Читать книгу Statistical Quality Control - Bhisham C. Gupta - Страница 26

During and after World War II, America was under a lot of pressure to increase productivity. The managers of manufacturing companies in America believed that productivity and quality were not compatible, and their way to increase productivity was to hire more workers and put “quality” on the back burner. Japan and Germany were also coming out of the ashes of World War II. So, until 1960, America dominated the world with its productivity – but in 1948, Japanese companies started to follow the work that many pioneers such as Shewhart, Juran, and Deming practiced at Westinghouse. The managers of Japanese companies observed that improving quality not only make their products more attractive but also increased productivity. However, this observation did not sink into the minds of the managers of American companies: they continued working with the assumption that improving quality cost more and inhibited productivity and consequently would mean lower profits.

Deming's famous visit to Japan in (1950) brought about a quality revolution in Japan, and the country became a very dominant power of quality throughout the world. During his visit, he gave a seminar that was attended not only by engineers but also by all the top managers. He told the Japanese managers that “they had an obligation to the world to uphold the finest of management techniques.” He warned them against mistakenly allowing into Japanese companies the use of certain Western management practices, such as management by objective and performance standards, saying that “these practices are largely responsible for the failure of Western industry to remain competitive.” As Deming noted in his book Out of the Crisis, which resulted from his visit to Japan, the chain reaction shown in Figure 1.2 became engraved in Japan as the way of industrial life. This chain reaction was on the blackboard during every meeting he held with top management in Japan.

Furthermore, Deming noted that “Once management in Japan adopted the chain reaction, everyone there from 1950 onward had one common aim, namely, quality.” But as remarked earlier, this idea was not adopted by American management until at least the late 1980s. In the 1960s and 1970s, American companies continued to dominate in productivity, mainly by increasing their workforce. However, as a result of ignoring the quality scenario, America started to lose its dominance in terms of competitiveness and thus productivity. During this period, Germany and South Korea also became competitors with America. Ultimately, in the 1990s, American management started to work on quality; and as a result, America began to reemerge as a world‐class competitor.

The gurus and advocates for quality – Deming, Feigenbaum, Juran, and Crosby – were the most influential people in making the move from production and consumption to total quality control and management. According to Joseph A. DeFeo, president and CEO of the Juran Institute, “the costs of poor‐quality account for 15 to 30% of a company's overall costs.” When a company takes appropriate steps to improve its performance by reducing deficiencies in key areas (cycle time, warranty costs, scrap and rework, on‐time delivery, billing, and others), it reduces overall costs without eliminating essential services, functions, product features, and personnel increases as outlined by Goetsch and Davis (2006). Feigenbaum also said that up to 40% of the capacity of a plant is wasted through not getting it right the first time.

Figure 1.2 A chain reaction chart used by the Japanese companies in their top management meetings.

Furthermore, we note that often, flexibility in manufacturing can increase productivity without affecting quality. For example, the best Japanese automaker plants can send a minivan, pickup truck, or SUV down the same assembly line one after another without stopping the line to retool or reset. One Nissan plant can assemble five different models on one line. This flexibility obviously translates into productivity (Bloomberg Businessweek 2003).