The Quality Masters Speak

Quality matters

Before we let the Quality Masters at it, I want to say something by way of introducing the topic and why I think you should care about quality even if it isn't making headlines or appearing on Larry King live these days.

I happen to be very interested in the topic of quality for two reasons:

1. I have been involved with helping businesses improve in many countries for over 25 years.
2. Anything more than a superficial improvement will require examining the interaction with customers. Customers are concerned with value and value can best be seen as a function of price and perceived quality.

Notice I said "perceived" quality. This is significant because it is the customer's definition that matters: not yours, not engineering's, not production's, not marketing's. Quality is more than just protecting the customer from annoyances. It's about delighting the customer by giving him or her great value.

Delighted customers are loyal customers. And if you haven't seen the research, I a can tell you categorically that loyal customers are just a whole lot more profitable than any other type of customer.

Ultimately, you will have to come up with an operationally definition of quality that makes sense in the context of your own situation, products, services, customers and so on. We'll leave it at that.

Few people get really exited about how you define quality, perceived or otherwise. They want to get to the business end of the stick: how do you improve it (however defined)?

That's a very good question and one that keeps consultants in business. There are more than one answer (no surprise) and not all of the same quality (that word again). It is this that I want to explore with you here; where to find good advice on improving quality and thus your business.

Looking for sources

Over the years I have had occasion to read the teachings and advice of many, if not most, of the quality gurus prominent over the last 50 years. That's not as onerous a task at it seems if you happen to like learning new things. What has struck me is that much of the available published material is merely repackaged stuff with a marketing twist or gimmick thrown in.

Lots of repackaging

It's self-evident that the repackagers needed someone to borrow from and it wasn't hard to trace back to the original material. Most of the literature on quality, quality management, total quality management, zero defects and so on - call it what you will - originates in the USA. At least that is true - or used to be true 10-15 years ago for the first two or three layers of publications.

A US centric world

This US centric phenomenon is both a treasure and a curse. It's a treasure because the good authors presents what seems to work in a Western setting. It's a curse because often the author has filtered out whatever is strange to his or her culture or even what goes against the grain of the current trends and fads; the kowledge trends and knowledge fads in this case.

Management trends and fads are real and pass quickly. I am not faulting authors for re-packaging material to reach new audiences. A good idea or a strong concept can last virtually forever. Every generation starts from the same point: ground zero and an empty brain. Personally, I think it is criminal that someone should be prevented from learning or be exposed to something useful simply because something is out of vogue. If all it takes is finding a new name or acronym to recycle it, then that's great. Go for it.

Content is king

This may sound contradictory. The problem is not the recycling, it's the content I am concerned about. My observation is that we are not terribly well disposed to consider the lessons of history.

Everything changes so fast in the business world that there is great fear - OK, sometimes its justified - that yesterday's ideas won't work.

Well, here we are full circle. What ideas and concepts remain relevant? How far back will we have to go? We'll surely loose them if we only consult the most recent literature. Why? Here is an example of how this works.

A case in point

Consider the martial arts and the following scenario.

• Venerable Master comes from China, Japan, Korea or wherever and starts a training studio in Our Town. The Master trained in the Old School, took 5-10 years to get his black belt and like as not, that only meant he was now considered a serious student and the real training could begin. Now, in the middle of life, he is here to teach you and I Something Useful.
• Venerable Master is stubborn and holds on to his old country ethics and progress up the belt hierarchy is slow. But you and I are equally stubborn and stay with it. One day we have black belts. And things get maybe a little boring because progress is slow and we seem not to be taught a lot of new things anymore. Besides, the training takes a lot of time and lessons chew up a few dollars. We decide to start our own studio and so get paid for doing what we like.
• Seems like a winning proposition. We have our mandatory black belts and even though we quit before we learnt all Venerable Master had to teach, we will know a lot more than our students for a long time. At least on the face of it.
• But what about the students? What are they buying into? They can never get past our level. For two reasons: We can't teach what we don't know. And we are always going to keep one or two tricks to ourselves just in case. We don't know what the students will be missing because we didn't get it either.
• I could stop right there, but the situation in the martial arts market place is now so ridiculous that you can find any number of studios that will guarantee you a black belt in something like two years. (I know of a case where a student who had quit received a belt promotion in the mail two months later - he was marked down on the calendar, I guess.)

So what is going on?

