Philip Crosby is a noted quality professional, author, and consultant who is widely known for promoting the concept of “zero defects” and for attempting to define quality from the viewpoint of conformance to requirements.

He was born in West Virginia in 1926. He graduated from Western Reserve University and rendered service in the Navy during World War II and then again in the Korean War. He graduated from the Ohio College of Podiatric Medicine. His working life started on the assembly line in 1952 at the Crosley Corporation, later switching on to the Bendix Corporation in 1955. After two years, he joined as a senior quality engineer at The Martin Company in Florida where he developed and implemented the zero defects concept.

In 1965 Crosby was promoted to the position of the Corporate Vice President and Director of Quality at the ITT Corporation for 14 years. Due to the magnitude of response to his book “Quality is Free,” he left the ITT Corporation and started his own consultancy company, Philip Crosby Associates, and as defined in his book, started explaining quality principles & practices to organizations.

His company was floated in 1985 for $30 million. In 1991, he launched Career IV Inc, a consultancy firm advising on the development of senior executives after his retirement from Philip Crosby Associates. On the quality crisis, Crosby devised the principle of “doing it right the first time” (DIRFT). He also included four major principles:

1. The definition of quality is conformance to product and customer’s requirements.
2. Prevention is the system of quality.
3. Zero Defects should be the performance standard.
4. Quality measurement is the price of non-conformance

He believed that establishment of good quality management principles in organizations will have more savings returns than what the organization pays for the cost of the quality system. Crosby stated that since “quality is free” it is less expensive to do it right the first time rather than paying for repairs and reworks.

Contributions to Six Sigma & Process Improvement

The Zero Defect Theory: The Zero Defects theory states that there is no existence of waste in a project. Waste refers to anything that is unproductive i.e. processes, tools, and employees etc.

Anything that is not adding any value to a project should be eliminated, thereby leading to the elimination of waste. Eliminating waste leads to process improvement and consequently lowers costs. The zero defects theory is the concept of “doing it right the first time” to avoid cost and time spent later in the process of project management.

14 Steps to Quality Improvement: Crosby gave 14 steps for process improvement. They are as follows:

1. Management’s commitment towards quality should be clear to all in the organization and those outside it.
2. Creation of quality improvement teams with senior representatives from all departments.
3. Continuous measurement of processes to determine current and potential issues related to quality.
4. The cost of poor quality has to be calculated.
5. Quality awareness has to be raised in the organization.
6. Corrective actions should be taken to address quality issues.
7. Establishment of a Zero Defect committee to monitor the progress of quality improvement.
8. Quality improvement training to all the employees.
9. Organize “zero defects” days in the organization.
10. All employees should be encouraged to set their own quality improvement goals.
11. Obstacles to quality should be discussed with employees in an open communication.
12. Participants’ efforts should be recognized.
13. Quality councils should be created.
14. Quality improvement is a continuous process. It keeps going.

Conclusions:

Philip Crosby’s ideas on quality came from his vast experience of working with an assembly line. His main focus was on zero defects which ultimately led to the adoption of this concept by the modern Six Sigma Quality movement.

Mr. Crosby explained the idea that zero defects is not a phenomenon that originated on the assembly line. He defined quality as a conformity to a set of specifications defined by the management rather than a vague concept of “goodness.” However, these specifications are set according to the needs and wants of the customer rather than being arbitrarily defined.

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Everyone is searching for the magical formula or ‘guru’ to help them find perfection in their personal lives. Type in “self-help” in your browser, hit search and pages of results will fill your screen. There are endless amounts of solutions to every possible behavior known to man and a guru behind every one of those concepts. It can be mind-numbing trying to find a technique that works for you. As with most challenges in life, some of the most effective practices are the simplest. Take some time and watch this inspiring video on how Kaizen can be applied to your personal life.

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What were the historical events that led to the birth of the Toyota Production System (TPS)? Tracing the history back to Eli Whitney and the concept of interchangeable parts, through the realities of post-war Japan and Douglas McAurthur, the tenets of Lean manufacturing and TPS were built on a foundation of innovative thinkers, each contributing elements of what we now know as TPS. Take a few minutes to learn more in this video.

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Eugene Lodewick Grant is a name not much heard around the great halls of modern engineering, but he was a stalwart in the field. Amongst select circles, he is best known for a book he published back in 1930 about engineering economics and quality control. Some feel that Grant could not get proper recognition despite receiving awards like the Shewhart Medal.

Early Life, Work, and Contributions

Eugene Grant hailed from Chicago, which was slowly evolving into an industrial hub in the roaring 20s. He had served the Navy during World War I after earning his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1917. Around 1920, he decided to join the faculty of the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Montana. Later during the year, the professor earned himself a master’s degree in economics.

He later joined Stanford’s Civil Engineering Department in 1930 where his teaching assignment led him to write the classic textbook on the principles of engineering economy. More books soon followed on varied topics like statistical quality control, the fundamental principles surrounding depreciation, and books across basic cost accounting. These tomes have gone a long way in silently influencing the field of modern engineering.

The professor headed the department until 1956 thereby taking up the role of heading the Committee on Industrial Engineering.

Grant’s contributions to Quality Control and Engineering

One of Eugene Grant’s best known contributions to the field of quality revolved around statistical quality control. His brilliance lay in the way he could perform thought experiments whilst keeping the practicalities in mind. His work and importance cannot be fully appreciated without first understanding the power of what they can achieve.

1. Statistical Quality Control: Any expert would say that this is the term used to describe sets of statistical tools to study quality. Even to an engineering apprentice, the quality of finished products holds the greatest importance, as that is the only way economics can be successfully married to engineering to create sustainable profit synergies across the board.

Until the early 20th-century, quality was limited to disposing of defective products post-production. This system proved to be not only impractical but cost heavy as well. To counter this, the powerful mathematical tools of statistics were employed which gave way to a completely new way quality was viewed in industry and engineering. Injecting various variables of a production process into statistical equations would give ways to prevent a defect before actual production. These could be then leveraged to redesign and optimize processes as well.

Among Grant’s practices, he believed that at least 20 observations would be needed over at least two to 10 working days of any process to make any useful conclusions. The equations related to standard deviation would be leveraged to create bell curves which would then be studied. These measurements would help in quantifying the probability of a defect occurring in a particular manufacturing process.

Professor Grant’s books on statistical quality control throw deep insights into this field and the huge potential statistics has on quality and its control in engineering.

2. Engineering Economics: It doesn’t require an expert to figure out that engineering and economics are two sides of the same coin. The challenge lies in its application wherein different factors of engineering and economics must be balanced to attain profitability of a product. Eugene Grant’s astuteness lay in this perfect confluence of the two fields where he could bring in methods to improve both profits and engineering processes.

There are various basic principles outlined before and improved upon by the late professor that revolve around simple but basic aspects of a manufacturing process. These would center around developing alternative solutions and focusing on the differences among them. His book on the subject, which was in its first publication in 1930 has since been translated into various languages across the world.

 Conclusion

In conclusion, even though the name Eugene Grant doesn’t ring an immediate bell, he has done more than his fair share for the advancement of statistics in quality control. Even after all these years, his achievements and insights on the engineering economy continue to influence new students of the subject and will continue to do so for a great many years.

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Armand V. Feigenbaum is an American quality specialist who devised the concept of Total Quality Control (TQC). This concept later became the foundation stone of the stream of TQM (Total Quality Management).

