Quality Management and Major Contributors

Quality is defined as conformance to specifications, fulfilling customer needs and fitness for use.

Quality management refers to the managerial activities to ensure the product or service is consistent. 

Functions of Quality Management

Quality management involved four main functions: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control, and quality improvement.

1. Quality planning refers to developing the products, systems, and processes to meet or go beyond customer needs and expectations.

2. Quality assurance: Quality assurance is a way of preventing mistakes and defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering products or services to customers; which ISO 9000 defines as "part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled"

3. Quality control refers to the means of fulfilling quality requirements.

4. Quality improvement refers to the means of providing mechanisms for the evaluation and improvement of organizational activities.

The quality gurus

The progress made in quality and productivity by organizations is mainly due to the teachings of quality gurus.

1. William Edwards Deming (USA)

Deming is considered to be the father of Japanese quality management systems. In recognition of his contributions, the highest honor in quality management, the Deming Prize, is named after him. Deming proposed a four-step process Plan-Do-Check-Act, popularly known as the PDCA cycle.

2. Joseph M. Juran (USA)

Juran defined quality as “fitness for use”. Juran’s approach to quality management focuses on three important aspects known as Juran’s trilogy: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement.

3. Philip B. Crosby (USA)

Philip B Crosby was the corporate vice president for quality in international telephone and telegraph in Japan for 14 years. Crosby introduced the notion of zero – defect performance and hence popularized the the phrase “do it right the first time”

4. Karou Ishikawa (JAPAN)

The Japanese quality guru promoted the concept of company-wide quality through the use of quality control (QC)circles. He also proposed the fishbone diagram (cause-effect diagram) to analyze quality problems in the workplace.

5. Shigeo Shingo (JAPAN)

The Japanese quality guru proposed a method called Poka-Yoke or mistake proofing for eliminating defects once or for all. The three-step analysis of risk in Poka-Yoke includes:

a)Identification of the need

b)Identification of possible mistakes

c)Management of mistakes before satisfying the need