Quality Gurus

What is a quality guru?
A guru, by definition, is a good person, a wise person and a teacher. A quality guru should be all of these, plus have a concept and approach to quality within business that has made a major and lasting impact. The gurus mentioned in this section have done, and continue to do, that, in some cases, even after their death.

W Edwards Deming placed great importance and responsibility on management, at both the individual and
company level, believing management to be responsible for 94% of quality problems. His fourteen point
plan is a complete philosophy of management, that can be applied to small or large organisations in the
public, private or service sectors:
• Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service
• Adopt the new philosophy. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delay, mistakes
and defective workmanship
• Cease dependence on mass inspection. Instead, require statistical evidence that quality is built in
• End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price
• Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the system
• Institute modern methods of training on the job
• Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers, The responsibility of foremen must
be changed from numbers to quality
• Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company
• Break down barriers between departments
• Eliminate numerical goals, posters and slogans for the workforce asking for new levels of
productivity without providing methods
• Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas
• Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and their right to pride of workmanship
• Institute a vigorous programme of education and retraining
• Create a structure in top management that will push on the above points every day

He believed that adoption of, and action on, the fourteen points was a signal that management intended to stay in business. Deming also encouraged a systematic approach to problem solving and promoted the widely known Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle. The PDCA cycle is also known as the Deming cycle, although it was developed by a colleague of Deming, Dr Shewhart.

It is a universal improvement methodology, the idea being to constantly improve, and thereby reduce the difference between the requirements of the customers and the performance of the process. The cycle is about learning and ongoing improvement, learning what works and what does not in a systematic way; and the cycle repeats; after one cycle is complete, another is started.

Dr Joseph M Juran developed the quality trilogy – quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. Good quality management requires quality actions to be planned out, improved and controlled. The process achieves control at one level of quality performance, then plans are made to improve the performance on a project by project basis, using tools and techniques such as Pareto analysis.

This activity eventually achieves breakthrough to an improved level, which is again controlled, to prevent any deterioration.

Juran believed quality is associated with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the product, and emphasised the necessity for ongoing quality improvement through a succession of small improvement projects carried out throughout the organisation. His ten steps to quality improvement are:
• Build awareness of the need and opportunity for improvement
• Set goals for improvement
• Organise to reach the goals
• Provide training
• Carry out projects to solve problems
• Report progress
• Give recognition
• Communicate results
• Keep score of improvements achieved
• Maintain momentum
He concentrated not just on the end customer, but on other external and internal customers. Each person along the chain, from product designer to final user, is a supplier and a customer. In addition, the person will be a process, carrying out some transformation or activity.

Philip B Crosby is known for the concepts of “Quality is Free” and “Zero Defects”, and his quality improvement process is based on his four absolutes of quality:
• Quality is conformance to requirements
• The system of quality is prevention
• The performance standard is zero defect
• The measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance

His fourteen steps to quality improvement are:
• Management is committed to a formalised quality policy
• Form a management level quality improvement team (QIT) with responsibility for quality
improvement process planning and administration
• Determine where current and potential quality problems lie
• Evaluate the cost of quality and explain its use as a management tool to measure waste
• Raise quality awareness and personal concern for quality amongst all employees
• Take corrective actions, using established formal systems to remove the root causes of problems
• Establish a zero defects committee and programme
• Train all employees in quality improvement
• Hold a Zero Defects Day to broadcast the change and as a management recommitment and
employee commitment
• Encourage individuals and groups to set improvement goals
• Encourage employees to communicate to management any obstacles they face in attaining their
improvement goals
• Give formal recognition to all participants
• Establish quality councils for quality management information sharing
• Do it all over again – form a new quality improvement team