Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Brief History of Quality:
The Good and The Bad
Presented by Bill Bellows
President
In2:InThinking Network
Canoga Park, California, USA
Email: [email protected]
DARQA Jubilee Conference 2016
Amersfoort, NL
May 26
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
The word “quality” has Latin roots, beginning
as “qualitas,” coined by Roman philosopher
and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, who
introduced his fellow Romans to the
vocabulary of qualitas, quantitas, humanitas,
and essentia. While Plato invented the phrase
poiotes for use by his peers, Cicero spoke of
qualitas with his peers when focusing on the
property of an object, rather than its quantitas
or quantity.
Abstract
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Two-thousand years later, when writing The
New Economics, W. Edwards Deming wrote:
“The basic problem anywhere is quality. What
is quality? A product or a service possesses
quality if it helps somebody and enjoys a good
and sustainable market.”
As with Cicero, Deming saw quality as a
property.
Abstract
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Agenda
Preview
Quality and the Greeks
Quality in the Middle Ages
Quality in Industrial Revolution
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
As Conceived
Replacing the screwdriver
Pilot holes
Hole saw
Drywall installation
Concrete
Product or Service Innovation
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
As Conceived
Replacing the screwdriver
Pilot holes
Hole saw
Drywall installation
Concrete
Product or Service Innovation
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
As Conceived
Replacing the screwdriver
Pilot holes
Hole saw
Drywall installation
Concrete
The top 5 uses:
1. Replacing the screwdriver
2. Pilot holes
3. Hole saw
4. Drywall installation
5. Concrete
Product or Service Innovation
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
What “grade quality” is required for all
purchased parts and services, as well
as tasks completed internally?
Grade Quality
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Exam Grade Quality
USA Netherlands UK
A+ 10 A* (first)
A+ 9.5 A* (first)
A+ 9 A* (first)
A+ 8.5 A* (first)
A 8 A (first)
A 7.5 A- (upper 2nd)
B+ 7 B (upper 2nd)
B 6.5 C (lower 2nd)
C 6 D (lower 2nd)
D 5.5 E (third)
F 5 F
F 4 F
F 3 F
F 2 F
F 1 F
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Exam Grade Quality
USA Netherlands UK
A+ 10 A* (first)
A+ 9.5 A* (first)
A+ 9 A* (first)
A+ 8.5 A* (first)
A 8 A (first)
A 7.5 A- (upper 2nd)
B+ 7 B (upper 2nd)
B 6.5 C (lower 2nd)
C 6 D (lower 2nd)
D 5.5 E (third)
F 5 F
F 4 F
F 3 F
F 2 F
F 1 F
The Good
The Bad
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Strike
Zone
Top of Shoulders
Beneath Kneecap
The Good
On Strike Zones
The Bad
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Agenda
Preview
Quality and the Greeks
Quality in the Middle Ages
Quality in Industrial Revolution
Quality in the 20th Century
Quality in the 21st Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman
statesman, lawyer, linguist, politician,
and philosopher
Born 106BC, Died 43BC
Introduced Romans to Greek
philosophy
Executed after power struggle with
Marc Antony
Quality and the Greeks
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Cicero added words to the Latin,
including
Humanitas, Quantitas, Qualitas
Qualitas – a property of an object,
character, nature
Quantitas – greatness, magnitude, size
Quality and the Greeks
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Agenda
Preview
Quality and the Greeks
Quality in the Middle Ages
Quality in Industrial Revolution
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Guilds – associations of artisans who
controlled the practice of their craft
Apprentices trained by Master
Craftsman
Quality in the Middle Ages
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Guilds included textile workers,
masons, carpenters, money changers,
etc.
Guilds created their own high standards
Declining influence in the 18th and 19th
centuries
Quality in the Middle Ages
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Agenda
Preview
Quality and the Greeks
Quality in the Middle Ages
Quality in the Industrial Revolution
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Guilds perceived by Adam Smith and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau as hindering
market forces over prices, wages, and
profits
Quality in the Industrial
Revolution
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Guilds perceived by Karl Marx as
maintaining social classes
Guilds faded in power with the
emergence of the Industrial Revolution
Quality in the Industrial
Revolution
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
In 1776, French General Jean-Baptiste
Vaquette de Gribeauval sponsored
standardized weapons through a royal
order
Quality in the Industrial
Revolution
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Efforts to execute the royal order of
“Interchangeable Parts” were led by
Honore Blanc
Higher volumes (mass production) and
lower prices of products were attractive
Quality in the Industrial
Revolution
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Mass production first demonstrated in
1803 at Portsmouth Block Works in
Hampshire, England
By 1808, annual production was
130,000, done with “ten men”, not “one
hundred and ten”
Quality in the Industrial
Revolution
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Thomas Jefferson learned of Blanc
during his role as US Ambassador to
France, 1785-1789
Blanc declined Jefferson’s offer to
relocate to US
Jefferson shared Blanc’s efforts with
Eli Whitney, leading to first contract with
US Congress for product (rifles) with
interchangeable parts
Quality in the Industrial
Revolution
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Agenda
Preview
Quality and the Greeks
Quality in the Middle Ages
Quality in Industrial Revolution
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
The advancement of machine tools
allowed mass produced parts to be
made to specification limits
The role of examination of parts by a
craftsman was replaced by a quality
inspector
Ransom Olds introduced assembly
lines in 1901 to build the “Curved Dash,”
the first mass produced automobile
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Olds Motor Works was sold to GM in
1908
Ford installed the first moving assembly
line in 1913
Model T assembly was divided into 48
steps
Ford hired Frederick Winslow Taylor to
conduct time and motion studies to add
efficiency to these steps
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
In parallel with Ford hiring Taylor, Bell
Lab’s Walter Shewhart was assigned
the task of developing a method to
manage variation in the production of
telephones
W. Edwards Deming met Shewhart in
1927 and him invited him to lecture on
control charts at the US Department of
Agriculture
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
During WW2, Deming partnered with
professors to share the theory of control
charts with the US defense industry
Deming was invited to Japan in 1950 to
share Shewhart’s methods for Statistical
Quality Control
During his 1950 visit, Deming also
shared his concept of “Production
Viewed as a System”
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
In 1982, Larry Sullivan, a senior Ford
manager, travelled to Japan to lead an
internal effort to study automobile
suppliers and the gain explanations for
their “results.” Together, they had captured
nearly 30 percent of the US market share
in automobile sales, beginning with zero in
1950 and growing to 3 percent in 1970.
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
A summary of his findings were published
in an article for the American Society for
Quality. Excerpts follow:
In March 1982, I was part of a
[management] group [from Ford] that
visited Japan and studied quality systems
at a variety of automotive suppliers.
Source: Variability Reduction: A New Approach to Quality, L. Sullivan, 1983
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
The most important thing we learned was
that quality in those companies means
something different from what it means in
the U.S. - that it is in fact a totally different
discipline.
Source: Variability Reduction: A New Approach to Quality, L. Sullivan, 1983
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
One inspiration for challenging the
mental model of “good parts are equally
good” is the 1983 discovery by Ford
Motor Company of a dramatic difference
in warranty claims between automatic
transmissions designed by Ford and
produced in two locations, one in
Batavia, Ohio, the other by Mazda in
Japan.
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Much to the surprise of Ford’s corporate
warranty office, the number of
complaints associated with the erratic
shifting of the transmissions produced in
Batavia were a factor of 3 greater than
the complaints against the
transmissions produced by Mazda.
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Upon close examination, Ford realized that
their manufacturing focus was on the valve
diameter and the bore diameter, taken
separately
valve diameter
bore diameter
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Meanwhile, Ford learned that Mazda’s
manufacturing focus was to actively manage
the gap between the outer diameter of the
valves within the transmission and
the corresponding diameter of the valve
bore.
gap
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
In doing so, Mazda’s efforts realized the
existence of an ideal gap, resulting from ideal
(“target”) values for both the bore and valve
diameters, with an awareness that variation in
gap size matters.
valve diameter
bore diameter
Quality in the 20th Century
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
“A product or a service possesses
quality if it helps somebody and
enjoys a good and sustainable
market.”
W. E. Deming on Quality
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
“A man’s mind, stretched by a
new idea, can never go back to
its original dimension.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Bill Bellows, [email protected]
Brief History of Quality:
The Good and The Bad
Presented by Bill Bellows
President
In2:InThinking Network
Canoga Park, California, USA
Email: [email protected]
DARQA Jubilee Conference 2016
Amersfoort, NL
May 26