Early Life, Work & Contributions

Armand V. Feigenbaum earned his master’s and doctorate degrees from MIT. During his doctoral studies, he started writing his book “Total Quality Control.” From 1958 to 1968, he served as the Director of Manufacturing Operations at General Electric.

In 1968, he founded General Systems Company at Massachusetts, which was mainly operational into the field of defining Business Operating Systems for companies. Dr. Feigenbaum shared his concepts and processes through a number of articles, books, and interviews.

Today, he is one of the most revered personalities in the field of quality and process improvement. His name cannot be missed in any discussion of the concept of total quality. He also served as the president of prestigious societies such as ASQ (American Society for Quality) and IAQ (International Academy for Quality). He passed away at an age of 94.

Approach to Quality and Six Sigma: Process Improvement

Armand V. Feigenbaum is most known for his major contributions in the field of quality and Six Sigma techniques, helping improve processes through his innovative strategies.

1. Total Quality Control: A system where quality development, maintenance, and improvement are effectively integrated to ensure production and service at considerably lower costs. This ultimately leads to higher customer satisfaction, which is so critical for all businesses.

According to Feigenbaum, it is imperative to consider a few elements of quality to enable complete customer focus, i.e. both internally and externally.

• Firstly, quality should be understood from the customer’s perception, not from the organization’s.
• Secondly, quality and cost should not be viewed as different, but the same.
• Thirdly, both individual and team commitment are needed for ensuring quality. Quality should be permanently embedded as a part of process improvement. Innovation and quality are interrelated and mutually benefitting.

2. Hidden Plant: Fiegenbaum stated that almost 15% to 40% of an organization’s capacity is wasted by not getting the things right as they should be. He explained that the cost of quality can be understood under two heads: the cost of getting the things right and the cost of not getting them right.

Even today, most organizations fail to understand that huge wastes on account of this major shortcoming. With what is called this hidden factory, it is a waste to establish big change interventions like restructuring or downsizing.

3. Quality Accountability: Fiegenbaum stressed that quality is a universal concept and cannot be restricted to a department or individual.

Each and every process and functional area is responsible and accountable for ensuring quality control in the organization. Quality in an organization needs to be managed actively and has to be made visible at the higher levels of management.

4. Quality Costs: Fiegenbaum described the concept of quality costs in an article in HBR (Harvard Business Review) in 1956. He stated that it is important to quantify the total cost of quality as a part of process improvement.

He challenged the conventional belief that higher costs are incurred in order to deliver higher quality (in buying better quality machines or materials or hiring expensive labor). He was of the opinion that the classification of quality-related entries in a company’s ledger would enable business managers and quality experts to evaluate decisions based on improvement in costs and the enhancement of profit.

He further identified the areas of cost control (prevention and appraisal costs) and the areas of failure of cost control (internal and external failure costs).

Conclusion

Armand Fiegenbaum will always be remembered for his invaluable contributions to the field of quality control and management. His works on quality costs and the hidden plant have paved the way for business organizations to identify the reasons for cost inefficiency and quality failures.

His principles in the areas of cost control and quality improvement are the guiding light for companies to build in processes with embedded quality systems in order to ensure higher customer satisfaction and value.

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Richard Beckhard will forever be remembered as a pioneer in advocating changes in a systematic manner across large organizations. Change is an inherent property of evolution and holds true for organizations as well as people. Accepting changes by the latter is simpler because the scale is low. Organizations, on the other hand, are large and complex institutions with various departments working in tandem. To introduce change, one needs to balance all of these interactions to reduce shockwaves across the organization. Beckhard was one of the first few to actually introduce a system by which all organizations can embrace change to evolve in their vision and path.

Early Life, Work, and Contributions

Richard Beckhard was born around the same time World War I ended in New York City. As a young student, Richard never showed any inclination towards academics but was always open to learning new ways to do things. In the initial years of his life, he found work at a theatre where he performed as an actor.

Beckhard’s tryst with the entertainment industry continued well into World War II, where he was put in charge of both direction and production for the troops stationed in the Pacific. It was here that he observed how changes in the army were absorbed with little to no shockwaves across battalions. This piqued his interest in the study of changes in a systematic manner and minimize adverse effects if any.

His most noted work would be in collaboration with Professor Douglas McGregor in the 1950s where they came up with the famous theory termed as the “Formula of Change.” Even though this had existed in some form or the other before him, Beckhard is largely credited with simplifying it so it could be socialized across large and complex organizations. He is also the founder of a unique model for organizational development, which is abbreviated to GRPI.

Beckhard’s Contributions to Organization Development

Beckhard is famous for his work in the development of the formula of change and GRPI. A change will always have resistance. It holds true for people and it holds true for organizations as well. Both of his contributions need to be looked at in a bit more detail to understand the impacts better.

1. Formula of Change: In the late 80s, Beckhard, in collaboration with David Gleicher came up with a simplified version of the formula for organizational change. This was radically different from the way the problem had been approached until then. Beckhard and team outlined a few key metrics which he believed governed change in complex organizations –namely dissatisfaction, initial steps, vision, and resistance to change. Leveraging only these key variables, Beckhard and team were hugely successful in bringing about changes in big organizations with little to no adverse effects.

2. GRPI: In the early 1970s, Beckhard came up with a unique model which would actually quantify teamwork so as to introduce changes more effectively. The main tenets of this model were namely:

• Goals – The goals set by a team must be agreed upon by all members. In addition, these goals should be quantifiable so as to measure effectiveness later on.
• Roles – Every member of a team should have clear roles. Ambiguity in roles, according to Beckhard was a key detrimental factor when it came to introducing change.
• Process – Processes in an organization should be set in stone. Beckhard also believed that effective communication across each and every process is key in order to introduce changes at a later time.
• Relationships – In any team, trust is key. If there is a lack of trust and communication, the entire team would crumble. In such a team it would be next to impossible to introduce change, as lack of communication would lose teeth fairly quickly.

Beckhard’s brilliance lay in collecting all these key tenets and coming up with a uniform structure by which changes could be introduced to an organization quite seamlessly and with low costs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Beckhard is one of the most eminent contributors to the field of organization development. His brilliance in identifying key tenets hampering change in any organization can never be forgotten even though advancements in the field have been made since his time.

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Joseph Moses Juran (1904) was born in Romania. He demonstrated his quest for knowledge since an early age; in school, his mathematical and scientific proficiency was brilliant. He was the first member of his family to enroll in the University of Minnesota in 1912. In 1924, he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota and joined Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works.

His first job was in the Complaint Department. In 1925, the Bell Labs proposed the training of Hawthorne Works personnel in its new statistical sampling and control chart techniques. Juran was also chosen to join the Inspection Statistical Department, a small group of engineers charged with the application and dissemination of Bell Labs’ innovations in statistical quality control. This highly visible position was the stepping stone in Juran’s ascent in the organization. The complexity of this enormous factory, with a labor base of 40,000 workers, presented Juran his first ever challenge in management.

In 1926, a new program was introduced by a team of quality control pioneers from the Bell Laboratories to Hawthorne Works. Designed to implement new tools and techniques, the project posed the requirement of a training program. Juran became one of the two engineers from a group of 20 engineers for the Inspection Statistical Department.

