070322 history of quality

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A Brief History of Quality Control

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1

First thoughts ............................................................................................... 2Measurement ............................................................................................... 2Legal ........................................................................................................... 2

Ancient China division of labour,.................................................................. 3India............................................................................................................ 3Mediaeval..................................................................................................... 4Industrial Revolution ..................................................................................... 6Statistical Methods........................................................................................ 6Japan .......................................................................................................... 8Conclusion ................................................................................................. 10References ................................................................................................. 10Introduction

There is difficulty in trying to pin down the origins of Quality control mainlybecause you first have to identify the start of what we might call Quality beforedeciding when it progressed to organized systems for ensuring this quality wasmaintained the control element.

In practice quality control has been around ever since man has been makingthings, there is even a school of thought that evolution itself is a form of qualitycontrol. One favoured term is survival of the fittest

Charles Darwin summarized what might be a mantra for the CQIs qualityprofessionals:

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, allcorporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.Charles Darwin 1809-1882

Another difficulty in charting the course of quality control over the years is toseparate developments in quality control from changes in production efficiencydriven by market need for more or cheaper product.

Quality control has evolved as the need for increased quantities of goods,reduced in cost to satisfy a new market or the expectation for quality hasincreased.

For the purpose of this element we will not attempt to identify the point of thebig bang for the birth of quality control, instead confine ourselves to presenting


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some edited highlights of organized control of quality in action through history.These will be presented in approximately chronological order.

Quality control has been around whenever product has been required in numbersand to standard.

First thoughts

QC. One example of evidence of quality control is following excavation of a minefor producing flints in Denmark (believed to date from around 3500 BC) to beused in the production of Viking boats. The excavation work uncovered evidenceof discarded part finished tools rejected at the mine and prior to sale to the

travelling merchants. The reason was to prevent unsuitable flints beingtransported to Sweden, only to be rejected at point of use.

An early example, perhaps, of a move to reduce the cost of non-quality byfinding rejects in house.

MeasurementIn around 3000 BC the Egyptians came up with a measure of length the RoyalEgyptian cubit, it was deemed to be equal to the length of the forearm from the

bent elbow to the tip of the extended middle finger plus the width of the palm ofthe hand of the Pharaoh or King ruling at that time.

The master of this measure was carved onto granite and workers were giventransfer standards in the form of wooden or granite copies. The calibrationfrequency was defined by the full moon and failure to bring their cubits back waspunishable by death.

These length measures together with other measuring equipment (including setsquares and plumb bobs) were used to set up precise right angles to establishthe orientation of the great pyramid at Giza built for King Cheops (whose reignwas between 2551 2528 BC).

LegalOne of the earliest examples of legal invoking of control of quality was the codeof Hammurabi (c2000 BC) in Ancient Mesopotamia. One of the many laws in thecode calls for the death penalty for the builder of a house that later collapsedand killed the owner.


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Ancient China division of labour,

Control over quality for handicrafts industries was evolved during the ShangDynasty from the 16th to the 11th Century BC. The handicrafts involvedincluded metallurgy, bamboo, woodworking and textile industries. The process ofcontrol was exercised by division of labour (predating the work of Frederick WTaylor in the 19th Century AD), material selection, excellent techniques and strictcontrol by management. So the quality was ensured by dividing manufacturingoperations into the main departments for:

Collection, processing, storage, distribution of raw materials and work inprogress

Manufacture of product Storage and distribution of product Establishing standards for quality (among other things) Inspection and testing

One example of how this affected production of articles and artefacts is a squarebronze cooking vessel of Simu Wu over a metre high and weighing around 875Kg. produced around the 12th Century BC. Its production apparently requiredbetween 200 and 300 workers and complicated processes including casting,repairs, and measurement including use of measuring equipment such ascompasses and squares

At the same time and leading into the Zhou dynasty a system of standardizationof measuring equipment was set up including a twice yearly calibration by thestate through an official organization parallels then with the trading standards /accredited calibration laboratories of current time.

Control of quality in the Zhou dynasty (11th 8th Century BC) was furtherdeveloped. The state produced and enforced rules for quality these rules weredocumented in the Records of etiquette typical specifications included

utensils under standard are not to be sold on the market so specifyingrequirements for product before they can be sold. This process has parallels withthe work carried out by the EU under the Treaty of Rome and the Directivesspecifying (largely) safety requirements.

India

In around the 4th Century BC in India the Arthashastra of Kautilya was producedfor supervising the working of gold and control of its quality. These became theregulations by which (among other things) roles and responsibilities weredefined. One example is detail of the work of the Superintendent of gold in the


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workshop and aspects of gold production including specifications for goldworkshops, test procedures and quality standards.

