A History of Managing for Quality Juran

A History of Managing for Quality Editor’s note: Throughout this decade, J.M. Juran has worked on bringing together authors from around the world to chronicle the history of quality. In July, ASQC Quality Press released the sum of that work: A History of Managing for Quality. The following excerpts from the 688-page book include portions from four chapters, including Juran’s concluding chapter.

MANAGING FOR QUALITY IN ANCIENT ROME Marco Bigliazzi, author History of Arts Department, University of Pisa Roberto Mirandola, scientific supervisor Mechanical and Nuclear Department, University of Pisa

J.M. Juran has edited a far-ranging book that studies quality’s worldwide evolution, trends, and future.

An empire of builders The Romans developed highly sophisticated techniques, such as territorial surveying, division, and mapping. They used these to master the rural and urban lands incorporated into the empire. They developed quality standards, measurement methods, and tools. They employed sophisticated customer-supplier relationships to increase production. The execution of large construction projects required effective working relationships among the various parties as well as effective processes for producing the individual buildings and other structures. The administration of urban life and living conditions involved the balancing of needs for urban administration with requirements of the social hierarchy. In doing so, political considerations often dominated juridical considerations. Thus, aims common to the individual building yards or to the development of a particular technique were influenced by the wider context.

The important role of standardization The definition of various types of standards played a key role in expanding and maintaining the empire as well as serving as the foundation for many of the Romans’ achievements in managing for quality. These standards differed somewhat

from the types of standards that later emerged in modern industrial processes. The Romans, however, came very close to matching those modern standards in their work in territorial planning and in various aspects of construction. Standardization was achieved in many fields. The first was units of measurement. A uniform measurement system was adopted throughout the empire. Its importance can be seen in land surveying, in construction work, and in stone quarrying. This achievement led to the development of highprecision instruments, the acquisition of technical skills, and the emergence of measurement as a specific component of the production process. A second example was size normalization for mass production of bricks and lead pipes to meet the growing demand for reliable and inexpensive building materials. The quality of bricks reached such a high level that they were considered more reliable than stone. A morphological normalization also developed to facilitate the use of certain architectural structures and construction techniques. Finally, a sort of housing standard existed with the building regulations that we know were in force at least from the time of Augustus. The Augustan period, during which the last republican political structures disappeared as imperial power achieved official status, is in fact a very important point in the history of Rome. It was after Augustus, for example, that mass brick production spread and the gradual move toward the imperial monopoly of the third century began. It was during the Julian-Claudian age, too, that masonry bridges began to replace boat bridges, and it became the rule rather than the exception to pave the major roads. Work on the majority of the monumental buildings, whose impressive ruins became centers of attraction for artists and tourists from the Renaissance to the present, also began at this time.

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Manufacturing bricks The potteries were located on the estates of large landowners, generally close to waterways for ease of transportation, which would have been extremely arduous by road. Production was regulated by a locatio-condutio, a contract under which the owner supplied the raw material and the equipment, and the contractor undertook to produce a certain number of bricks and to supply the necessary manpower. Many shop foremen were slaves and freedmen, whose pecuniary obligations toward the landowner made them suitable candidates for running the potteries on a subcontract basis. This created a process of social mobility: With his earnings the slave acquired his freedom, after which he could stipulate other contracts. The pottery owners, many of whom were women, were often great landowners from one of the powerful families, who took no direct part in overseeing the production process (a function generally assigned to agents, proxies, administrators, and so on), but whose social position was of the utmost importance when selling the bricks. Toward the end of the second century, the names of the emperor or his family appeared increasingly frequently among the names of pottery owners. The imperial monopoly was actually achieved in the third century, through confiscations and bequests, making the control of brick production one of the elements of the increasing wealth of the emperors. The quality of a brick was specified in terms of its durability and the precision of its dimensions, and—depending on its composition and baking—could be assessed by an expert eye from its weathering and the color acquired over the years. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a first century B.C. Roman architect and author, notes, “Unfortunately it is impossible to assess the quality of baked bricks beforehand. They have to be laid: if they are of good quality they will withstand storms and the heat of the summer; but if they have been made from unsuitable clay or if they have been insufficiently baked, then they will reveal their defects. Therefore it is best to build roofs from old tiles; then the walls too will certainly be solid.” This quality assessment, where the craftsman depended on the experience of his eye, was of prime importance in the process of quality management. In fact, old bricks were often called tegulae (tiles), because their greater exposure to atmospheric agents meant they had weathered better and were more reliable.