The force at work here is dilution of a knowledge pool and oversimplification to make something complex accessible in an easy way. Everything becomes a template driven, do-by-numbers exercise. You've been headed off at the pass. It's like we are facing this massive denial that some things are non-trivial and will take a non-trivial effort to master.

The meaning of mastery

Let us stay with the concept of mastery for a minute. What gets lost in a process like that described above is the ability to differentiate beyond the superficial and rudimentary. What do I mean by that?

Let me try this: Thomas Leonard, the founder of Coach University, made a really great comment at a seminar I attended. He was talking about development of skill levels and described the process as moving from competent - do the basics well, to expert - do the non-basics well, to being a master - you make things up.

The make-things-up bit almost sounds flippant, but the idea is that you are no longer conscious of why you do something or react to something the way you do. Your decisions are influenced by the full richness of the context with a seemingly infinite capacity for variation and adaptation. (Don't we wish we were so.)

Another way to look at this is through a different lens: Remember the childrens Whisper game? Johnny on the left makes up a pragraph length story and whispers it to Jane. She turns around ant whispers to Bobby and at the tail end of five, six, eight, whatever number of exchanges, Lisa stand up and speaks out loud what she heard. Then Johnny gets up and reels of the original. I can guarantee you the two stories are from different planets.

You go ahead and pass a message through a number of adults and you'll see distrotion there, too. The moral of this story is: stay close to the original source.

Bottom line

In our example, a new student would have to go back to Venerable Master to get the real and full training. Which brings us back to my original point. We have to know where and who to go to when we look for the useful sources to ensure we get access to something beyond the trivial and superficial.

Why these masters

The people I will introduce you to all reached the master level and beyond. They all have their own styles. As I got into the material I was struck not by how different their thoughts and ideas were, but how similar they were. If you dig to the core level, to the foundation of what they each represent, I think you will agree.

I have found eight sources that have the encyclopedic knowledge of the quality management area. There are others worth checking out, but my guess is that these eight will be all you need for a good while.

The panel members are both American and Japanese. I think it is useful to read the Japanese and their take on why they were so successful in the quality game, a game taught them by the Americans after World War II. It certainly was a revelation to me.

I am not going to rehash what they are all about. I have listed the key items of their respective improvement programs to give you a flavour of their styles and main focus points. I have also given references to their single most seminal works and provided a link to their web sites or other sources. All of them have published a lot, so you can keep going for quite a while.

The gallery

• P. Crosby
• W. E. Deming
• A. V. Feigenbaum
• R. Fukuda
• K. Ishikawa
• J. Juran
• R. J. Schonberger
• S. Shingo

Philip Crosby

Phil Crosby is the number one North American champion of zero defects. He got his start in the large aerospace and defense contractor conglomerates. He has written extensively and is best known for his books "Quality is Free" and "Quality with out Tears".

His style is engaging and he has a good grasp of how to get ideas accepted in a North American business culture. My favourite quote: "Quality is free, but it is not a gift". It is fitting that he kicks us off, because I think he is a great place to start.

The 14 point program

1. Management commitment.
2. Quality improvement teams.
3. Quality measurement.
4. Cost of quality evaluation.
5. Quality awareness.
6. Corrective action.
7. Ad-hoc committee for zero defects program.
8. Supervisor training.
9. Zero defects day.
10. Goal setting.
11. Error-cause removal.
12. Recognition.
13. Quality councils.
14. Do it over.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

W. Edwards Deming

Dr.Deming is the undisputed doyen of quality. A statistician and accomplished mathematician, he got his start in the pre-WWII era. He was very instrumental in transforming the US manufacturing capabilities to cope with the unprecedented demand for war materiel in the forties.

After the war, he visited Japan regularly as part of the effort to rebuild Japan's industry. This is where the legend truly began.

Whereas the wartime quality movement in the US never got much beyond the factory floor, things were done differently in Japan.

Deming, in one of his books, laments the fact that they - the quality champions - tried to put on quality seminars and training for top management, but never succeeded in getting even one session running during the war. The champions were chagrined because they had learned that the vast majority of quality problems were systems or infrastructure related. Since management is responsible for systems, infrastructure and policies, improvement beyond a certain point was not possible unless management bought into it and made the necessary decisions to support the program.

Unfortunately, even in the light of the spectacular advances made in manufacturing practices during the war, quality was seen as something for the shop floor to make sure enough stuff got shipped on time.