The end of World War II compelled Japan to change its focus to become an economic power rather than being a military power. The attention of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers JUSE was drawn to the first edition of Juran’s Quality Control Handbook in 1951 and they invited him to Japan in 1952. He campaigned for quality and quality management throughout his life. Juran wrote several books on the concept of quality and its applications.

Contributions to Quality Management

Pareto principle: In 1941, Juran applied the Pareto principle to quality concerns in the organization: 20% of the causes are responsible for creating 80% of the problems. This is also popularly quoted as “the vital few and the trivial many.” In the later years, Juran used this quote to signal that the remaining 80% of the causes cannot be ignored.

Management theory: Juran is widely acknowledged for the addition of the human dimension to quality management. He advocated the training and education of managers. Juran proposed that human relations problems are supposed to be isolated and that the fundamental cause of quality issues was resistance to change. Juran’s concept of quality management can be extended outside the factory to encompass non-manufacturing processes and those that are service related.

The Juran trilogy: Juran was one of the first to point out the cost of poor quality. He illustrated this concept in “Juran trilogy,” a cross-functional management approach, constituted of three managerial processes: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. He pointed out that without change, there will be a constant waste. However, margins will be higher and the increased costs are recouped after the improvement.

Transfer of quality knowledge between East and West: He became aware of the concept of quality circles during his visit to Japan in 1966. He preached this concept with enthusiasm in his assignments in the West. He acted as a moderator between the U.S. and Japanese companies looking for mutual and professional introductions to each other.

Conclusions

Joseph M. Juran has many contributions in the field of quality management. His book, the ‘Quality Control Handbook’ is a classic reference for quality engineers to date. He transformed the Japanese philosophy of quality management and worked hard in shaping their economy helping them to become industry leaders.

Dr. Juran was the first to embed the human aspect of quality management, known as Total Quality Management. The involvement of top management, the Pareto principle, identifying the need for widespread training in quality, propagating the new definition of quality as fitness for use, and the project-by-project approach towards quality improvement are the ideas and concepts for which Juran is best known, and they are still widely used today.

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Early Life & Achievements

F. W. Taylor, popularly known as the father of scientific management, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1856. He started his career as a machinist and shop floor worker at Midvale Steel Works and belonged to an aristocratic family. His promotions came fast; he finally served as the Chief Engineer of Works at Midvale. He switched to a manufacturing investment company where he joined as the general manager and a consulting engineer for three years. He then started his own consultancy specializing in systematic shop management.

He is widely known for his philosophies on shop management, which made him earn the title “Father of Scientific Management.” During his work at the Midvale machine shop, he observed some of the workforces not working to their full capacity thereby slowing down the entire process, leading to inefficiencies. He devised a system known as production or task management which helps in objectively approaching the jobs and the measurement of job efficiency and effectiveness.

Contributions

Taylor is known for his tremendous contribution to the issues faced by the shop floor level in organizations. He observed much wastage of human and other resources in the organizations. The management had no idea about the systematic performance of task and efficiency at work. He attempted to remove these problems with the development of the concept of scientific management.

His major breakthroughs are:

• Principles of Scientific Management: These principles discuss how time and money can be saved when the production is at its full capacity. Removal of anything that doesn’t add to the value was also proposed by Taylor. He performed a number of scientific studies on the workers to quantify their lifting capabilities. He also discussed incentives and their effect on motivation. The four principles are:
  1. Each and every part of an individual’s work is to be scientifically analyzed, and then the most efficient method for completing the job is devised which is the ‘one best way’ of doing that job.
  2. The most suitable person to complete the job is also selected scientifically. His training and development are done systematically so as to complete the job as suggested and devised.
  3. Cooperation between managers and workers to ensure the completion of work in a scientific manner.
  4. Clear division of work between managers and workers. Managers plan the work and workers execute it.

Taylor advised finding the right jobs for workers and then paying them in proportion with the increased output. He advocated paying the person and not the job and discarded the concept of unions if individual workers are satisfied the way they were rewarded for their contribution.

2. Clear Distinction between Managers & Workers: Taylor proposed that there should be a transfer of control from workers to management. Therefore, he started explaining the differences between planning and execution. Charting out the detailed plans according to the specified job was done by the managers and was then given to the workers for the execution. However, scientific management led to a decline in skill enhancement and the autonomy of the workers working at the shop floor level. The personal style of every worker also suffered due to increased supervision for following the given instructions.
3. The Differential System of Payment:- Under the system of differential pay, a worker is eligible for piece rate pay, which means the more the units produced by a worker, the greater will be the pay received by him. This, in turn, will motivate the workers to work more and produce more with efficiency and effectiveness.

Conclusions

Scientific examination of the way in which work in an organization can be completed made Taylor a pioneer in management. Taylor is also recognized as a major contributor to time and motion study along with Lillian and Frank Gilbreth. This involved examination of workers’ movements in detail and using these details to streamline work and save on effort.

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Dr. Noriaki Kano, a Japanese educator and thinker, is one of the world’s leading authorities in the field of quality management and process improvement. He is an emeritus professor of TUS (Tokyo University of Science). Kano did his undergrad, post-grad, and doctorate degrees from the University of Tokyo.

A Brief Discussion of Kano’s Works

He is most known for his invaluable contribution to the field of quality management. He is one of those rare personalities who received the prestigious Deming Award in two different categories in their lifetime. In the year 1997, he received the Deming Prize for individuals, administered by JUSE (Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers). In the same year, he was awarded the Deming Lecturer award for his paper titled, “Business Strategies for the 21^st Century and Attractive Quality Creation.”

His book ‘Guide to TQM in Service Industries’ is one of the most read and referred books in the areas of Six Sigma and Quality Management. Dr. Kano has delivered lectures in many international universities and eminent societies like American Society for Quality, European Organization for Quality, and Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers and firms in over 50 countries around the world.

Dr. Kano is well known for his innovative approach to modeling customer satisfaction. He challenged the conventional beliefs that all attributes in a product or service lead to customer satisfaction. He stated that it is not all but some attributes that actually lead to higher customer loyalty than the other attributes. This belief was developed into a model now popularly known as the “Kano Model.”

The Kano Model & Its Applications to Process Improvement

Dr. Kano formulated the well-known Kano Model. The major objective of creating this new model was to identify and understand the five major categories of customer requirements and how these requirements influence the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of customers for a particular product and service.

The purpose of the Kano model is to support product specification through better development of team understanding. Kano’s model is focused on differentiating product features, as compared to focusing on customer needs initially.

Kano Analysis was devised for mapping consumer responses into the model and classifies customer requirements into five categories so that they can focus on these categories that maximize the satisfaction and loyalty indexes.

The Kano Model has three main categories of attributes which play a pivotal role in its functioning.

1. Threshold or Basic Attributes: These are the basic attributes in a product or service. The product/service is believed to be incomplete without them. They are basically those simple attributes without which the product will be out of the market owing to the dissatisfaction of customers. Their presence will not ensure the satisfaction of the customers; however, their absence can lead to dissatisfied customers.

2. Performance or Linear Attributes: They are the attributes on which an organization bases its performance aspirations. For instance, for Walmart, it is price (“Low cost always”) that serves this purpose. Higher quality on these attributes implies more satisfaction and vice versa.

