Quality Time Machine #1

While perusing through some of my old work, I happened to find a gem about the simplicity and effectiveness of well formulated quality management systems.

“Dr Juran is at least partially responsible for the very wide circulation of the Motorola-Matsushita/Quasar story in the manufacturing circles. He explains the concepts behind cost of poor quality with the following example, in his foundation lectures on Management of Quality: In the mid 1970s, the Japanese electronics giant bought out a color TV plant that had been formerly run by Motorola. Before it came under the Japanese Management, the Motorola factory had been running at a rate of 150 to 180 defects per 10 sets. Three years later, the defect rate had dropped to three or four per 100 sets! As a result, the cost of poor quality dropped from $22 million to less than $4million, the number of in-plant repair and services employees was reduced from 120 to 15 and personnel turnover from 30 percent to one percent per annum.

All this was possible through effort and marginal investment, including modified product designs that were less prone to field failure; changes in manufacturing process that reduced the risk of defect generation; and more reliable defect-free parts. In short, Matsushita utilized many of the basic quality management principles that the leading American experts had been preaching for 20 years. They did not use a revolutionary new technology, or a new work force. The key to their expertise in the field was intensive quality oriented management that brought with it the targeted increases in quality as well as simultaneous and concomitant decreases in cost.

How the Japanese have achieved mastery over quality is not a mystery or a miracle. The ‘secret’ is no secret at all, and its key is not superior technology or robots, nor is it government assistance or macro-economic forces. It is a management system—the quality control system taught by Prof W Edwards Deming and subsequently enlarged for leadership and quality improvement by Dr Joseph M Juran.”

 This excerpt originally appeared in “WORLD CLASS QUALITY – AN EXECUTIVE HANDBOOK” by SURESH LULLA

Copyright © 2003, by Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited.