Currently we tend to find ourselves confronted with distinct quality systems based on creating , maintaining and inspecting a management system with ISO 9000 standards at its core or people-based total quality as exemplified by the Japanese approach of hoshin kanri or the use of quality circles.
These two approaches emerged from the work on quality management during the 1950s by gurus such as Juran. While one school of thought focused on codifying those principles into more prescriptive requirements for inspection , the other supported a wider approach focusing on people and how to manage them. During 1975-1985, there was a struggle between the two schools of thought with the inspection focused approach ultimately becoming more widely accepted.
The people-based approach , with its roots in post-war Japan, was not as widely understood and had few advocates , despite the fact that its most powerful supporters included Deming, Juran , Ishikawa and Crosby. At the European Organization for Quality conference in Stockholm in 1966, Juran warned his contemporaries of the potential economic power of Japanese people-based total quality , when he said:" The way the Japanese are now working, they will become the world leaders in quality 20 years from now, if we in the west are not doing anything. There is no doubt about it!"
The audience he addressed , however was largely made up of engineering inspectors who were more comfortable with the standardized approach to quality. These inspectors made up part of a vast group that had been growing since the development of so- called scientific management at the turn of the 20th century.
Scientific management was the theory developed by Frederick Taylor of managing work flows to achieve cost efficiency and productive labor. Prior to the industrial revolution inspectors were unheard of, because a craftsman does not need to have his work inspected.
Craft-made products as a hand-thrown pottery plate, a Chippendale chair or an intricately woven rug, encapsulated the pride, dignity, self respect and hours of painstaking work of their creators, all made with loving care to be enjoyed by their users. Unfortunately the craftsmanship system proved unsustainable in the modern world. The global population explosion demanded the high-volume manufacture of mass -produced products where perfection was ignored in order to produce the bulk required. Techniques were developed to take the skill out of the work and reduce operations to their most meaningless detail. This development elevated to the US the most powerful industrialized country in the planet and everyone else follow suit.
The deskilling of work resulted in the need for the work of the unskilled person to be inspected by others and caused the emergence of engineering inspector as an appendage to the production process, but not a part of it. The inspector was a powerful and not-always -friendly policeman, and as mass production increased so did the number of inspectors.
By the time Juran made his speech in Stockholm, the number of inspectors around the world was substantial and growing. Attention was by then being diverted to inspecting the means by which the products were made rather than the product itself, and the quality assurance was born.
Inspection and engagement
As the quality assurance movement developed , as exemplified by the creation of the International Organization for Standardization and the adoption of voluntary standards, at no point did inspectors challenge the scientific management approach itself as being the fundamental cause of the problems they hoped to inspect out. They ignored the fact that if people do not really care, if they just do their job accordingly to instructions, if they are not particularly inspired to do good work, then no amount of inspection-whether it be of the system or the product- is going to achieve the required results. Essentially they forgot the work of the quality gurus such as Crosby who argued that to be externally successful a company must ensure that "people do things right routinely" and that "people are proud to work there".
The system management audit concept marched on, resourced by a vast number of inspectors now elevated to the role of auditor. As a consequence , progress towards the publication of ISO 9001 gathered momentum.
Advocates of the standard approach claim that it is the most successful management concept ever created. This is undeniable. Its searching and probing touches every aspect of human life, but critics argue that it hasn't inspired people to embrace quality nor enabled companies to reach pinnacle of success. As a standard , ISO 9001 can only ever set the minimum acceptable requirements for business practices, because you cannot create a standard for best practice. If you tried , it would require constant revision because people can always find better ways of doing things.
Neither can auditing against a standard highlight every problem. For example , the company at the center of the toxic waste spill in Hungary during October 2010 had been audited only weeks before. The well-publicized problems with the quality of care at the Staffordshire hospital despite a number of NHS audits and Rolls- Royce current problem with Trent 900 engines have wiped more than the 1B sterling pounds off the value of the company's shares despite intensive auditing.
Nobody can challenge the need for auditing and inspection routines. They are critically important in sectors where lives are risk, such as nuclear energy, aerospace, defense and health care. But even in these situations, we would sleep more soundly in our beds if we knew that those responsible for these activities loved their work and took pride in their achievements. Audits and inspections should be supplementary to quality and not its driving force.
In Japan there have never been the same number of inspectors as in the west. At the point in history when this might have occurred , Ishikawa argued against it, saying the division -of -labor approach being implemented was alien to their culture. He postulated that it might be possible to create a new system that contained all the advantages of the western system with those of the now abandoned craftsmanship approach , but without either of their disadvantages. He concluded that it might be possible to introduce craftsmanship back to groups of people rather than simply to individuals.
In a speech to mark the 1,000th quality circle convention in Japan in 1981, he explained:" I first considered how best to get grassroots workers to understand and practice quality control. The idea was to educate all people working at factories throughout the country but this was asking too much. Therefore, I thought of educating factory foreman or on-the -spot leaders in the first place.
His concept was proven and spread rapidly throughout Japanese industry. This combined with total quality learned from Juran in 1954, and the overarching benefit of hoshin-style policy planning , policy deployment and policy control proved irresistible in the companies that applied it and soon they were moving to market domination throughout the world.
A people- based approach should embrace process auditing, but only when it is carried out in a supportive manner as a part of the process and not as a policing activity parallel to production. The quality function must be supportive of quality, not responsible for it.
Back to basics
Fundamental to future progress is the simple premise of recognizing that each person is the expert in his or her own job- a basic quality principle defined by Ishikawa in the 1950s. By galvanizing the collective thinking power and job knowledge of all of your people. Ishikawa and Crosby believed that you can make your organization the best in its business. Perhaps one of today's most famous icons, Bill Gates, call it "corporate IQ". People have infinite capabilities and it is our job as quality professionals to draw out those capabilities. This is the only way to ensure fewer environmental disasters and an improvement in quality of life both in and out of work.
It was through the intensive application of Japanese total quality control and hoshin kanri that Toyota went from insignificance in the 1950s to surpassing General Motors in the late 2000s as the world's car manufacturer. Once such success was achieved , it was sadly easy for the organization to become complacent and forget what propelled it there in the first place, resulting in million of cars being recalled due to quality issues and substantial damage being caused to the Toyota brand.
Another back-to basics lesson from the quality gurus is to never give up. When you have nearly achieved your goals set new ones. This commitment to continuous improvement is at the heart of total quality and hoshin kanri as well as the core principle behind the Shewhart wheel, which is now known as plan-do-check-act cycle.
The quality profession has reached a crossroads and it needs to look back toward its founding fathers and the basics of quality to move forward. As profession we need to ensure quality is exciting, enriching, rewarding, innovative and creative, to engage with our colleagues. Without this approach quality is in danger of becoming hidden behind standardization, conformance, compliance, documentation and procedures.
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