Companies generally schedule their investments and decisions using performance attributes. A customer’s willingness to pay for a product is directly associated with the performance attributes. The higher the performance attributes, the higher the customer’s willingness to pay.

3. Excitement or Delighter Attributes: The excitement attributes help in spurring the hidden needs of the consumers that they have never thought about before. Building in excitement attributes in the product or service can help organizations create a competitive advantage over their market competitors.

The attributes discussed above drift from basic to performance and to excitement over time. The drift is driven by the performance levels of the competitors and the expectations of the end consumers.

Conclusions

Dr. Noriaki Kano is one of the eminent contributors in the field of quality management, process improvement and Six Sigma. His highly successful Kano Model is being used by organizations the world over today irrespective of the size and industry type.

The model not only helps organizations identify the attributes influencing the satisfaction and loyalty among the customers, but also gives businesses a strategic direction through which a competitive edge can be had over the competitors.

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Harold French Dodge was born in Lowell in 1893 and was among the key architects of the field of SQC (Statistical Quality Control). Dodge completed his B.S. in electrical engineering from M.I.T. in 1916 and his master’s degree in physics from Columbia University in the year 1917. He worked at the Bell Laboratories quality assurance department from the year 1917 to 1958. His colleagues included Walter Shewhart, George Edwards, Harry Romig, R. L. Jones, Paul Olmstead, E.G.D. Paterson, and Mary N. Torrey. In 1958, after his retirement from the Bell Laboratories in 1958, he joined the Statistics Center of the Graduate School at Rutgers and became a professor of applied mathematical statistics until 1970. He was associated with NASA as an assurance consultant in 1961 and 1962 and with the Sandia Corp. from 1958 to 1967.

He is universally acclaimed for originating acceptance sampling plans for taking inspection operations on a scientific basis in terms of controllable risks. He also originated some other concepts such as skip-lot sampling plans, CSP type continuous sampling, acceptance sampling schemes, and chain sampling plans.

He was the chairman of the American Standards Association (ASA, now the American National Standards Institute) War Committee Z1, which prepared the Z1.1, Z1.2, and Zl.3 quality control standards. The American Society for Testing and Materials honored Harold Dodge’s contribution and named him its Marburg Lecturer in 1954 and an honorary member in 1968.  He was a fellow member of the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the Royal Statistical Society. Dodge was the recipient of the prestigious Shewhart Medal (1949), Grant Award (1972), and was the fifth Honorary member (1965). He was also one of the Fellows and founding members of the Society. Several patents on telephone instruments and electrical stethoscopes are held by Dodge. He also authored a number of articles pertaining to the analysis of heart and lung sounds, in addition to his articles on quality control and sampling inspection in various technical publications.

Major Contributions to Quality Improvement

Sampling Inspection Tables: Dodge was the member of a small group that developed the Army Ordinance standard sampling table; the Dodge-Romig Sampling Inspection Tables, developed with Harry G. Romig in the early 1930s and published in 1940, are his most prominent and pioneering work. In more than 30 quality control training conferences for Army Ordinance, he was associated as an instructor. He also chaired the ASQ Standards Committee for many years and was chairman of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Committee E-11 on statistical methods.

Acceptance Sampling: It is an important field of statistical quality control, originally applied during World War II by the U.S. military for the testing of bullets. If every bullet was tested in advance, no bullets would be left to ship and on the other hand, if none were tested, defects might occur in the battlefield, with disastrous results. Dodge proposed that a sample should be picked at random from the lot, and on the basis of information yielded by the sample, a decision can be made regarding the status of the lot. The acceptance or rejection of the lot was then decided. This process is known as acceptance sampling.

Differentiation Between Acceptance Quality Control and Acceptance Sampling: Harold Dodge pointed out in 1969 that acceptance quality control is not the same as acceptance sampling. The former can be implemented in the form of an acceptance control chart, the control limits for which are computed using the specification limits and the standard deviation being monitored. The latter, however, depends on specific sampling plans, which when implemented indicate the conditions for the acceptance or rejection of the immediate lot.

Conclusions

One of the aspects of quality assurance is related to inspection and decision making regarding quality products. Harold Dodge significantly contributed to the field of statistical quality control with the development of inspection tables, devising the concept of acceptance sampling, and clarifying the differences between acceptance sampling and quality control.

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Peter Drucker is a name which will remain etched into the halls of management forever. His work in balancing the profits of a company to worker empathy is considered groundbreaking. Drucker was strongly influenced by the lectures and studies of the famed economist Joseph Schumpeter and John Keynes. His focus was mainly on the people whom he considered the brick and mortar of any successful business. This resonates with the modern thought which directly links company performance with the mental state of workers.

Early Life, Work, and Contributions

Peter Drucker graduated from Dobling Gymnasium in 1927 and soon thereafter found employment in Vienna. He then moved to Hamburg where he worked in the capacity of an apprentice at a cotton trading company. He then tried his hand at journalism and was employed by a financial newspaper. He later earned a doctorate in international and public law and in the early 20th century, Drucker left Germany for England where he rose to the position of chief economist at a bank. He then worked as a professor of politics, philosophy, and management until 1976. It was during this time that Peter Drucker with his ideas disrupted the prevalent norms across management studies.

This was the first time that business management and psychology was balanced to constitute a synergic relationship for maximum profits. He brought in key tenets from various schools of thought across history, psychology, politics, and culture to create his own version of business management. It is famously known as management by objectives and is leveraged by many business houses to this day.

 Drucker’s Contributions To Business Management

Peter Drucker is credited with the development of a scientific method to business management. The basic wireframe for this school of thought involves the following set of ideas:

1. Organizational goals should grow and evolve to best suit the circumstances
2. Objectives of workers should be clearly defined at the very outset of a process
3. Progress should be supervised as course corrections need to be applied immediately
4. Work should be evaluated and rewarded as it serves as an incentive for a better quality of work

These ideas were encompassed into what is today termed as Management by Objectives. Drucker did not believe in the famous assembly line design of Henry Ford. According to him, the entire process was people dependent and a weak cog in the wheel would make the entire process useless. This, he believed, only added to inefficiency and hampered quality as the process was only as strong as the workers working them.

Management by Objectives (MBO): This pioneering idea where workers were not seen just as a means of profit but a valuable resource to the running of an optimized process sent tremors of change across industries. If certain key tenets were to be followed, Drucker believed that the performance of workers would improve drastically along with their mental state. This would mean more involvement from management to include the workers in the daily operations of the company. According to this school of thought, goal creation should be a joint effort across all levels of management, starting from the CEO to the plant worker. If the generation of objectives could be balanced with the psychological state of the workers, great things could happen.

There are various benefits which can be simplified into a few key points:

1. Involving employees to set goals so as to empower them. This is a key investment as it leads to improved job satisfaction
2. Creation of touch-points between the employer and employee on a frequent cadence so as to keep the idea and intent of the company fresh in everyone’s minds. This helps in improving relationships and problem-solving when the need arises
3. Linking the well being of employees to the well being of the company leads to loyalty which cannot be simply bought with higher wages

The above practices, though still in use today, are not explicitly called MBO in modern times as advancements in technology have made it possible to perform advanced forecasting studies based on the various behavioral metrics associated with workers.

Conclusion

The ideas of Peter Drucker have long been considered as the foundation stones of modern business management theories. His methods to reduce bureaucracy in management processes were key to the development of modern management practices. Lean management is one key outcome of his work which is still leveraged today.

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Early Life & Achievements

George Edward Pelham Box was born in Kent, England. He was a renowned statistician and theorist of quality control. He completed his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and statistics from University College, London. He presented the initial proposal of his thesis to be completed under master’s to his guide and impressed him to the level that his research guide advised him to pursue his doctorate straight away. In 1952, he completed his Ph.D.

In 1957, Box joined as a head at Statistical Techniques Research Group at Princeton. After three years, he established the Department of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin. He started working on a research project which was later accepted by the United States Air Force in 1960. His findings from the project were compiled in the form of a book, Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control which was published in 1970. He received the Samuel S. Wilks Award in 1972, as the sole recipient named by the American Statistical Association (ASA). He was known for his work in experimental designs, Bayesian Methods, and Time Series Analysis.

He served as the president of American Statistical Association (ASA) and later served the Institute of Mathematical Statistics as President. Box was a visiting faculty at the University of Essex in England and continued teaching till 1970. He was appointed to the Ronald Aylmer Fisher chair of statistics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1971. He continued as the professor of industrial engineering with the University of Wisconsin. In 2003, the George Box Medal was established by the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics in his honor to acknowledge his contribution to the development and application of statistical methods in the European industry. George E P Box died at the age of ninety-two years. With undaunted attention on quality, he wrote more than 100 publications on major inventions. He won the Brumbaugh Award when he was 90.

Contributions

Contributions to Applied Statistics: His first important contribution was the invention of Evolutionary Operation, an original procedure for continuous improvement of the conditions in a plant. The concept of robustness, variable transformation, model diagnosis, and Bayesian statistics and its scope were also pioneered. The third contribution is the analysis and forecasting of time series. All major banks and statisticians are utilizing the methods developed by Jenkins, Box, and Tiao. Finally, the fourth critical contribution is in the area of Quality Control. He explained and clarified the role of many statistical tools and procedures in the improvement of quality and productivity. He quoted, ‘‘the way to improve a field is to do applications in this field.” He worked extensively with many organizations such as Hewlett Packard and Ford to implement practical learning in the field apart from conceptual knowledge.

Contributions to Quality & Improvement: George Box played a critical role in the quality movement from the 1980s to 1990s. The major work fields of Box like robustness and industrial experimental design got new energy after quality was measured in a quantifiable manner. He delightfully shared how the application of scientific methods and statistical tools has transformed the quality movement.  He believed that certain issues clarifying the role and importance of statistics in quality and productivity improvement have not been properly addressed such as the role of statistics in investigation and discovery, extrapolation of results, and evaluation of management changes for the benefit of an organization.

Conclusions

George Box was an eminent statistician known for his noteworthy contribution in the area of statistics. He clarified the role of statistics and related tools such as Bayesian statistics, model building and diagnosis time series analysis, and transformation of variables in the field of quality improvement and Six Sigma. He advocated the quantitative measurement of quality and, in turn, paved the way for statistical applications in quality improvement. He always believed that there is nothing that cannot be improved. His methods are widely used by organizations like Hewlett Packard, Ford, and major banks for quality control.

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Genichi Taguchi is a name which will forever be associated with quality control. His pioneering thoughts and subsequent work changed the field forever. His focus was into greater customer satisfaction by looking into the loss of quality. He challenged the prevalent ideas of production where it was okay if a defect was within a tolerance limit. His methods famously known as the “Taguchi Methods” have left a lasting imprint in the field of quality control.

Early Life, Work, and Contributions

Genichi Taguchi was born in Japan around 1924 and was a student of textile engineering at Kiryu University till the breakout of the second world war. This war was instrumental in influencing the young man’s mind with respect to quality post-production. Certain armaments in the Japanese Navy were notorious for exploding post-production and Taguchi found himself right in the middle of it during the war. He served in the Japanese Navy during the second world war and worked with the navigations department until the end of the war. After the war he found himself working at the public health and welfare department where he was heavily influenced by Matosaburo Masuyama, a famed statistician.

The manufacturing industry of Japan had very little resources to work with after the war. Taguchi’s work was centered around trying to reduce spiraling costs and saving the industry. He realized that most of the aberrations in cost were due to certain external factors which he termed as “noise” in a production process. Even if the production was within parameters and tolerance levels, the quality would decline owing to these “noises.” His idea to isolate these noises at the source and reduce variations in quality is by far the most important statistical work done in the field of quality control.

 Taguchi’s Contributions to Quality Control

Genichi Taguchi’s additions to the field of quality control were not constrained to just the process of production. He had keen insights into the perception of a customer towards a particular product and how it varies with variabilities in quality as time passes. His equations to quantify and calculate the same are famously called the Loss Function and is still used by manufacturing houses today.

Another major contribution of Taguchi was to isolate and remove factors which affect the variability of a product. These activities were often ignored owing to the associated cost and time needed. Taguchi’s brilliance lay in the simplistic and cost-effective way he designed arrays to isolate and remove these factors.

1. Reducing loss – Taguchi was the first one to actually quantify customer experience and define how it changed with changes in product quality. These equations would give insights into the loss in revenue and the relationship it had with customer experience.
2. Reducing product defects – In all production processes there are factors which either influence product quality in a direct or indirect manner. Though the direct influencers are simple to catch and control, the challenge lay in doing the same for the indirect variables. Even if it were possible it would be a very expensive process and not practical when scaled up. Taguchi came up with certain arrays called orthogonal arrays which would pinpoint the indirect variables and also keep costs under control.

In addition to these famous works, Taguchi also imparted his experience in manufacturing houses across various types of products. Later in his life he even helped a candy company retain the quality of their products by applying the same principles and equations he leveraged to improve the quality of electronic equipment and daily household items.

Throughout his life Taguchi immersed himself to improve customer experience and cut costs at the same time. He was one of the pioneers of quality control and was the first to bring in mathematical equations and statistical methods to quantify the relationship between the experience of a customer and profits of a company.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Genichi Taguchi contributed tremendously to the advancement of statistics in quality control. Even after all these years his achievements and insights in the field continue to influence new students of the subject and will continue to do so for a great many years.

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Walter A Shewhart and His Contributions to Statistical Quality Control

Walter A Shewhart is a name highly revered amongst modern engineers as a man who married statistics, quality control, and process improvement in an era when quality control involved discarding defective items post-manufacture.

He is often regarded as the grandfather of total quality management and process improvement. Not only that, his concepts serve as a primer for quality engineers to this day.

Early Life, Work, and Contributions

Shewhart attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign before pursuing his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1917. He worked for the Western Electric Company and was with the Inspection Engineering Department until 1925 when he joined the newly established Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Whilst at Bell Labs, Shewhart revolutionized the production process followed at the time. He leveraged schematic control charts of his creation to bring down the number of defective pieces being manufactured. This not only brought down costs for the company but also helped in building credibility among consumers.

Today, he is one of the most revered and well-respected personalities in the field of process improvement and quality. His contributions to process adjustments in manufacturing are still considered the founding stones for modern industry six sigma quality guidelines.

Shewhart’s contributions to Process Improvement – Reducing variation

Shewhart is best known for his simple schematic control chart which changed the manufacturing industry forever. This chart outlined principles essential to modern process quality control. These are followed to this day with certain improvements as production processes became more complicated.

A key thing to remember in any process is that no two products will ever be the same. Reducing these variations to improve quality has always been one of the manufacturing industry’s greatest challenges. Dr. Shewhart’s acknowledgment of two classes of variation, namely ‘special-cause’ and ‘common-cause’ led him to improve his control chart mentioned above.

He proposed variables which would reduce ‘common-cause’ variations. According to him, to distinguish between the two, every manufacturing process would need to be brought under statistical control. This and other principles of Shewhart helped pave the way for modern analysis of manufacturing processes.

Deming Wheel Cycle and Six Sigma

One of Shewhart’s other well-known accomplishments included a simple plan termed PDCA or plan-do-check-act, an iterative four-step management method for the continual improvement of processes. This is also known famously as the Deming Wheel cycle.

In six sigma programmes, the above-mentioned cycle is renamed as DMAIC or define-measure-analyze-improve-control. A guiding principle of the PDCA/DMAIC is the iterative nature of the processes. More the number of iterations a product is subjected to, the better the end output.

To illustrate and highlight his contribution to six sigma and the PDCA cycle, the latter needs to be looked at from the perspective of a company which isn’t experiencing profits.

The company would brainstorm ideas for improvement which is the ‘plan’ phase of the cycle. Next, the company chooses an actionable course, then pursues it, which constitutes the “do” phase. The next phase ‘check’ constitutes studies conducted to test the results of the actions taken prior. This phase also quantifies the efficacy of the prior phase and serves as the foundation stone for the next step. In the “act” phase, the company analyses the observed results. If the results are up to the mark, the process is set in stone until further improvements are needed. If they are not, this phase instructs the company to circle back to the original brainstorming pool to start the process over again and repeat the cycle until the company is pleased with the results.

This plan illustrates Shewhart’s brilliance and the thought process that the continuous evaluation of management procedures and the consideration of new ideas are vital in streamlining “common causes” and mitigating “special causes” in variation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Shewhart is one of the most eminent contributors in Six Sigma and process improvement. His work and contributions help organizations identify unique attributes in their processes which influence customer experience and quality.

They will always be leveraged by organizations operating on the bleeding edge and wanting to re-define the way things are done.

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Kaoru Ishikawa: Contribution to The Theory of Process Improvement

Kaoru Ishikawa is known as the ‘Father of Japanese Quality’. He invented major quality tools and concepts including the Fishbone diagram (cause and effect diagram) frequently used in the analysis of industrial processes and CWQC – Company-Wide Quality Control.

Ishikawa sponsored the “next operation (process step) as the client” concept to avoid workplace politics.

Early Life and Career

Kaoru Ishikawa was born in the year 1915 and went on to complete his engineering in applied chemistry from the University of Tokyo. Until 1947, he was associated with Nissan after which he started rendering his services as a professor in a university.

He played an instrumental role in the development of the concept of the ‘Quality Circle’. Ishikawa believed that increased internal cooperation and coordination positively affects a customer’s needs and ultimately leads to process efficiency and better quality of products and services.

He expressed the need for the top level management to support the teams which were under their control all the time. He was awarded the Shewhart Medal & the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Japan) for his outstanding technical leadership in the area of modern quality control.

He received the Industrial Standardization Prize for his eminent writings on quality control. The American Society for quality control awarded him with the Nihon Keizai Press Prize and the Grant Award for his education initiatives in the area of quality control.

Kaoru Ishikawa: Contribution to the Theory of Process Improvement

Ishikawa’s major contributions in the area of quality control and process improvement can be traced as under:

1. Fishbone Diagram (Cause & Effect Diagram) – This tool created by Kaoru Ishikawa is known as the Fishbone Diagram owing to its shape. It is one of the seven basic Quality Control tools. The objective of the Six Sigma program is the removal of waste so as to identify the areas for improvement. A fishbone diagram clusters the roadblocks together to identify which factors have the greatest impact. Ishikawa diagram is commonly used in product design and prevention of quality defects to reveal the factors causing the overall effect.

2. Implementation of Quality Circles: A voluntary group of people who meet to identify, analyze, and resolve work-related issues. Improvement in Occupational health and safety, product design, manufacturing processes, and the overall culture of the organization are the objectives of a Quality Circle. In Japan, this concept was first launched in Nippon Wireless and Telegraph Company in the year 1962. The idea of Quality Circles was described by Edward Deming in 1950 and was later expanded by Ishikawa. Basically, Quality Circles are formal groups of people trained by specialists in human factors and skills of problem identification, data gathering, and analysis and generation of solutions.

3. Emphasis on Internal Customer: Ishikawa suggested that over-reliance on specialists would limit the scope of improvement for all the employees. Therefore, an overall participation was required from workers at all the levels of the organization. Every area has the potential for contributing to the overall quality, therefore; all areas should embed statistical techniques in the internal and external audit programmes. The term “company-wide” does not only include a company’s activities focusing on internal quality control, but also the quality of management, human aspects, after sales service, and sensitive customer care.

Conclusion

The contribution of Kaoru Ishikawa stands tall and unquestioned in the area of quality control and process improvement. The cause and effect diagram is used by global organizations in order to understand the causes behind the quality gaps and the effects of these gaps on the overall functioning of the organization.

Ishikawa propagated the concept of ‘Quality Circles’ and ‘Internal Customers’ thereby emphasizing the strategic importance of the employees of an organization. He stressed the equal participation of all employees rather than relying only on the specialists.

This leads to the overall development of employees with respect to the processes in the organization. Further training can even lead to the formation of voluntary groups called Quality Circles which under the supervision of an expert can identify and solve various quality problems in an organization.

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James P. Womack

Dr. James P. Womack was born on July 27, 1948. His dreams are the reason behind his successful career. He decided to leave Arkansas, the place where his family was living from 1820, after completing his high school. Cars and speed were always a source of fascination for James, so he decided to pursue his passion as his career and focused his studies on the urban transportation system. He relocated to Chicago and obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. Living his passion, he went to Harvard to pursue his Masters in transportations systems, followed by a Doctorate at MIT in political science in 1982 (His dissertation was on the theme of industrial policy comparison among U.S., Japan, and Germany).

During the period 1975-1991, he was associated as a full-time research scientist at MIT and directed a series of comparative studies of manufacturing practices around the world. He was the Chief Researcher and project director for a project that led to the publication of The Urban Transportation System: Politics and Policy Innovation in 1978 by Alan Altshuler with Dr. Womack and John R. Pucher.

While serving as the research director of MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program, he led the research team which coined the term “lean production” to describe the business system of Toyota.

Contributions:

Introduction of Lean to Manufacturing: Lean Thinking is a design philosophy and approach which was pioneered by Toyota after the Second World War. James Womack and Dan Jones in their book “Lean Thinking” which was published in 1996, defined the way to reorganize the provision of goods and services, different from the concept of ‘mass production’ given by Henry Ford and called it ‘lean production’. In 1990, Dr. Womack and co-authors Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos also published The Machine That Changed the World. The original manuscript had an academic title which was later changed by the editor Eleanor Rawson. She proposed this title to James but he objected stating that no machine has been discussed in the entire book. But Eleanor was unfaded and confident that the proposed title will still sell. It became one of the most influential books on manufacturing ever published. Dr. Womack has also been the author or co-author of several subsequent business books on quality, including Lean Thinking, Lean Solutions, Seeing the Whole and Gemba Walks, and he has also written more than 150 articles.