When the time came to rebuild Japan, the lessons had been learnt and this time the programs started at the top. How could they get away with that when they failed in the US?

Well, consider this. Here are the victors talking to at best the middle management level of a de facto ruined country. Top management got effectively peeled off through prosecution as war criminals, suicides or simple retirement.

Would you as a middle manager poised to be put in charge have listened if someone told you that they were going to teach you that which had ensured your country's defeat? Hell, yes!

So programs got started and the rest is history. Eventually, Japan managed to bring into fruition unique and effective management practices that made Japan a feared competitor in every market they entered.

The world woke up to the new kid on the block and after much research and soul searching, NBC aired an interview with Dr. Deming in 1979 or 1980. America learned about a to them unsung hero whose name adorned the most prestigious quality award in Japan, the Deming Prize.

This was the turning point for American business because suddenly it became clear that all this Japanese stuff was really invented by a good old American!

It wasn't quite that simple of course, but the marketing angle was important to legitimize these ideas as something an American business could legitimately look into. Dr. Deming lived into his nineties, active to the last. He passed away only recently.

The 14 point program:

1. Create constancy of purpose.
2. Adopt the new philosophy.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership.
8. Drive out fear.
9. Break down barriers between departments.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the work force.
11. Eliminate:
    1. Work standards and quotas; substitute leadership.
    2. Management by objective; substitute leadership.
12. Remove:
    1. Barriers that rob hourly workers of their right to pride of ownership.
    2. Barriers that rob management of their right to pride of ownership.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

Armand V. Feigenbaum

Feigenbaum is another of the American legends. He introduced the cost of quality concept as far back as 1956 and fathered the term Toral Quality Control. He is one of the few practitioners still about with what we may think of as really deep roots.

The quality system

• Controls quality on an integrated, organization wide basis.
• Provides for primary quality decision-making ties with upper management.
• Fosters a sufficient budgetary base and technical competence.
• Establishes quality control as a set of disciplines to be applied systematically throughout the business.
• Builds in quality control's coupling with customers on a positive feed forward basis.
• Structures and reports quality costs.
• Makes quality motivation a continuous process of quality goals, quality measurement, and quality attitudes.
• Structures a unique technological contribution to the plant and company.
• Provides for continuously measuring and monitoring actual customer quality satisfaction.
• Provides good product service rapidly and economically.
• Integrates product-safety and product-liability-control considerations.
• Adds major, company-wide work scope to the quality function.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

Ryuji Fukuda

I can remember receiving his book "Mangerial Engineering" in the mail from the UK and taking it with me one sunny spring Sunday to a place on a lake outside of Oslo in Norway where I was living at the time. There, along side the trail, with squirrels, birds and bumble bees for company, I had a thoroughly enjoyable read of some great material. Thanks Ryiju for contributing to a memorable moment.

18 steps to zero defects:

1. Maintenance of work environment.
2. Consistency in fundamentals.
3. Inspection of equipment.
4. Elimination of dangerous operations.
5. Quality assurance in each process.
6. Complete personnel training and information exchange.
7. Paper tests for workers.
8. Operations standards.
9. Immediate detection and complete elimination of equipment failures.
10. Emphasis on systematic preventive maintenance.
11. Leaders of worker groups active as front line managers.
12. Respect for creativity of the line people (foremen, group leaders, workers).
13. Day-to-day management with participation of all persons concerned.
14. Use of interchange training to broaden skill development.
15. Continual steady improvement.
16. Utilize an idea system for steady improvement.
17. Perfect quality production achieved through the enthusiasm of all,and maintained in a relaxed atmosphere.
18. Definition of perfect quality production and recognition, by all, of the achieved results.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

Kaoru Ishikawa

Ishikawa is one of the most central Japanese quality gurus. He rose to fame in the sixties. Here's what happened.

In the late fifties, the quality programs started to plateau in Japan in terms of improvement results. At that point, every Japanese top and middle manager had been through the quality training. The quality doctrine was thoroughly entrenched in all the of the most important companies. This meant that pretty much all systemic causes of problems had been chased down given the technology if the day and improvements became harder to come by. All the low, medium and fairly high hanging fruit had been harvested.

It wasn't difficult to realize that while systemic causes account for the majority of the problems, that still left a good chunk of non-systemic causes. The way this came to be expressed was "Quality is designed at the management level, but is produced at the shop level". (Actually, there is probably a little less turgid way to formulate this. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.) The point is; execution matters.