These regulations and controls over production methods were further developeduntil the time of the Qin dynasty (221 BC) when the law:

standardized shape and dimensions for groups of products specified guarantees for products such as city walls punishment for officials and craftsmen when product is found not to

comply

Control of measuring equipment carried on up to these times with developmentof acceptable tolerances for the (now) annual calibration and corrective action inthe event of a tolerance being exceeded again normally by punishing an official

perhaps 4.11 (g) of BS 5750.1979 and the new follow up requirements in ISO9001 are not quite as onerous as some believe! Again in the Qin dynasty thestate went further by producing large batches of standard measuring tools(transfer standards) distributed to all corners of the empire.

Later in the Tang dynasty (618 907 AD) the laws required traceability ofmanufacture to the original craftsman by inscribing bows, arrows and otheritems with the workers full name.

Develops in the calibration requirements in this time included an annualcalibration in August and a seal to identify calibration status again withpenalties if the procedures were not followed.

In Ancient Greece the quality control of building included use of a straight flatsurface to control the quality of joints the kanon stone which was used withvermillion a bright red pigment to identify poor fit between blocks. Theworker was then required to improve the mating surface. Specifications weredrawn up for contractors to clearly specify requirements an example is below,including use of the kanon.

The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties. This exercise mustoccupy a complete lifetime. One swallow does not make a spring, nor does onefine day. Excellence is a habit, not an event.

Aristotle

Mediaeval

Although organizations of craftsmen are reported to have been in existence inIndia during the Veda-period from 2000 - 500 BC the next major development in


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Europe (mirroring a lot of what had already taken place in China above) was thedevelopment of mediaeval guilds for control of product quality.

In these times the majority of wealth and power was in the hands of a few kingsand noblemen. They could afford the best and employed master craftsmen toproduce their wares. Weapons including armour and swords were made by thesemen and guilds were formed to provide training for apprentices to learn thesetechniques and become the next generation of craftsmen. The training was longand demanding under the watchful eye of the master and the apprentice had toshow evidence of their ability to create high quality products.

By around 1100 AD these guilds or livery companies began to look very similar instructure to the organizations / institutes we see today. The guilds were built on

the instructional capital or the process for transferring knowledge from themaster to the apprentice.

At around the same time the concept of product marking as evidence of qualitywas further developed in 1300 AD when Edward I instituted legislation forassaying (testing) by the officers of the Goldsmiths' Guild in London andsubsequent hallmarking of precious metals before it could be offered for sale.The design adopted was the Leopard's Head.

http://www.theassayoffice.co.uk/hallmarking_history.html

The principle behind product marking remains the same today; protection of theconsumer for the quality of goods purchased and of the trader from unfair (orinferior) competition.

Venetian Arsenal(Need something from Juran)

Shipbuilding had existed in Venice for many years. In 1320 a new (much larger)Arsenal was built to allow the state's navy and merchant ships to be constructedand maintained.

In the Arsenal they developed methods of mass-producing warships, includingthe frame-first system to replace the Roman hull-first practice. The Arsenal grewfrom around 3,000 to 16,000 people at its peak and they were able to producenearly one ship each day.

The key to this productivity was the standardized parts and work methods thatenabled a consistent product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal


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This idea of interchangeable parts developed over the years and moved from anindustry where one a day was an achievement to industries producing muchhigher volumes examples here are the printing and arms industries.

The idea of interchangeability goes back to Gutenberg's invention of movabletype. Gutenberg lived around the turn of the 15th Century. He invented a processfor making this type in quantity and with precision to enable a practical systemfor printing books.

In the case of arms Americans like to credit Eli Whitney with inventing the ideaof interchangeable arts for muskets in 1803. In practice this was firstdemonstrated by Frenchman Honor in around 1778.In his deomonstration Blanc

had made a thousand muskets and put all their parts in separate bins. He calledtogether a group of academics, politicians, and military men. Then he assembledmuskets from parts drawn at random from the bins.

Industrial RevolutionThe modern era of quality control developed in three stages of IndustrialRevolution starting in Britain. The first wave occurred in the 18th century withthe advent of steam power; the second stage in around 1850 with steampowered ships and railways opening up new markets for the goods produced bythese large factories. The third stage was the advent of machine tools for

producing components for assembly in the early 1900s. There is a lot ofdisagreement about when the phases started and even whether there were thethree phases at all. Some say it was less of a three phase revolution more ofan evolution over time!

Statistical MethodsExperimental design had been around for a long time. One example was of aships surgeon, James Lind in 1747 attempting to discover a cure for theshipboard illness, scurvy. He divided a group of 12 sailors ill with the diseaseinto smaller groups and then carried out controlled experiments on theirtreatment before coming up with the conclusion that treatment with citrus fruitwas the answer.

Ronald Fisher was a Cambridge University educated mathematician. In 1919 heaccepted a post as a statistician at the Rothamsted Agricultural ExperimentStation where they study the effects of nutrition and soil types on plant fertility.

