The Foundation of Modern Quality Management: The Gurus

Walter Shewhart- “father of statisical quality control”, developed control charts for analyzing the output of processes to determine when corrective actions was necessary, and had a strong influence on the thinking of two other gurus, W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran.

W. Edwards Deming- statistics professor at New York University in 1940’s, went to Japan after WW2 to assits the Japanese in improving quality and productivity. “Deming Prize”

Joseph M. Juran- taught Japanese manufacturers how to improve the quality of their goods, viewed quality as fitness-for-use, and He described quality management in terms of a trilogy consisting of quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement

Armand Feigenbaum- instrumental in advancing the “cost of nonconformance”, He recognized that quality was not simply a collection of tools and techniques, but a “total field”, and it is the customer who defines quality.

Philip B. Crosby- developed the concept of zero defects and popularized the phrase “Do it right the first time.”, stressed prevention, and he argued against the idea that “there will always be some level of defectives.” Quality Is Free, and believes that any level of defects is too high and that achieving quality can be relatively easy, as explained in his book Quality Without Tears: The Art of Hassle-Free Management.

Kaoru Ishikawa- The late Japanese expert on quality was strongly influenced by both Deming and Juran, cause-and-effect diagram (also known as a fishbone diagram), and He was the first quality expert to call attention to the internal customer—the next person in the process, the next operation, within the organization.

Genichi Taguchi- best known for the Taguchi loss function, which involves a formula for determining the cost of poor quality.

Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo- developed the philosophy and methods of kaizen, a Japanese term for continuous improvement (defined more fully later in this chapter), at Toyota. Continuous improvement is one of the hallmarks of successful quality management.