To get any further, it was necessary to concentrate more on the workers, foremen and supervisors to get them to start thinking along the same lines as management.

That was a huge challenge. Consider the logistics. Management was trained in small classes and seminars. But the sheer numbers of workers, foremen and supervisors was staggering. Something had to give.

Enter Ishikawa. He devised a self-study program and organized study groups at the factory level. These study groups became known as quality circles. The training program was cost effective and the quality circles worked famously because they had full management backing and support.

Amazing, isn't it? Quality circles got a bad rap everywhere else outside of Japan. Cost too much and didn't get results. Small wonder when you start at the wrong end. If, say, 80% of your problems are system problems, then how much can you achieve from looking at non-systemic problems in an environment where management will not or cannot make sweeping changes to support recommendations from quality circles? And it isn't always realistic to think that quality circles can make good recommendations for system changes which may require different skills and backgrounds.

So there's your quick run-down on quality circles. Do you believe me now that history matters? How can anyone pass judgement on quality circles or any other technique from Japan or wherever without knowing something about its historical context? My answer is you can't.

Let's look at what Ishikawa has to say about improving quality.

Advice for management

Top management:

• Study quality control and total quality control ahead of anyone else in your company, investigate how they are implemented in Japan, and have a good understanding of the issues involved.
• Establish policies defining the positions the company will take in regard to total quality control.
• Assemble information regarding quality and QC (quality control) and specify, in concrete terms, the priority policies in regard to quality.
• Establish "priority of quality" and "quality first" as the basic policy, and determine long-term goals for quality standards (in concrete terms and with an international perspective).
• Assume leadership in quality and QC; always be a vanguard promoting them.
• To implement QC, provide adequate education and combine it with long-range plans such as personnel placement and organization plans.
• Check to see if quality and QC are conducted as planned, and take action.
• Make clear the responsibility of top management over quality assurance; equip your company with a solid system of quality assurance.
• Establish your own system of cross-function management.
• Drive home the notion that the next process is your customer, providing assurance of each successive process.
• Top management must assume leadership in bringing about a breakthrough.

Middle management:

• Strive to be a person who does not have to be always present at the company, but become a person who is indispensable to the company.
• One who cannot manage his subordinates is not half as good as he is supposed to be. When he is able to mange his superiors, then he can be called an accomplished person.
• If you delegate authority freely, your subordinates will use their abilities to the fullest extent and grow in their jobs.
• Don't always look to the top when working.
• Middle managers and those below are responsible for getting the right handle on the facts concerning the work place.
• Ask "Who hinders a company's breakthrough?"
• It is the responsibility of middle management to make QC circle activities wort.
• Communicate with other divisions (cross-function management).
• The key to success is to look into the future. The president must look ten years into the future, the director five years, the division three years, and the section chief must look at least one year in to the future.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

Joseph M. Juran

Juran. Next to Deming, I would hazard to say that he is perhaps the best known quality guru in America and other parts of the world. A prolific writer, he was part of the wartime quality movement and later went to Japan.

He has been very instrumental in bringing the quality message to organizations around the world and making it accessible for implementation. If you are looking for "Quality in a box", then Juran's probably your ticket. He has more manuals and programs than most anyone out there. And it's good stuff, don't get me wrong..

The program

• Secure the active participation of those who will be affected, during both the planning and the execution of the change.
• Strip off all technical and cultural baggage not strictly needed for introducing the change.
• Reduce the impact of the changes by weaving them into an existing broader pattern of behaviour, or by letting them ride in on the back of some acceptable change.
• Put yourself in the other fellow's place.
• Make use of the wide variety of methods available for dealing with resistance to change:
  1. Persuasion;
  2. Change of environment in a way which makes it easy for the individual to change his point of view;
  3. Remedy of cause of the resistance;
  4. Create a social climate which favours the new habits;
  5. Provide sufficient time for mental changes to take place;
  6. Start small and keep it fluid;
  7. No surprises.
  8. Treat the people with dignity.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

Richard J. Schonberger

Schonberger is one of the prominent post-war gurus. I like his writing style which manages to get things across with clarity and precision. He is very explicitly customer focused which makes sense to me. Remember, it is the customer's definition of quality that matters most, not your engineering specifications because the specs only cover purely technical concerns.

