Page 46 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

raditional quality programs for the most of the twentieth century
were focused on the command and control aspects inherent to the
Tfunctional hierarchy organizational structure. The efforts of Taylor
to both standardize and simplify work at least made this possible, if not
enforced its legitimacy. In the aftermath of WWII, American business had
extended control backward to the sources of supply and forward to the
distribution and merchandising. To the extent that organizations suc-
ceeded in this endeavor, they reduced uncertainty in their environments
and gained control over critical elements of their business.
Internal quality practices were largely associated with off-line inspec-
tion by trained quality inspectors, assigned to a Quality Control depart-
ment. Operational personnel were responsible for their assigned functions,
such as production; inspectors were responsible for ensuring conformance
of the product to the customer requirement, usually just before the prod-
uct was shipped to the customer. Although Shewhart had developed the
statistical control chart in the 1920s, its use in industry was dwarfed by
inspection sampling plans that better fit this organizational model. These
sampling plans had become established as MIL-STD 105, a requirement of
military suppliers, which had made them the de facto standard through-
out the war years for all suppliers.
Unlike that of most of the industrialized world, the American infra-
structure was undamaged by the war. While the rest of the world rebuilt,
shortages were endemic, and American suppliers ramped up production
to fill the void, resulting in a period of prosperity and profitability that
further enforced the perception of well-designed, or at least adequate,
systems. In reality, quality levels were poor, as is often the case during
shortages (Juran, 1995).
By the late 1970s, however, market influences emerged to challenge
the status quo, including (Juran, 1995):

· The growth of consumerism
· The growth of litigation over quality
· The growth of government regulation of quality
· The Japanese quality revolution
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