Establishment of the Lean Enterprise Institute: In 1997, the Lean Enterprise Institute was established by Dr. Womack. LEI is a nonprofit organization responsible for education, publishing, research, and organizing conferences. The Institute is responsible for developing hypotheses and performing real-world experiments in real-world manufacturing plants to observe if the hypotheses are accepted or rejected. The goal is simple: to make the things better. Though Dr. Womack was the Chairman and CEO of LEI till 2010, he still continues to render his services as a senior advisor. In 2007, a Lean Global Network of 23 other nonprofit institutes with the same mission was started around the world by LEI. They led emphasis on the importance of thinking out of the box and going beyond the immediate and predictable boundaries of the firm and looking at the holistic perspective i.e. entire set of activities required for producing the desired product or service.

Conclusions: The influence of lean principles and Dr. Womack on manufacturing is unmatched.  While some key-persons associated with the manufacturing sector view lean as a methodology of inventory management, Dr. Womack considers it a management philosophy. Lean’s primary aim is to create more value for customers by devising ways for employees, suppliers, and customers to work together effectively and creating more satisfying work for everyone.

Dr. Womack is still associated with MIT and the world of manufacturing as well as the automotive industry. He is currently working on developing a project that involves hyper-connectivity, asset sharing, and alternative energy.

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Harry Romig and His Contributions to Quality Control

Harry Romig is a name which will remain etched into the halls of quality control stalwarts. His outstanding work in advancing research in the field of quality control is still being studied by engineering graduates. Romig himself loved teaching and was instrumental in laying the groundwork upon which the modern principles of quality control stand. It can be safely said that he was, in the true sense, one of the architects of modern quality control.

Early Life, Work, and Contributions

Harry Romig was one of the founding members of the prestigious institution American Society for Quality also known as ASQ. Romig began his career around 1921 with a teaching job at a high school in Oregon. While teaching mathematics and science there, Romig was also considering getting a master’s degree in physics. The very next year, he resigned from his teaching job at the school and joined the University of California, Berkeley to pursue a master’s in physics. Before his stint at the Bell Labs which changed the course of history forever, he also taught physics and math at San Jose state college.

Romig began working at the Bell Labs in 1926, where he immersed himself in the quality control department. It was here that he created the famous sampling tables with Harold F. Dodge, another stalwart of quality control. Romig is associated with a new sampling technique he created where variables are used instead of data derived from attributes. He is also credited with the development of the concept surrounding outgoing quality limit.

While creating the building blocks of quality control, Romig was also improving his education by earning degrees in various fields of industrial engineering. He enjoyed improving his understanding while applying the learnings into his own designs.

Romig’ s contributions to Quality Control

Harry Romig is credited with the development of sampling tables called the Dodge-Romig tables. His other famous work included the usage of variables instead of data derived from attributes.

1. The Dodge-Romig sampling method: Quality becomes highly important when the products are related to issues like defense. The US army follows certain standards. One of them is the MIL-STD-105 which was co-developed by Romig, Dodge, and Shewhart. The latest revision was termed MIL-STD-105E which was canceled only in 1995 due to further advancements in the field.

This method was based on various inspection theories related to sampling and mathematical equations. It falls under a wider area of study termed as acceptance sampling. The rationale behind this method is that a production lot should always match with the requirements of the technical design. Inspection alone cannot hammer out non-compliance to the engineering design. Not only is it costly but consumes a lot of time which adds to the net cost to the company. Instead of inspecting and evaluating every element in a system, samples are taken and if they pass the acceptable quality limit or AQL, it is accepted or rejected.

Romig’ s contribution to improving the quality control system through this sampling method still serve as a building block for further research in this area.

2. Average Outgoing Quality Limit (AOQL): Romig is also credited with the development of the concept behind AOQL. In simple terms, it can be defined as the maximum tolerable defect in a product. It is defined as a percentage and is calculated over time. It was the tenacity of Romig and team that led to the statistical establishment of the fact that if the quality of raw material is up to the mark it should result in a near defect-free product.

The equations which were developed still serve as a standard to production companies to this day, as it was the first-time statistics and math were leveraged to quantify various rules of thumb. Romig has written hundreds of papers on the topic and has four publications to his name.

Conclusion

The ideas of Romig have long been considered the foundation stones of modern quality control. The fundamentals of the area would never have matured to fruition had it not been for the work of Romig. His contributions to sampling methods and development can never be forgotten; quality remains an inherent part of any production process.

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Frank and Lillian Gilbreth

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth are names which will forever be associated with engineering and process improvement. They believed efficiency to be paramount in any process and also that once a decision is made regarding a particular method, it should be replicated everywhere. They were pioneers in their own right in the field of scientific industrial management and believed in the elimination of redundant steps in a process to improve efficiency.

Early Life, Work, and Contributions

Frank Gilbreth was born to John and Martha Gilbreth in Maine in the late 1860s. After the death of his father, the family moved to Massachusetts in the search for better education for the children. It was here that Frank took to math and science like fish to water and wrote the entrance exam for MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) but never went even after qualifying. Later in life, his studies on the motion to improve process efficacies among others would be renowned around the world as the pillars of modern scientific management.

His future wife, Lillian Gilbreth was born Lillian Moller to William and Annie Moller in the late 19^th century. Unlike the parents of Frank, hers were wealthy ones with German ancestry. Like most well-off citizens at that time, Lillian was home-schooled. She began going to school later, only to rapidly outshine her peers at every grade. Later in life, her work married the science of psychology with engineering and industrial management.

Together, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth re-wrote industrial engineering and management for the history books. Never had the efficiency of process controls been so succinctly brought into the limelight to improve quality and cut production costs in the 20^th century.

The Gilbreths’ Contributions To Industrial Management

It would near impossible to talk about all the couple’s contributions to the field of scientific industrial management, but a few worthwhile mentions would be their work in time and motion studies. By the early 20^th century with Henry Ford’s moving assembly line, there were a lot of interesting studies going on around industrial management. Challenges spread across reducing costs while maintaining quality all done within a minimum time. Time reduction was the key catalyst in most of the advancements made at the time.

Both Frank and Lillian were owners of a company they founded together which delved in consultancy for industries and engineering houses. It was here that they began advanced experiments based on their belief that every process will have one and only one efficient way with a maximum output. They believed the answer lay in the balancing of the three main aspects of any production process: Motion, Time and Cost. Their method came to be known as the Gilbreth System and was one of the most important works in the space at the time.

Time, Motion And Fatigue Study – The study related to the various motions by a worker to complete a task can actually be broken down into very small movements. It was the brilliance of the couple that identified and leveraged motion pictures for the first time to study such movements. These movements are also associated with a minimum time required to execute them. Painstaking observations by Frank and Lillian over hours helped them to create a fixed set of movements for specific tasks.

These movements they believed were the minimum ones required to produce one efficient way to do a certain task. Efficiency was the key outcome they looked for in all of their studies. They came up with the minimum number of motions required per task and also sketched out drawings to illustrate the improvement the changes could make. They also studied the fatigue of the workers and how the motions could be optimized to reduce it. This was a new way of thinking where importance was given to the worker as well. With optimized movements came less fatigue which in turn improved the productivity of the worker. The drawings by the Gilbreths are still studied by engineers who are researching ways to improve process optimization processes at various manufacturing hubs.

