Until 1911: pre-industrial revolutionUntil the period preceding the Industrial Revolution, quality was an activity of self-control, carried out by craftsmen. In this phase, the craftsman developed all activities: conception, choice of materials, production, and commercialization, maintaining direct contact with customers. Small quantities of each product were produced, and the parts were adjusted manually. Inspection, after the product was finished, was informal, when it was done. In this phase, the concept of quality is synonymous with technical perfection.From 1911 to 1930: TaylorismAt the beginning of the 20th century, with the advent of mass production and the theories of Scientific Management of Production, launched by F. W. Taylor (Principles of Scientific Management, Harper & Brother, NY, 1911), even though the concept of quality continued to be that of technical perfection, the practice of quality control changed substantially. Quality control became an activity external to production.According to Taylor: "The inspector is responsible for the quality of the work, and both the workers and the foremen (who provide the use of the appropriate cutting tools, who check whether the work is on the right track and whether the cuts are being made in the right part of the piece) must make sure that the work is finished in a way that satisfies him." In other words, inspection aimed to separate good products from defective ones before they were shipped to the consumer. Inspection activities were more formally related to quality control in 1922, with the publication of The Control of Quality in Manufacturing, by G. S. Radford. For the first time, quality was seen as a distinct management responsibility and as an independent function.It is important to note that, in addition to the separation between quality control and production activities, Taylorist philosophy imposed a series of constraints on quality control activity during the product manufacturing cycle, such as:• The excessive segmentation of work caused the worker, reduced to a small and repetitive task, to lose sight of the effect of his part of the work on the final result, in terms of product quality.• Productivity as an absolute parameter of competitiveness and the establishment of standard times forced production personnel to work increasingly harder, without considering aspects of manufacturing quality.From 1930 to 1950: Sampling and statisticsFrom the late 1930s onward, H. F. Dodge and H. G. Romig, also from Bell Labs, developed techniques for inspecting product lots by sampling (Sampling Inspection Tables: Single and Double Sampling, 2nd Ed., Wiley, NY, 1959), based on the probabilistic approach to predicting lot quality from sample quality. These techniques greatly simplified and increased the accuracy of the inspection process.One of the products of Dodge and Romig’s theories is the concept of Acceptable Quality Level, that is, a target in terms of percentage defective, supposedly based on economic reasons. Today it is recognized that a devastating effect of this acceptable quality level concept is that it promotes quality improvement up to a certain level, beyond which quality improvements are not economically justified. In other words, from this perspective, production scrap came to be understood as undesirable but inevitable. For many decades, this thinking prevailed.Therefore, in the period between the 1920s and 1950s, while quality control techniques evolved into statistical quality control of the process (Control Charts) and Sampling Inspection, conceptually quality evolved from Technical Perfection to Acceptable Quality Level.From 1950 to 1970: Total Quality ManagementFrom the 1950s onward, the concept of quality was radically revised, with the introduction of the concepts of Total Quality by pioneers such as Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum, among others, who are now regarded as the Gurus of Quality.The solidification of the Total Quality philosophy happened first in Japan, which revolutionized and frightened Western industry. The American economy was booming, and therefore blind and deaf to its tenets. On the other side of the Pacific, in Japan, the situation was quite different: an industrial park devastated by war, and a reputation for poor-quality products prevented economic recovery.In 1950, at the invitation of JUSE (Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers), Deming went to Japan to give a series of lectures on Statistical Quality Control. Upon finding an audience made up of senior executives eager to find ways out of the crisis, Deming realized that this was a favorable environment for putting his ideas into practice.W Edawrds DemingDEMING advocates worker participation in the decision-making process and states that 94% of quality problems are the responsibility of management, with workers being harmed by the system. He encourages top management to get involved in quality improvement programs. His set of principles became known as the 14 Points of Deming:1. Establish constancy of purpose for the improvement of product and service, aiming to become competitive, stay in business, and provide jobs. An organizational vision should guide the company and give it a goal2. Adopt the new philosophy. Management must awaken to the challenge, become aware of its responsibilities, and assume leadership in the transformation. It is not possible to live with high levels of delays, errors, and material defects.3. Do not depend on inspection to achieve quality. Introduce quality tools, such as statistical process control, design of experiments, and quality function deployment. Inspection only measures a problem, without allowing any correction of it.4. Abandon the practice of approving budgets based only on price. Seek minimization of total cost, develop a single supplier for each item, in a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.5. Constantly and continuously improve every process. Find problems by working on processes. Improve quality and productivity; as a consequence, costs will decrease. Do not fight fires; prevent defects and improve processes.6. Institute training on the job. Training applies to all levels of the organization.7. Adopt and institute leadership. Leadership comes from knowledge, expertise, and interpersonal skills, not from level of authority. Leaders remove the barriers that prevent people from achieving their best.8. Eliminate fear so that everyone works effectively. Fear stifles creativity, which is the engine of quality improvement. Fear increases with people’s insecurity when they depend on work rules, authority, punishment, and a corporate culture based on internal competition. It can be eliminated by identifying and overcoming failures in communication, culture, and training.9. Eliminate barriers between departments. People involved in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team in order to anticipate production, use, and product/service performance problems.10. Eliminate numerical targets, slogans, and exhortations to workers, asking for zero defects without providing the conditions and methods to achieve it. These exhortations create hostility among workers, since in most cases the cause of low productivity and poor quality lies in the system.11. Eliminate management by numbers. Administrators must replace work standards with leadership based on knowledge of the tasks. Numerical quotas do not take into account the statistical notions that affect workers. Natural variation must be considered; not all workers can be above average and not all can be below.12. Remove the barriers that rob people of pride in their work. Eliminate the annual rating system and management by objectives. Remove the barriers that rob the worker of their hours of satisfaction in the job.13. Adopt a strong program of education, training, and self-improvement. Training provides an immediate change in behavior. The results of education show their effects in the long term. Self-improvement is a task of education and self-development that requires courses in time management, stress reduction, allowing employees to exercise during working hours if they have a sedentary job, participation in mentally challenging tasks, or in educational processes.14. Create a structure so that everyone in the company carries out the 13 previous principles. Top management must get everyone working to support the transformation.It is important to note that Deming, like other pioneers of the Total Quality movement, was able to perceive the importance, for the proper use of statistical quality control tools, of long-term commitment from top management to the goal of continuous quality improvement, as well as investment in training and education of human resources, and changes in management methods.In 1956, A. Feigenbaum argued that high-quality products would not have a chance of being produced if the manufacturing department continued to work in isolation. In his words: "The principle on which this total quality view is based is that, in order to achieve true effectiveness, control must begin with product design and only end when the product has reached the hands of a customer who is satisfied ... the first principle to be recognized is that quality is everybody’s job".Armand V. FeigenbaumFor FEIGENBAUM, Quality is a corporate way of life, a way of managing the company, through a systemic approach, with involvement of all functions in the quality process.He introduced the term Total Quality Control in the United States in the 1950s. FEIGENBAUM’s proposal stands out for seeking the integration of the company’s activities, referring to the industrial cycle as a sequence of activities necessary to bring products from concept to market. This cycle includes marketing, design, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, inspection, packaging, shipping, installation, and service, with quality present in all these stages:Study of processes in sales and where interventions or inspections may occurThe cost of quality is present in these stages and can be minimized through a total quality perspective, managed at every stage. There must be specifications in all phases of production to ensure that customer requirements are met.Training related to the task and motivation must be an organizational commitment. Quality programs should not be set aside when demand increases or when something new draws top management’s attention. His Quality Improvement Program presents 18 steps:1. Definition of Total Quality Control as a system that integrates development, maintenance, and improvement for the quality of the company’s groups, generating more economical levels to satisfy the customer.2. Representation of control as a management tool composed of 4 steps: a) Establishment of quality standards, b) Evaluation of conformity to these standards, c) Action when standards are exceeded, d) Planning to achieve improvements in the standards.3. Integration of activities, coordinating them for customer satisfaction.4. Increase in profit resulting from quality, as it brings improvements in customer satisfaction, reduction in operational losses and service costs, and optimization of resources, reducing total costs.5. Quality produces quality. When one supplier seeks quality, others work to meet or exceed this new standard.6. Human resources have an impact on quality. People’s actions produce the greatest improvements in quality.7. Total Quality Control applies to all products and services. All departments and all people must provide quality products and services to their customers.8. Quality is total attention to the product or service life cycle. Quality is present in all phases of the production process, beginning with customer specifications, design, manufacturing, transportation, product installation, and after-sales support.9. Process control involves 4 types of processes: design control, material input control, product control, and study of special processes.10. Definition of a Total Quality Control system. This system integratedly and continuously controls the company’s key activities, such as: preparation, documentation, and integration of technical and management procedures, which lead people, machines, and information in a coordinated way, in order to ensure customer satisfaction and the economic costs of quality.11. The benefits resulting from Total Quality programs generate improvements in design and product quality, reducing losses and operating costs, raising employee morale, and reducing bottlenecks on the production line.12. Quality costs are a means of measuring and optimizing Total Quality Control activities. The operational costs of quality are divided into 4 categories: prevention cost, appraisal cost, internal failure cost, and external failure cost.13. Quality Control must be an organized program. The responsibilities of all members of the company regarding quality must be clearly defined.14. Development of quality facilitators and not quality police. Quality Control must communicate the results achieved, provide new techniques, facilitate activities, acting as an internal consultant and not as a quality policeman.15. Continuous commitment to quality. The Quality Program should not be seen as a temporary improvement in quality or a reduction in design cost. It is continuous and long-term.16. Use of statistical tools. Statistics are part of the standards of Total Quality Control, they are not the standard itself.17. Automation is not a panacea; it is complex and can become very difficult to implement, so one must analyze whether people are carrying out activities in the best way before deciding on automation.18. Quality Control at the source. The quality of a product must be controlled by its creator, who must have the necessary authority and freedom.Around the same time, two other pioneers of the Total Quality philosophy, Juran and Ishikawa, each working in different contexts, put forward their theories on commitment to the pursuit of improving the quality of products and