The building yard One of the most important elements of quality management in the general organization of building was the coordination of the production functions (temporary works/structural normalization/evaluation of materials/stress optimization) performed on the work site by the various categories of craftsmen under the supervision of the architect. Thus the building yard became a center for exchanging and comparing ideas and for continuous training. The building yard was the place where the Romans’ achievements in design, materials, process, and standardization came together. There were many worker categories in the building yards. The foreman (magister structor) supervised the masons (structores). Wooden structures—ranging from frameworks and scaffolding to roofing—were built by the carpentarii. Walls were built by the parietarii and whitewashed by the dealbatores. This first layer of workers was followed by the plasterers 126

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(tectores for ceilings and gypsiarii for the walls), lapidarii for marble decorations, tassellarii for floor laying, and musivarii for mosaic laying. Important roles were played in the building yard by the mensores aedificiorum, mechanici, and geometrae, all of whom were skilled in surveying operations. But the outstanding figures, particularly for public works or major urban works, were the machinatores and architecti—the engineers and architects. Stone was handled by stone cutters and chiselers (lapicidinarii) and, for more refined works, by sculptors (marmorarii) and inlayers (sectores serrarii). Because the quarried blocks had to be dressed with the utmost precision, we know that measuring instruments were constantly used in quarrying work. The setsman used a regula, a 1-foot-long ruler marked off with all its submultiples, which were generalized under the empire. Setsmen also used bronze squares, bevel rules (T-bevels), and the plumb rule (libella cum perpendiculo), an instrument used to check that a surface was perfectly horizontal.

THE STORY OF THE QUALITY OF CLOCKS Cornelis Spaans, mechanical engineer, adviser on technical and transport museums

During the long history of clock making there has been continuing growth in precision of timekeeping. This growth, initially slow, later faster and faster, is the result of numerous improvements derived from multiple sources: a few great inventions; discovery of the underlying laws of stress and strain; a steady increase in craftsmanship; and incremental improvement in construction processes. Collectively these and other improvements have increased the precision of timekeeping by over 10 orders of magnitude during the current millennium. The chief quality feature of clocks is precision—precision of timekeeping. There are also other quality features. Clocks may serve as a public spectacle and a source of pride to the community. They may serve as a piece of jewelry that incidentally is able to keep time.

The sundial and the clepsydra The sundial, still popular as a garden ornament, is one of the oldest known time indicators. It existed in primitive form in Egypt from at least the 15th century B.C. 1 Herodotus, the Greek known as the Father of History (fifth century B.C.), states, “The polos and the gnomon and the 12 divisions of the day, came to Hellas not from Egypt but from Babylonia.” 2 Polos and gnomon might not have been sundials in the form we know now. The earliest specimen of a device indicating time by means of a shadow cast on a fixed scale was found in Greece and dates from the third century B.C.3 In Greece the sundial was studied mathematically, which led to a considerable increase of the accuracy. The sundial, in its advanced form, remained in use until the 19th century, not only to measure the hours, but also for the purpose of setting and checking clepsydras (water clocks) and, later, mechanical clocks. The sundial indicates time only when the sun shines, and therefore the water clock was a good answer to the gap in the quality of clocks. In its original form, a clepsydra consisted of a vessel with a hole in the bottom through which the water trick-

led out. Greek and Roman writings seem to indicate that it was used for limiting the length of speeches, which resembles the use of the still well-known hourglass. Clepsydras are very old— in Egypt and Babylon they were in use from at least the 16th century B.C. The earliest surviving Egyptian one dates from circa 1400 B.C. In the course of the ages, the clepsydra developed into a quite complicated clock. Ctesibios of Alexandria (300-270 B.C.) is known for his work on advanced and complicated clepsydras. 4 He used the feedback principle to obtain a constant water flow rate, and he might have been the inventor of the rack and pinion driving the hour hand. 5 Vitruvius, writing about Ctesibios, mentions toothed racks and drums causing various motions that in turn move figures, cause balls to fall, trumpets to sound, and so on. 6 Archimedes designed a water clock that indicated time in three ways: a metal ball dropped every hour from a bird’s beak onto a bell, the irises of the eyes of a “human” face changed color every hour, and rings were continuously moved along pillars with hour divisions on them. 7 Furthermore, he applied a worm and worm-wheel and a “hypoid transmission” in his clock, and he introduced a means of regulating the speed of the constant rate of flow of the water.8 The clepsydra given by Haroun el Raschid, king of Persia, to Charlemagne in 807 A.D. is well known. 9 Every hour another little door opened and let through a number of balls, which dropped on a bell in order to strike the hour. At 12 noon or 12 midnight, 12 miniature horsemen appeared and closed the 12 doors. The timekeeping accuracy of clepsydras was rather low, one of the causes being that the viscosity of water changes considerably with the temperature. But there was no need for high accuracy in those times. The length of the hour differed with the daily duration of light and dark, and the clepsydras were constructed and adjusted to indicate such differing hours. A great step forward was the invention of the mechanical, weight-driven (later spring-driven) clock. It was so successful that in medieval Europe it pushed the clepsydra aside. It could now indicate equal hours throughout the year, thus marking the beginning of our present notion of time. 10

References 1. Ludvig Borchardt, Die alte Ågyptische Zeitmessung (Die Geschichte der Zeitmessung, ed. E.V. Bassermann-Jordan, Bd I.1g.B), Berlin & Leipzig, 1920. 2. Histories II, 109.3. tr. A.D. Godley. 3. Sharon L. Gibbs, Greek and Roman Sun-dials, New Haven, London, 1933. 4. A.G. Drachmann, “Ktesibios, Philon and Heron,” Acta Historica Scientiarum Naturalium et Medicinalium IV (1948). 5. A. Wegener Sleeswijk, “De waterklok van Archimedes,” Histechnicon, jrg 16, Sept. 1990, 5-15. 6. “Vitruvius’ Waywiser,” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 29 (1979); and Plinius (Pliny) Historia Naturalis VII. 7. D.R. Hill, On the construction of waterclocks, Kitâb Arshimîdas fi’amal al-binkamt, London (1976); and B. Carra de Vaux, “Notice sur deux manuscrits arabes,” Journal Asiatique 8, série 17 (1891). 8. Sleeswijk, “De waterklok.” 9. Willis I. Milham, Time and Timekeepers, New York (1947). 10. M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England, 10661307, Oxford, 1979.

HOW THE FRENCH ARMS INDUSTRY MASTERED QUALITY Michel Dunaud Ancien Chargé de Mission Qualité Délégation Générale pour l’Armement Ministère de la Défense France

Final product control and the supervision of the manufacturing process The famous Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83), who was finance minister (1661), controller general (1665), director of buildings, arts, and manufacturing (1664), and secretary of the king’s house and to the navy, was highly interested in the navy. Because France, unlike England, had land frontiers to defend, it obviously gave priority to its land forces. Colbert, however, realized the importance of trade and the seas when it came to ensuring the supremacy of a country. King Louis XIV (16381715) was determined to affirm his power and glory, and he used diplomacy and the armies to accomplish his ambition. The army was where he concentrated all his energy, but he nevertheless supported Colbert’s efforts to build up a navy worthy of him. To be effective on the seas, it is necessary to take quality into consideration. Colbert was worried about the quality of the production, as is shown in the multiple surveys he ordered concerning defects, “the good and bad qualities of the naval ships.” Thus it is possible to read in one of his reports that the Superbe was “beautiful and seaworthy except for two stress points which resulted in its keel becoming arched” or that the Triomphant was made of “poor quality wood and was tilted forward.” The notion of overseeing construction was first introduced in the navy by Colbert’s eldest son, the Marquis de Seignelay (1651-90). This was not a coincidence as Seignelay was merely continuing his father’s work. The contemporary historian Alain Guillerm wrote on the subject of these two men that “From 1660 to 1690 they almost made Louis XIV’s kingdom the foremost maritime power in the world.” Louis XIV’s decree concerning the navy and the naval arsenals, dated Versailles, April 15, 1689, detailed the attributions and obligations for the supervision of the manufacturing process of the general commissioner for naval artillery, and the provincial naval commissioner’s responsibility for the receipt of wood for construction. The final control was effectively carried out for the purpose of verifying that the product corresponded to that which had been ordered. This is evident from Article 8 of the decree, concerning the responsibilities of the general commissioner for artillery. The general commissioner’s role was not limited to that of a simple verification at the end of the manufacturing process. His role was more global. As Article 7 shows, he supervised the whole production process, providing assistance rather than merely providing a mandatory point of control. On March 25, 1765, Louis XV signed a decree that completed that of his predecessor. From then on, the engineers of the ports of Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort were sent to the other ports where, working for the arsenal in question, they supervised the activity of the port.

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This trend toward the supervision of the manufacturing process applied also to weapons used by the army. In 1765, Jean-Baptiste Wacquette de Gribeauval appointed to each factory an artillery officer whose job it was to supervise the manufacture of war material from the very start of the manufacturing process. The officer did not depend on the arsenal because he reported directly to the director general of forges.

Choosing suppliers The major reference in this area is a famous letter that Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), fortifications commissioner, addressed in 1685 to his minister, Mr. Louvois. This eight-page letter concerning public markets underlined the importance of the choice of suppliers in order to obtain a quality construction. As a military architect, Vauban insisted particularly on the fact that cheapness should not be the sole selection criterion, as such a selection process in the long run ended up by being more expensive: “There still remains a number of buildings of previous years which are not yet terminated, and which shall never be, if we are to believe the builders. All this is due, Monseigneur, to the confusion caused by the frequent reductions in price which are attributed in your construction contracts. It is a fact that all the broken contracts, agreements not kept, and renewal of adjudications only attract the people who know nothing about the business, rogues and ignoramuses as contractors, while those who know what they are doing do not even attempt to sign such contracts. I say that in addition they increase the price and delay the construction of the buildings which is thereby much worse.” 1 The last sentence of this text already mentions the three parameters that should be taken into account to make a quality product: delay, cost, and performance. The end of Vauban’s letter is clear: “This should suffice, Monseigneur, for you to see the inconveniences of this way of doing business; stop now, and in the name of God reestablish the notion of ‘good faith’; pay the correct price for a construction and do not deny an honest salary to an entrepreneur who is doing his work correctly. It will always in the long run be the cheapest deal you could make.” The army was interested not only in having dependable suppliers, but also in the raw materials it bought from them, as can be seen from Article 3 of Louis XIV’s decree, which specifies the task of the naval commissioners in charge of receiving the wood for naval construction.

Reference 1. Letter from Vauban to Louvois, dated 1 September 1685.

SUMMARY, TRENDS, AND PROGNOSIS J.M. Juran, chairman emeritus Juran Institute, Inc.

Strategic quality planning Once upper managers accepted the need to raise the priority of quality, they faced the question of how to make the new pri128

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ority effective. Most upper managers decided to avoid making managing for quality yet another semiautonomous function. Instead, they opted to make managing for quality a part of managing the business. The emerging method for doing this is often called strategic quality planning (SQP). The Japanese term is jishu kanri. The concept of SQP follows closely the approach long used in managing for finance. The application to quality involves the following: • The business plan is enlarged to include goals for quality. • These goals are “deployed” to lower levels in order to determine the resources needed, agree on the actions to be taken, and fix responsibility for taking the actions. • Measures are developed to permit evaluation of progress against the goals. • Managers, including upper managers, review progress regularly. • The reward system is revised to give appropriate weight to meeting the quality goals. Application of SQP in the West is quite new—it did not emerge noticeably until the 1980s. The parallel to managing for finance has appealed to upper managers. The likelihood is that SQP will emerge as the dominant approach toward making managing for quality a part of managing the business.

Total quality management By the 1980s it was becoming clear to upper managers that quality leadership could not be achieved by pecking away—by bringing in this or that tool or technique. Instead, it was necessary to apply the entire array of quality know-how (the “quality disciplines”) throughout the entire company—to all functions and all levels—and to do so in a coordinated way. One shorthand expression for this comprehensive approach is the term total quality management, or TQM. (The usual Japanese term is company-wide quality control.) At the outset there was no agreed standard definition for TQM, so communication became confused—among company departments, in their training courses, and in the general literature. This confusion has since been reduced by the publication of the criteria used by the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to judge the applications for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Those criteria have been widely disseminated—NIST has filled over a million requests. While there have been relatively few applications for the award, many companies have conducted self-audits against the criteria. In addition, as national quality awards have proliferated, many have used the Baldrige Award criteria as inputs to their own list of criteria. By the early 1990s, this wide exposure had made the Baldrige Award criteria the most widely accepted definition of what is included in TQM.