At the station he studied design of experiments (DoE) whereby he arranged anexperiment as a set of sub-experiments with a planned arrangement of variablesto enable statistical analysis of the sub experiments and an overall assessment.This was a significant advance on varying only one factor in an experiment at a


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time, which was a relatively inefficient procedure. This work was to become thefoundation of all modern DoE.

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Fisher.html

At around the same time another Cambridge educated mathematician, KarlPearson was developing theories that underpin many statistical methods incommon use today. Some of his main contributions:

1. Linear regression and correlation.2. Classification of distributions.

Much of this work was used by later statisticians, in particular for the

development of sampling methods and process controls.

http://www.economics.soton.ac.uk/staff/aldrich/kpreader.htm

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturatedwith a bad one.

Henry Ford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_A._Shewhart

When Dr. Shewhart joined the Western Electric Company Inspection EngineeringDepartment at Hawthorne in 1918, industrial quality control was limited toinspecting finished products and removing defective items.

In 1924 he transformed quality control by introducing the control chart. Usingthis chart the process could be monitored and, where required, action taken toprevent quality problems through reduction of process variation.

The problem of variation was also developed into terms of assignable causeand natural variation, the control chart was used as the tool for distinguishingbetween the two. This differed significantly from traditional views of normaldistribution where all variation was natural.

He also developed and first published (in 1939) the PDCA cycle sometimesknown as the Shewhart cycle but more commonly referred to as the Demingcycle after the man who made it famous. The idea is that it is a continuousprocess of:


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PlanDoCheck

Actas a continuous improvement activity until a process is continuously deliveringproduct as it is required.

Sampling plans produced at the laboratories by Harold F Dodge and Harry Romigwere developed into MIL STD 105 to have a significant impact in thedevelopment of processes for sampling during WW II. They considered samplingon a risk based approach and suggested sampling of batches and taking adecision on the whole batch based on the results of the sample. The concept ofacceptable quality level was directly as a result of this approach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_F._Dodge

Japan

Deming 1950 lectureshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

William Edwards Deming was a mathematician and statistician who worked for

the US Department of Agriculture and the US Census Bureau. He learnt fromWalter Shewhart and, as part of the war effort lectured on statistical processcontrol.

With his experience Deming was asked to go to Japan to support their census.His experience of statistical quality methods led to invitations to lecture tomembers of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). So in 1950he trained hundreds of engineers in the methods.

Japanese manufacturers took his lectures to heart and with his encouragementto improve quality to reduce costs, improve productivity and market developed

their systems around his principles.

He returned home and practised as a consultant largely ignored in his nativecountry while feted in Japan.

In 1980 the US picked up on improvements in Japanese quality and productivityand one of the first companies to bring Deming in to help them was Ford, helpedthe with quality management and to transform their financial performance froma loss maker to the most profitable car maker in the US.


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His management theories in the form of the famous 14 points for managementwere captured in the 1982 book Out of the Crisis.

Juranhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M._Juran

Shewhart and Dodge were part of a team from Bell Laboratories made a visit toWestern Bells Hawthorne factory (famous for the Hawthorne Effect when studieson factory lighting and its effect on proiductivity indicated the mere act of takingan interest in employees at work would affect their behaviour) with the intentionof applying some of the laboratorys tools and techniques. They put in place atraining program at the factory and one of the trainees was one Joseph Juran.He went on to join the Inspection Statistical Department, one of the first in the

country. The rest, as they say, is history.In December of 1941, Juran led a team that successfully redesigned a shippingprocess thereby resolving a paperwork logjam that kept critical shipments stuckin the dock.

In 1945, Juran left the war effort and Western Electric to work as anindependent.

In 1951, he published the Quality Control Handbook which was quickly tobecome the reference document of choice in US industry.

On the back of the handbook and the reputation he had earned, Juran wasinvited out to Japan by JUSE to lecture about managing for quality.

Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or takingaction.

Joseph M. Juran

A good rule in organizational analysis is that no meeting of the minds is reallyreached until we talk of specific actions or decisions. We can talk of who isresponsible for budgets, or inventory, or quality, but little is settled. It is only

when we get down to the action wordsmeasure, compute, prepare, check,endorse, recommend, approvethat we can make clear who is to do what.Joseph M. Juran

Quality control is applicable to any kind of enterprise. In fact, it must be appliedin every enterprise.

Kaoru Ishikawa


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All of management's efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customersatisfaction.

Masaaki Imai

The ideas of control and improvement are often confused with one another. Thisis because the quality control and quality improvement are inseparable.

Kaoru Ishikawa

Conclusion

ReferencesA history of managing for quality: the evolution, trends, and future direction ofmanaging for quality.J. M. Juran, editor-in-chief (1995) ASQC Quality Press, Milwaukee

Out of the crisis.William Edwards Deming(1986) Massechusetts Institute of Technology Center for

Advanced Engineering Study, Cambridge (Mass)

Kaizen, the key to Japans competitive success.Imai, Masaaki (1986) McGraw-Hill

Wikipedia the online encyclopediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

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