The Global Quality Management System

Improvement Through Systems Thinking

Suresh Patel

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498788311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Global Quality Management System: Improvement Through Systems Thinking shows you how to understand and implement a global quality management system (GQMS) to achieve world-class business excellence. It illustrates the business excellence pyramid with the foundation of management systems at the system level, Lean System at the operational level,

1

Homage to Quality and Lean Six Sigma Gurus

Origins of Quality

The structures made in India and Egypt BCE show evidence of measurement and inspection in the process of cutting and sculpting the stones to construct idols, forts, and pyramids. The quality improvement movement traces its roots back to thirteenth century Europe, where craftsmen began organizing into unions called guilds. Until the early nineteenth century, manufacturing in the industrialized world would follow this craftsman-ship model. The factory system, with its emphasis on product inspection, started in Great Britain in the mid-1750s and grew into the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s. In the early twentieth century, manufacturers began to include quality processes and practices.

After the United States entered World War II, quality became a critical component of the war effort. Bullets manufactured in one part of the United States had to perfectly match the rifles made in another part. The armed forces initially inspected almost every unit of product. Then, to simplify and speed up this process without compromising safety, the military began to use statistical sampling techniques for inspection, which ended in the publication of military-specification standards.

The honor and full credit go to many “quality gurus” who have changed the quality world forever.

The following are brief profiles of leading quality/Lean Six Sigma gurus.

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855)

The letter sigma (σ) (uppercase Σ), as a measurement standard, can be traced back to Carl Friedrich Gauss, who introduced the concept of the “normal curve.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947)

Henry Ford defined the Lean concept in one sentence: “We will not put into our establishment anything that is useless.” In 1913 he introduced interchangeable parts with standard work and moving conveyors to create what he called “flow production.” Thus “waste” elimination and “speed” became hallmarks of Lean production.

Philip B. Crosby (1926–2001)

Philip B. Crosby entered the quality world in 1952, after his military service in Korea. In the nearly five decades that followed, he became widely renowned in business circles as a guru of quality management. He stressed the importance of “doing it right the first time.” Crosby is perhaps best known for promoting a standard of excellence based on nothing—the concept of zero defects (ZD). In his own words:

• “Quality is free. It’s not a gift, but it’s free. What costs money are all the unquality things—all the actions that involve not doing jobs right the first time.”
• “Why spend all this time finding, fixing and fighting when you could have prevented the problem in the first place?”
• “It isn’t what you find; it’s what you do about what you find.”
• “Quality management is needed because nothing is simple anymore, if indeed it ever was.”
• “Good things only happen when planned; bad things happen on their own.”
• “The customer deserves to receive exactly what we have promised to produce—a clean room, a hot cup of coffee, a nonporous casing, a trip to the moon on gossamer wings.”

Walter A. Shewhart (1891–1967)

Six Sigma, as a measurement standard for variation in processes, can be traced back to the 1920s when Walter Shewhart showed how three sigma from the mean is the point where a process requires correction and, at six sigma from the mean, the process runs at 3.4 defects per million (DPM).

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993)

There is no greater example of W. Edwards Deming’s belief in and devotion to quality than his contributions during and after World War II. In 1942, along with Walter Shewhart, he crafted the foundation for statistical quality control. This gave the United States a valuable edge during the war. But he was quickly forgotten in peacetime because, as Deming saw it, his knowledge rested with engineers rather than the management that drove the decision-making process. Five years after the war, in June 1950, Deming traveled to Tokyo to teach statistical methods at the behest of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). Japan soon became the world leader in quality, leaving the United States far behind. Deming’s cycle and Deming’s 14 points are his most valuable contributions.

Joseph M. Juran (1904–2008)

In Juran’s words:

• “In the USA, about a third of what we do consists of redoing.”
• “Quality is fitness for use.”
• “For quality in the sense of freedom from deficiencies, the long range goal is perfection.”
• “Without a standard, there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action.”
• “Observing many companies in action, I am unable to point to a single instance in which stunning results were gotten without the active and personal leadership of the upper managers.”
• “All managerial activity is directed at either breakthrough or control. Managers are busy doing both of these things, and nothing else.”

In 1951, the first edition of Juran’s landmark quality treatise, Quality Control Handbook, was published, cementing Juran’s reputation as the authority on quality. Shortly after W. Edwards Deming’s visit to Japan, Juran also made visits to Japan to share his knowledge of quality control. These visits were pivotal in world history because of how the two q...