Standards and Quality Practices: Quality philosophy

By Vijay Pratap Singh|Updated : May 29th, 2021

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Quality philosophy:

The philosophy of quality has traditionally focused upon the development and implementation of a corporate-wide culture that emphasizes a customer focus, continuous improvement, employee empowerment, and data-driven decision-making.

Following given quality philosophers who are considered as the greatest contributors to quality:

(i) Walter A. Shewhart:

He developed quality control charts that are used to identify whether the variability in the process is random or due to an assignable cause, such a poor workers or mis calibrated machinery.

(ii) W. Edwards Deming:

Deming outlined his philosophy on quality in his famous “14 Points.” These points are principles that help guide companies in achieving quality improvement.
Proper methods should be taught, and detecting and eliminating “poor quality should be everyone’s responsibility”.

(iii) Joseph M. Juran:

One of Juran’s significant contributions is his focus on the definition of quality and the cost of quality.
Juran is well known for originating the idea of the Quality trilogy:

(a) Quality planning,

(b) Quality control, and

(iv) Armand V. Feigenbaum:

Armand V. Feigenbaum, who introduced the concept of total quality control.

(v) Phillip B. Crosby:

He became famous for coining the phrase “quality is free”and for pointing out the many costs of quality, which include not only the costs of wasted labor, equipment time, scrap, rework, and lost sales, but also organizational costs that are hard to quantify.

(vi) Kaoru Ishikawa:

For the development of quality tools called cause-and-effect diagrams, also called Fishbone or lshikawa diagrams.

(v) Genichi Taguchi:

Taguchi is known for applying a concept called design of experiment to product design.
This method is an engineering approach that is based on developing robust design, a design that results in products that can perform over a wide range of conditions.

Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)

Also known as PDSA, the “Deming Wheel,” and “Shewhart Cycle”

What Is PDCA?

Deming used the concept of Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA). He found that the focus on Check is more about the implementation of a change.

Plan: Identify and analyze the problem or opportunity, develop hypotheses about what the issues may he, and decide which one to test.
Do: Test the potential solution, ideally on a small scale, and measure the results.
Check/Study: study the result, measure effectiveness, and decide whether the hypothesis is supported or not.
Act: If the solution was successful, implement it