Have you ever wonder when does the quality practices begin. In ancient days, where a craftsman would be able to manage all aspects of
transforming raw material to finished goods which will eventually be
sold and he will also be the inspector of his own product. An example would be a carpenter would choose
a tree which would yield good wood to chop and he will transform the wood into furniture. He had a control on each step including
inspecting his own work in the process making the part. In this scenario time to reach consumer is not a primary concern
to finish the product.
Frederick Taylor (1856- 1915) enabled mass production with his principles of Industrial engineering to building products with higher efficiency and more systematic approach where product time
to reach consumer become a primary concern.
Therefore mass inspection conducted by trained inspectors is formulated in tandem
with mass production to enable operator to focus on just transforming the parts from raw materials or semi finished
parts. This could be the beginning of
modern quality practices per American Society of Quality (ASQ). Since
then, there are many quality
philosophies being conceived over the last centuries by great quality gurus
from America and Japan. After world war
II, leading quality engineering experts
Juran and Deming had went to Japan to
introduce quality management tools to help Japan to build up their manufacturing industry. This had created a ripple effect where
Japanese quality philosophies had been discovered. Together all great gurus had contributed to the founding of modern quality management concepts in manufacturing industry.
Modern quality practices adopted a lot of tools such as
FMEA, 8D, advance product quality
planning (APQP) from military and automobile industry as both was the most advance industry hiring the best
expert before the digital age. With the invention of computer in digital age and the growth of semiconductor had
created a need for more systematic quality improvement methods. Thus systematic problem solving approach such
as 6 sigma was conceived by Motorola in late 1980s can be used in continuous quality
improvement.
We shall trace back the development of the modern quality
techniques and philosophies using the table below.
Era
|
Quality
culture contributors
|
Quality
principles and techniques
|
Origin
|
1900
|
NA
|
Mass quality inspection by Frederick
Taylor
|
NA
|
1930
|
Walter Shewart
|
Statistical Process control chart
|
Bell Telephone
|
1930s -1980s
|
William Deming
|
Sampling, PDCA, help Japan industry
to grow through his quality philosophy,
14 key principles to transformation which is foundation of total
quality management
|
America to Japan to global
|
1930s -1980s
|
Joseph Juran
|
Adopt Pareto principle in quality
analysis, cost of poor quality, Juran
trilogy Quality control, improvement and planning, quality from top
management, quality cannot be achieved thru inspection, Juran
Quality handbook
|
America , Japan to global
|
1960s -1990s
|
Philip Crosby
|
Quality management and maturity,
Zero Defects,
|
America
|
1960s -1980s
|
Kaoru Ishikawa
|
Concepts of quality circle, Fish
bone cause and effect diagram
|
Japan
|
1960s -1970s
|
Genichi Taguchi
|
The Taguchi loss function, Taguichi method in Design of experiment
|
Japan
|
1960s
|
Aerospace/Military
|
FMEA
|
America
|
1980s
|
Automobile
|
Advance product quality planning (APQP)
|
America
|
1980s
|
Semiconductor, Motorola
|
Quality improvement Six sigma
methodology
|
America
|
1980s
|
International Organization for
Standardization
|
Standardized quality management
systems to ensure product meet customer requirement
|
Europe
|
The biggest quality principles contributions which lead
to today quality engineering strategy and techniques happen after World War II with aggressive movement to
build up nation economy at both sides of Pacific.
With so many quality tools and principles being developed
in last century, it is sad that today there are not many organizations are able to
execute quality tools well. Perhaps we should focus on how to apply all the quality tools properly to improve manufacturing
process and shifting the quality management paradigm from inspecting quality in
parts to build in quality to parts in a manufacturing process.
