The Next New Thing Is Here

Foolproof, can’t-fail quality management

Is anyone performing total quality management (TQM) anymore? MIL-Q-9858A? Total cost of quality (TCQ)? Pert planning? Are there any one-minute managers around? Pareto? What about “up the organization?” Value analysis? Quality is free? They were all big things—in their day.

We in the quality business are fickle. We change our minds a lot about the best way to manage quality. Sometimes we even change and then change back. Statistical process control (SPC) and statistical quality control had their day, but we lost interest. However, back in the 1980s—and thanks to Deming—SPC got new life and became the hottest next new thing. Now I see signs that SPC is on the wane again. When I joined the quality game, the big thing was TCQ and visibility. The quality manger had to report high enough to give the big boss visibility. TCQ and TQM came and went.

We always seem to be looking for the next big thing. Why is that?

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Comments

Zero Defects is just "sloganeering"

see above.

Zero Defects is just "sloganeering"

With all respect to Mr. Crosby, the only probelm with Zero defects is variation, which is in every process, and as Deming says, 94% of problems are a result of the system, the process, not the people working in the system. Here's a brief excerpt of Deming's persepecitve on ZD: "In his book, Out of the Crisis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, second edition, 1986), renowned quality guru W. Edwards Deming took issue with the concept of zero defects, deriding it as an example of management sloganeering with little meaning for the worker on the shop floor. Part of Deming’s argument stems from the idea that rating workers is nearly impossible--even if a bottom-line measurement such as defects is used. As proof, Deming offered his now-famous red bead experiment,..." taken from an earlier Quality Digest article: http://www.qualitydigest.com/april05/articles/05_article.shtml. It's the process, not the people!