Upper managers in charge Historically, upper managers in large companies have avoided direct involvement in managing for quality. Instead, they delegated it, often vaguely, to some subordinate manager. With the creation of inspection departments in the 20th century, it became convenient to “delegate quality” to the chief inspector, and, later, to the quality manager. It has now become evident that attaining quality leadership requires that upper managers personally take charge of the qual-

ity initiative. Such has been the conclusion from study of what happened in those companies that did attain such leadership. In every case the upper managers took charge. They did not just make the speeches and then delegate all else to subordinates. Instead, they personally carried out certain nondelegable roles: • Serve on the quality council. • Establish the quality goals. • Provide the needed resources. • Provide quality-oriented training. • Stimulate quality improvement. • Review progress. • Give recognition. • Revise the reward system. It should be emphasized that these roles are nondelegable— they must be carried out by the upper managers, personally. 1

Managing for quality—a long look ahead Throughout this chapter, I have ventured to look ahead and offer bits of prognosis—estimates of where the emerging trends are leading us. My final bit of prognosis goes beyond the near future; it examines what managing for quality will look like well into the next century, beyond the year 2050. For such prognosis, it is helpful to look at scenarios that were followed by other disciplines—those that moved to center stage centuries ago. Such disciplines have reached a greater state of maturity than managing for quality—they have been at it for centuries rather than decades. Good examples are finance and, especially, one of its subdisciplines—accounting. Accounting has been under study for centuries. These studies have yielded a consensus on numerous aspects of that field: • The subject is organized into distinct processes such as general accounting, cost accounting, and auditing. • Numerous concepts have been invented to permit translation of actions into money—concepts such as depreciation, accruals, and amortization. • Standardized reports have been evolved: balance sheet, profit statement, cash flow statement. Anyone trained to read these reports can acquire a reasonable understanding of the financial condition of the associated company. • Key words and terms have been precisely defined, and these definitions have largely been standardized. • Tools have been invented and standardized: charts of accounts, double-entry bookkeeping, spreadsheets. • Standing committees continue to explore the field. Their findings often get embodied into legislation. • The industry has been professionalized through degree-granting schools of accounting, and through examinations to qualify for the title of certified public accountant (CPA). (In the United States, anyone may practice accounting, but only those who have passed the examinations may use the title of CPA.) Study of recent developments in managing for quality shows much commonality with the preceding scenario. We can expect such commonality to continue. We can also speculate on what will take place during the 21st century as these developments impact the national economies: • Awareness of the new importance of quality will spread to national policy makers: legislators, administrators, economists. (Some of this has already happened at local and regional levels.) • Correlations will be established between performance on

quality vs. financial results. • Standardized reports will evolve to provide a summary of the quality achievement record of companies as well as their current status. • Financial analysts will use achievements in quality as inputs for rating creditworthiness as well as for judging the financial potential of companies. • National, industry, and other quality indexes will be evolved, paralleling those already available on productivity, prices, and so on. • Degree-granting colleges oriented to quality will proliferate among universities, business schools, and engineering schools. (This movement became evident during the 1980s.) • The K-12 schools (kindergarten through 12th grade) will evolve courses relating to managing for quality. (Here again, a trend was already evident during the early 1990s.) • With the emergence of college faculties oriented to quality, research will intensify. This will produce standardized terminology, a consensus on how to divide up the subject, and so on. • Professionalism among quality specialists will grow. This has already happened at the technical level (quality engineers, reliability engineers) but not at the business level. There will be national examinations for the right to use the resulting broad professional title whose name has yet to be invented. Comparable titles in other fields include professional engineer, CPA, and so on. A corresponding title in the quality field might be “professional qualitist” or “certified public qualitist.” (We need to find or coin a new generic term to describe someone active in the quality field, paralleling generic terms such as accountant, engineer, and economist.) It is conceivable that future laws will extend the use of licensing in the quality field, on the ground of protecting the public interest. Licensing is already widely required for technician jobs that involve risks to human safety and health or to the environment. Examples include laboratory technicians in hospitals or welders in the aircraft and nuclear industries.

Reference 1. J.M. Juran, “Made in USA, a Renaissance in Quality,” Harvard Business Review, July-August 1993. A History of Managing for Quality (order number H0876) is available through Quality Press for $36 (ASQC member price) or $40 (list price). To place an order, call ASQC’s Customer Service Department, 800-248-1946 or (414) 272-8575.

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