Conclusion

It was the pioneering work of both Frank and Lillian Gilbreth that identified the inherent synergy between time, motion, and fatigue to change the field forever. Their micro-motion study will always be a stroke of brilliance which led to bleeding edge studies and deep analyses of industrial engineering. Their imprint on scientific management will forever be a standing legacy to quality and six sigma.

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Eliyahu M Goldratt

Early Life & Achievements

Eliyahu M Goldratt, born on March 31, 1947, was an Israeli physicist who was later associated with major global corporations as a consultant and advisor. He is known to have devised interesting concepts like Optimized Production Technology (OPT), the Theory of Constraints (TOC), the Thinking Processes, Drum-Buffer-Rope, and Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM).

He graduated with a bachelor degree in science from Tel Aviv University and completed his Masters in Science as well as his doctorate from Bar-Ilan University. Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt was the founder of Creative Output, a company which developed the Optimized Production Technology (OPT).  It was the first software providing finite capacity scheduling for production environments.

He has written a series of popular books including ‘The Goal’. He launched the Goldratt Satellite Program, a series of lectures and programs recorded online on various disciplines of management. Later Dr. Goldratt and his son Rami Goldratt together created TOC Insights, an interactive computer learning program which explains the application of the Theory of Constraints.

Goldratt has written articles and white papers for the promotion of his theories, in addition to multiple business books like The Race, The Haystack Syndrome, It’s Not Luck, Critical Chain, and The Choice. Goldratt also established the Goldratt Institute in the year 2000.

Contributions

Theory of Constraints: The Theory of Constraints is basically a systems framework to determine: What to change? What to change to? How to cause the change? Goldratt assumed that three levers can be utilized and put to work for the effective management of businesses: business expense, throughput, and inventory. Throughput can be understood as the rate at which an organization generates money through sales. TOC states that the goal of a company is to generate profit. It describes three methods to achieve this goal: Increase Throughput (T = Sales Revenue – Totally Variable Costs), Reduce Inventory (I = investment blocked in the processes of the system e.g. receivables, inventory and fixed assets, etc.), Reduce Operating Expense (OE = fixed costs).

According to Dr. Goldratt, the first method of Increasing Throughput is more convincing (and sustainable) than the other two options. Therefore to achieve the same, he stated Five Focusing Steps:

• IDENTIFY the constraints of the system
• EXPLOIT the constraints of the system
• SUBORDINATE everything else to support the above decision
• ELEVATE the constraints of the system.
• AVOID INERTIA if the constraint has been broken and refer back to Step 1.

To ensure maximum flow through the constraint, organizations can use buffers. A TOC buffer is usually measured in time, so an organization can decide to have work equivalent to one hour or one shift.

Optimized Production Technology (OPT): Optimized production technology is a scheduling system that uses computer software for optimizing shop floor scheduling. The system recognizes that there are two fundamental manufacturing processes i.e. Dependent events and statistical fluctuations. OPT is based on the principle that profits in an organization can be increased by reducing the bottlenecks of a system along with optimizing and scheduling the non-bottlenecks components maximizes the throughput of a system.

The Goal:He authored The Goal, a classic business book presented in a novel form. The Book was written to generate awareness about certain assumptions that resisted the implementation of OPT software. The book was initially rejected by all major publishers; then the Board of Directors of Creative Output took the initiative to get it published acknowledging the effort of the CEO Eliyahu Goldratt. And with the help of North River Press, The Goal was published and became a super hit.

Conclusions:

Goldratt founded Goldratt’s Marketing Group, Goldratt Consulting, and Goldratt Schools – together forming the Goldratt Group. The stated purpose of the Group was to make TOC the central way of managing the organizations. Eliyahu was an acknowledged consultant as well as trainer associated with many of the world’s largest corporations like General Motors, Procter & Gamble, AT&T, NV Philips, ABB, and Boeing. He has a number of patents in areas ranging from medical devices to drip irrigation to temperature sensors. He was a frequent contributor to research papers, articles and white papers to journals, magazines, and business publications.

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Bill Smith: Contributions to The Theory of Process Improvement

Bill Smith is the founder of Six Sigma, the powerful methodology that is now being used by businesses the world over for process and quality improvement in the interest of defect minimization and ultimately greater customer satisfaction.

Early life and Career

Bill Smith was born in Brooklyn in the year 1929. He joined the U.S. Naval Academy and pursued further studies at the University of Minnesota School of Business. He spent 35 years of his professional career in the field of engineering and quality assurance.

He joined Motorola as the Vice President in the year 1987 in the Land Mobile Products division. Bill Smith is known as “The father of Six Sigma” being the key person who invented the concept and revolutionized the concept of quality in organizations around the world.

His Contribution to Six Sigma

Smith started working on the concept in the early 80s. In the year 1984, he shared his notes in two research papers titled “Early Life Failures in Electronic Equipment” and “Reliability Predictions and Customer Perceptions”.

Smith identified the correlation between the performance of a product in the field and the amount of work that needs to be re-done during the process of manufacturing. Further, he also discovered that the products with the least nonconformity were the best performing as reported by the customers.

Moreover, Smith observed that products that were built with less nonconformity were the ones that performed the best after delivery to the customer. Latent defects were identified as one of the reasons where the early failure of the product was reported after five loops of environmental testing. These latent defects were directly proportional to the defects observed in components and manufacturing of the products.

The Rise of Six Sigma

Bill Smith convinced Bob Galvin, the CEO of Motorola at that time, that improvement of their products was possible with new ideas and he proposed a couple of them. In 1985, Bill Smith coined the term “Six Sigma” to explain the expected level of design margin and product quality.

Michael Harry (another engineer known for his contribution to Six Sigma) and Smith together started exploring a standard formula for reducing defects (which were quite a concern for Motorola at that time). The approach was popularly known as MAIC: Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.

Six Sigma and Motorolla

Bill was one of the major reasons for leading Motorola towards huge success by reducing the defects to 1/100^th in four years and eventually leading it to the performance level of Six Sigma (i.e. 3.4 defects per million units produced). Bill’s concept of Six Sigma was incorporated into the existing new product testing at Motorola and was explained in detail in a white paper by Ken Enger in 1986. Motorola received its first Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the year 1988 from the U.S. Government just two years after Bill Smith coined the term “Six Sigma”.

In the decade from the beginning of Six Sigma in 1987 and 1997, Motorola achieved a five times growth in sales with 20 per cent increase in profits per year, a cumulative saving of 14 million dollars purely on account of the launch of Six Sigma efforts and again in the stock price compounding to an annual rate 21.3%. 

The Six Sigma Research Institute (SSRI) was established by Motorola in order to accelerate the scope of “Six Sigma and Beyond”. The concept of Black Belt was propounded by the SSRI. Apart from Motorola, giants such as Allied Signal (1993) and General Electric (1995) also adopted the Six Sigma methodology.

Conclusion

Bill Smith, popularly known as the ‘Father of Six Sigma’ has gifted today’s organizations with an amazing concept. Six Sigma not only ensures an upper hand over competitors in terms of quality but also a customer base of loyal and satisfied individuals.

The concept of Six Sigma has reduced the amount of waste created in organizations during the creation of products and services. This is a powerful methodology of product and process improvement which can lead to the desired financial performance keeping the defects under control.

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