Principles of world-class, customer driven performance:

General:

• Get to know the next and final customer.
• Get to know the competition.
• Dedicate to continual, rapid improvement in quality, cost, response time and flexibility.

Design and organization:

• Cut the number of components or operations and number of suppliers to a few god ones.
• Cut the number of flow paths (where the work goes next).
• Organize product- or customer-focused linkages of resources.

Operations:

• Cut flow time, distance, inventory, and space along the chain of customers.
• Cut setup, changeover, get-ready and start-up time.
• Operate at the customer's rate of use (or a smoothed representation of it).

Human resource development:

• Develop human resources through cross-training (for mastery, continual education, job switching, and multi year cross-career reassignments.
• Develop operator/team-owners of products, processes, and outcomes.

Quality and problem solving:

• Make it easier to produce or provide the product without error.
• Record and retain quality, process, problem data at the work place.
• Assure that line people get first crack at problem-solving - before staff experts.

Accounting and control:

• Cut transactions and reporting; control causes not costs.

Capacity:

• Maintain and improve present resources and human work before thinking about new equipment and automation.
• Automate incrementally when process variability cannot otherwise be reduced.
• Seek to have plural instead of singular workstations, machines, and cells or flow lines for each product or customer family.

Marketing:

• Market and sell your firm's capability and competence.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

Shigeo Shingo

Shingo is perhaps the most famous of the Japanese quality gurus. Whereas Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum and others came and went, Shingo was right there on the ground all the time.

Reading the Japanese and their take on the quality movement was refreshing and revealing. Only by reading these authors - and Shingo is prime amongst them - can you get a feel for the difference culture makes. Really fascinating, if you happen appreciate stuff like that.

Shingo was an inventor, really. He has certainly been associated with quite a number of the best known, and not so well known, techniques or methods.

Let me give you an example. Are you familiar with the ship building industry of some thirty-forty years ago? Japan suddenly emerged as the premier builder of super tankers. They knocked them off in half the time or less than their western competitors. How? Well, they had Shingo among other things. He modularized the building technique so work could be done in parallel. The time savings were huge.

This thinking culminated in what he called the SMED-system (single digit minute exchange of dies). SMED is a technique to reduce set-up time on machines on a factory floor. This is a very big deal as it allows you to cut batch sizes. Shigeo routinely cut set-up times 75% or more on the first pass. Eventually, he refined his technique further to what he called OTED - as in one touch exchange of die. Now the production line really smoked. The concepts are easy to learn and work outside of the factory floor, too.

Intrigued? You should be. Shingo is great. I've read all his stuff. You can get his books from Productivity Press.

No longer with us, his name lives on in the Shingo Prize, an award for quality excellence. His thinking lives on in his improvement program.

Procedure for establishing a production method

• Value engineering (functions, structure, shape, or material properties).
• Value analysis.

Process improvements:

• Process/processing: how will it be manufactured; what sort of processing, what combination of processing sequences will be used?
• Inspection: what quality is required? Combine source inspections and poka-yoke (fail-proofing) in the process.
• Transportation: what layout will be used? Reduce transport to zero; use a process sequence based layout.
• Delays: think of a non-stock method; use small lot processing and balanced loads and capacities (levelling).
  • Process delays: use a synchronization method; use a full-work control method.
  • Lot delay: use one-piece flow method; improve the layout.

Operation improvements:

• Operations: think of the operation methods that will realize the process functions.
  • Processing operations: determine the proper operation conditions and methods for deformation, transformation, assembly and disassembly; what machines, tools, jigs etc. will be used?
  • Inspection operation: determine what causes to check and what methods (sensors) to use; what poka-yoke method to use; the method for implementing immediate action and for combining it with processing.
  • Transport operations: determine the method for linking processes and what transportation means to use (method for direct linkage).
  • Delay operations: think of ways for coordinating loads and capacities; synchronization methods; enhance equipment lineup )even at the expense of a reduced operating ratio); manufacture the machines in-house (at a tenth of the cost of buying them); linkage and transportation methods for achieving one-piece flow.

Reference:

Crosby | Deming | Feigenbaum | Fukuda | Ishikawa | Juran | Schonberger | Shingo |

Want to know more?

For a gateway to the field of quality, try the American Society for Quality

For a fairly concise list of seminal thinkers in the world of business (most of whom were preoccupied with quality issues) from the 1800's and onwards, try this History of Management.

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