What Is Quality? The book is well-organized, comprehen-sive and concise. A well-worn copy should be on the desk of everyone who has special responsibility for assuring quality. After all is said and done, Feigenbaum is a “quality means customer satisfaction” guy. His book, The Quality Control Handbook , is only one of dozens of books and contin-ues to be a classic reference for all quality advocates. He revolutionized the Japanese philoso-phy on quality management and in no small way worked to help shape their economy into the international leader it is today. Juran was one of the first to link the people aspect of quality management, which is referred to as total quality man-agement. He also developed the widely adopted “Juran’s trilogy,” an approach to cross-functional management that he used to connect three managerial processes: Planning, control and improvement. In 1979, Juran founded the Juran Institute, and in 2004, he became an honorary doctor at Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. Juran’s definition simultaneously attempts to be product-focused and cus-tomer-focused, claiming that a practical definition of quality is probably not pos-sible. One gets the impression that Juran would like to define quality in terms of cus-tomer satisfaction. To do so, however, he must deal with the relationship between customer satisfac-tion — for which he suggests no compre-hensive measurement strategies — and the conformance of service attributes or product specifications — which can be accomplished fairly well in the workplace. Because he is not satisfied with efforts to integrate customer satisfaction with prod-uct characteristics, he first attempts to define quality in two different and possibly inconsistent ways. When that appears not to work, he defines quality ambiguously as fitness for use. In any event, I don’t find his definition of quality practical. What measures of fitness for use do we have that would enable us to assess the quality of a product or service? ment processes to create profitable situa-tions for both businesses and consumers, promoting a creation of his own: The statis-tical process control chart. He brought a sense of logic to the idea of what constituted causes of failure. He advanced the notion of “common causes” and “special causes” of produc-tion quality issues. He analyzed these with his famed Shewhart charts or “control charts.” In truth, Shewhart laid the statistical foundation upon which all modern industry is built. Although Shewhart has a healthy con-cern for being able to determine mea-surable characteristics of high-quality products and services, the focus of his definition of quality is consistent with a customer-focused quality concept. It is sometimes difficult to remember that Shewhart wrote his definition in the 1920s, particularly since I believe it to be more insightful to the definitions of the gurus who followed him. Kaoru Ishikawa Ishikawa was a Japanese university pro-fessor and influential quality management innovator best known for his cause and effect diagram — also known as the fish-bone diagram — that is used in the analysis of work processes. In one single snapshot, top management gets to see exactly why the problem is occurring. The fishbone diagram and collabora-tive team approach were key elements of Ishikawa’s “company-wide quality control” quality strategy. His “quality circles” model became popular worldwide for the fresh breath it provided previously stale problem-solving strategies. In recognition of his lifelong efforts of making “quality” a household word, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) institut-ed the Ishikawa medal as an annual award that recognizes leadership in the human side of quality. Ishikawa’s definition of quality is also a customer-focused definition. He is very insightful, has a great deal to say about the principles of quality control and is clearly interested in quality assur-ance at the in-plant, practical level. He does not, however, have much to say about how manufacturing procedures can be designed to assure the satisfaction of customer needs and expectations. On the other hand, Ishikawa makes it clear that proof of high quality is the satis-faction of ever-changing consumer expec-tations. In a continuing pattern, Ishikawa advo-cates the idea that customer satisfaction is the end game for all the efforts to deliver a quality product or service. Genichi Taguchi Taguchi is well-known for developing a methodology for applying statistics to improve the quality of manufactured goods and reduce costs. In the United States, his ideas are known as the “Taguchi methods.” He also developed the quality loss func-tion. Taguchi’s methodology emphasizes the idea of pushing the concepts of quality and reliability back into the design stage — prior to manufacturing. He defined an efficient technique for designing product tests even before begin-ning the manufacturing process. His methodology is fundamentally a pro-totyping technique that enables engineers/ designers to produce a robust design that can survive repetitive manufacturing in order to deliver the functionality required by the customer. While it may be difficult to imagine that quality is defined as a loss, it is actually easy to imagine what Taguchi has in mind. He is suggesting that the maximum qual-ity experienced by society occurs when society gets exactly what it wants and expects. Walter Shewhart The early ideas of total quality management and continuous improvement trace back to a former Bell Telephone employee named Shewhart. One of Deming’s teachers, he empha-sized the importance of adapting manage-Joseph Juran In his extraordinary career, Juran made many contributions to the field of quality management. 30 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • December 2011
CMM – Archives Dec 2011: 30