processes.For Juran, quality is associated with satisfaction and dissatisfaction with a given product. Satisfaction occurs when a product has superior performance or characteristics. Dissatisfaction occurs when there are deficiencies in the product or service. Thus, there are two dimensions in the concept of quality: an external one, which considers consumer needs, and an internal one, related to the proper construction of the product.Joseph M. JuranConsidering these two dimensions, JURAN proposes defining quality as "fitness for use." Considering that internal and external consumers may use the product in different ways, to achieve quality one must begin with understanding who the user will be, how, and where the product will be used. For Juran, the company is a process made up of several stages, each playing the role of consumer and supplier. In each of these stages there are opportunities for improvements, achieved project by project. In other words, through a succession of small improvement projects that can be suggested by managers, operators, and quality specialists.Thus there are internal customers and suppliers that are linked, forming a chain.Improvement projects are analyzed using the Pareto principle to identify the vital few problems, the trivial many, and thus properly direct efforts. Another way to analyze improvement projects is through the costs of poor quality, since money is the main language of management. That is why Juran supports the idea that middle management must be able to translate the language of things into the language of money and vice versa. Thus, a cost classification system is necessary, dividing costs into internal and external failure costs, appraisal or inspection costs, and prevention costs.Minimum quality cost can be calculatedIshikawa’s quality program was influenced by Deming and Juran. His contribution is the development of a broad view of quality, the emphasis on its human side, the development of the cause-and-effect diagram, the use of the 7 tools, and quality control circles.Kaoru IshikawaSua vision of quality highlights the importance of rapid perception and satisfaction of market needs, suitability for use of products and services, and low variability of processes. Viewing the process as a set of causes that must be controlled in order to obtain good products and services, he developed the cause-and-effect diagram. ISHIKAWA (1993) classified statistical control techniques into 3 groups of increasing complexity.The first group is made up of the 7 tools that require knowledge by everyone in the company and can be used in the analysis and resolution of 90% of quality problems. They are: Pareto Analysis, Cause-and-Effect Diagram, Histogram, Control Charts, Check Sheet, Scatter Plot, and Flowchart.The intermediate statistical methods form the second group and are for use by quality specialists and by some managers responsible for quality in their section. These methods require some statistical knowledge, but can be learned by some managers. They include: sampling inspection, statistical estimates, and design of experiments.The last group is made up of advanced statistical methods, for use by quality specialists and consultants. They include multivariate analysis, operational research techniques, among others.ISHIKAWA (1993) believes that total quality implies participation by everyone and working in groups rather than individually. This led him to create quality control circles, which should be part of a broader quality program. According to him, quality is not a miraculous drug, it is a natural remedy that has long-term results. It begins with the consumer, with understanding their needs, translating them into clear specifications, and considering their complaints a vital opportunity for quality improvement. His Quality Program is based on 6 points:1. Definition, by top management, of a policy in which quality comes first, thereby gaining consumer trust, increasing sales, and long-term profits.2. Consumer-oriented focus. The company must produce products and services that meet the customer's needs and requirements.3. Elimination of barriers between divisions and departments. It is necessary to clearly define who the customers of each process are, so that efficient communication can take place between them, facilitating problem identification and the verification of their satisfaction.4. Description of facts through data and use of Statistical Methods. Facts must be expressed through accurate data that will be analyzed through statistical methods. 5. Administrative philosophy of respect for the human condition. Standardization of processes and procedures and delegation of authority. Management must allow the growth of human potential, give people authority, and allow everyone to participate in quality control through CCQ (Quality Control Circles).6. Management by function, breaking the company's vertical rigidity and helping it work transversally, intertwining divisions and functions. 4.3.Ishikawa classifies quality into four aspects, as follows:• strict quality: related to product attributes and freedom from defects• cost: related to cost and price• delivery: related to quantities and deadlines• assistanceIn other words, product quality, from the customer's point of view, incorporates aspects of efficiency and the quality of the production system responsible for the product.Traditional View New ViewProductivity and quality have conflicting objectives Productivity gain is achieved through quality improvement Quality is defined as conformity to specifications and standardsQuality is defined to satisfy customer needsQuality is measured by the degree of nonconformity Quality is measured by continuous improvement in processes and products and by customer satisfaction Quality is achieved through product inspection Quality is determined by product planning and is achieved through effective control of techniques Some defects are allowed when the product is within minimum quality standardsDefects are prevented through process control techniquesQuality is a separate function focused on the production process Quality is a part of each function in all phases of the product life cycleRelations with suppliers are not integrated and are directly related to costsThe relationship with suppliers is long-term and quality-orientedConclusions of 1950-1970The publication of the works of these authors represents a milestone in the change in the concept of quality, bringing it closer to consumer satisfaction and moving away from the view of "technical perfection" or "acceptable level of quality". The definitions of quality by these theorists were practically the same and followed the same emphasis on consumer satisfaction:• Deming: product quality as maximum utility for the consumer.• Feigenbaum: quality as the user's perfect satisfaction.• Juran: quality as customer satisfaction.• Ishikawa: effective quality is the one that truly brings satisfaction to the consumer.
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