emphasis on inspection of products. This system led to the industrial revolution in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Quality management became a critical element of war after the United States entered World War Two. Military officials adopted Walter Shewhart’s statistical process control methods after engaging in tedious unit-by-unit inspection of armory. The quality management revolution in Japan after the Second World War led to the birth of the Total Quality system with help from Joseph M. Juran and Edwards Deming. Competition from Japanese products prompted the United States to respond emphasizing on approaches that embraced the whole organization. This became the Total Quality Management. Quality management has now matured beyond total quality management to the modern strategic quality management.
References
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