What happened to quality control?, By Rajindra C. Ratnapuli, CEng (Lond)

Quality activities are nothing new to the manufacturing and service industries. They have always been an integral part of the operations system of successful businesses. The conventional approach to quality was concerned mainly with eliminating rejection rates and re-work and so lowering the product cost. Quality control, according to this process involved statistical sampling, inspection and testing of the product. This simple quality approach underwent constant changes and improvements over the years, driven largely by the ever increasing severity of customer requirements and growing competition in the market place. In the period between 1960 and 1980 quality control philosophy developed into more of a customer centered quality management function and in the early 90s the concept of total quality management (TQM) was introduced. TQM is now the preferred business process adopted by forward-looking enterprises. Its major attraction is that the system can be developed and used to win both customer satisfaction and supplier confidence. Much of the new thinking behind these quality systems came from the pioneering ideas of quality gurus like Edwards Deming, Crosby and Juran.

Japan provides a striking example of how these quality management ideas can make a difference to industrial performance and contribute to economic growth of a country. Prior to the 1950s Japanese industry lagged far behind the American and European counterparts in both productivity and quality. The situation however began to change rapidly for the better between the years 1950 -1970. That was when the Japanese industrialists started to introduce the proven American quality philosophy to domestic businesses. By the end of the ‘60s, Japan’s industrial performance had already equaled or even surpassed, in certain sectors, the performance of Western industries. In fact Japan turned out to be a formidable competitor in the global market for high quality products and services. Even today, many countries find it difficult to match Japan’s leadership in heavy industries and high technology electronics products.

The global outlook to quality took a dramatic change between the years 1980 and ‘90s with the emergence of ISO 9000 quality standard. ISO 9000 soon became a hot topic in practically all sectors of industry, both manufacturing and services. There was a huge rush by businesses, big and small to obtain ISO 9000 certification. Today it is hard to find a medium to large size enterprise (more than 400 employees) that is not registered with this standard. Without this registration, nowadays it would be practically impossible for a company to participate in global business. Quality management became so important that some countries have even created prestigious national quality awards to honor those businesses that achieve quality excellence on a national level. For example, in the USA companies may compete for the well known Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award (MBNQA), the equivalent in Japan being the MBNQA/Deming award.

Despite all this development work, there appeared some bad news also for the quality profession. By the mid ‘90s reports began to emerge that some ISO 9000 registered companies were continually turning out poor quality products and services. The reports had also referred to a few Malcolm Baldridge quality award winners that had gone bust. What is worrying though is that even today 10 years into the 21st century the old problems still keep cropping up ever so often. For example, the food industry frequently churns out bacteria contaminated processed food, and the garment industry is noted for its low quality defective products. Children’s toys often contain prohibited toxic material like plastics, lead and cadmium. The auto industry has fame for regularly recalling defective vehicles. Imagine a leading auto manufacturer recently recalling several thousands of cars for faulty brakes. Strangely, in this case the problem seemed to have escaped the company’s quality system for over a decade. According to some observers the company had already known about the problem but had failed to divulge the issue. Some of the service providers like banks, transport and telecommunications are notoriously poor servers. And of course there are many more that could readily enter the list. Under these circumstances it would be very difficult to find a satisfied customer these days.

It must be emphasized that ISO 9000 only lays out minimum requirements necessary to establish a quality management system It is not a quality standard, rather it attests to the company’s quality system and how it will be managed. It is still the responsibility of the company to deliver high quality. A sure sign of failing quality is increased customer complaints. Businesses must frequently conduct internal audits to correct non compliances and continually improve the quality procedures. On the other hand, there is lot more new thinking required by the quality profession to improve the system. There are indications however that the quality profession is already running out of ideas.

Rajindra C. Ratnapuli, CEng (Lond)