Quality is Free

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Philip Crosby
1979
• Quality is free
– What costs money are the unquality things
• All the actions that involve not doing job right the
first time
• Muda (大野耐一)
• Top management’s responsibility to Quality
“Top management may or may not realize what
has to be done to achieve quality”
• Ex: 家長 vs. 孩子的學習

“Or worse, they may feel, mistakenly, that they

do understand what has to be done. Those types
can cause the most harm.”
• Quality Control
– Measurement
• Go
• No-Go
• Quality = Prevention

“Why spend all this time finding and fixing and

fighting when you can prevent the incident in
the first place?”
• Culture make quality last forever
– Firefighting would have to be replaced with
defect prevention
– Quality would have to be recognized as a
genuine “first among equals”
• Labor, material, money, machines, …
– The habit of doing things right the first time
had to become routine
– The whole thing had to happen within the units
• 所有部門皆須具備這些文化特質
 Tools for quality system
• Quality control • Product qualification
• Reliability • Training
• Quality engineering • Testing
• Supplier quality • Consumer affairs
• Inspection • Quality improvement
Fundamentals for quality system
• Management participation & attitude
• Professional quality management
• Original programs
• Recognition
1. Management participation & attitude
– “Participation” rather than “support”
• Right attitude about quality
• Right understanding about quality
– Ex: ISO 9000 系列
» 說一套、做一套
» 經理人自己都不相信
– Erroneous “conventional wisdom”
» Quality mean Goodness
» Unmeasurable
» Error is inevitable
» People just don’t care about doing good work

– Real Life Quality

» Quality is conformance to requirement
» Precisely measurable
» Error is not required to fulfill the laws of nature
» People work just as hard now as they ever did
– ITT’s way of management participation
• Conducted seminars throughout the ITT world on a
regular basis.
– Those managing directors and general managers
who had participated in programs
who had learned to understand quality properly
testified to others.
working on a group-y-group, unit-by-unit basis
throughout the corporation.
2. Professional quality management
– Allow quality professional to form forums to
help each others
• Ex: 品質學會
– Institute quality college to teach quality tools
• Certification
– Ex: six sigma (Black belts, Green belts)
3. Original programs
– Buck A Day (BAD)
• Cost reduction idea program
– Zero Defects – 30
• 30 days programs for supervisors
– Consumer Affairs
4. Recognition
– Ring of Quality
• Award presented
– at formal dinner
– by corporate president
Dignity & Respect
– Cash and financial awards are not personal
enough
 Erroneous assumptions
• Quality means
– Goodness
– Luxury
– Shininess

“Quality of Life”
• Speakers
• Listeners
• Quality as
“Conformance to requirements”

– Quality of life
• Desirable income
• Health
• Population
– Ex: 學校評鑑
 Erroneous assumptions
• Quality is
– Intangible
– Not measurable
• Cost of quality
– Best tool to measure quality
• Prevention, Appraisal, Failure categories

– Measurements should be displayed for all to see

• Visible proof of improvement
• Recognition of achievement
 Erroneous assumptions
• Economics of Quality
– “Can’t afford to make it that good”

Evidence of “don’t understand quality”

It is always cheaper to do things right the first

time
 Erroneous assumptions
• All the problems of quality are originated
by the workers

Shop floor problems are easy to spot

– Use “cost of quality” to direct attention
• Prevention
• Appraisal
• Failure
 Erroneous assumptions
• Quality originates in the quality department

– Root cause problems

• Accounting problems
• Manufacturing problems
• Design problems
• Housekeeping problems
• Responsibility of Quality department to
“problems”
– Report results clearly & objectively
– Lead the drive to develop a positive attitude
toward quality improvement
– Use educational program to be helpful
• Zero defects
– Should NOT do the job for others
 Quality Management is
• Systematic way of guaranteeing that
organized activities happen the way they are
planed

• Management discipline
– Prevent problems from occurring
– Create the attitudes and controls that make
prevention possible
Why quality management needed
• Faceless end users
Sophisticated business world
– Service providers never meet end users
• 教授 vs. 畢業生的雇主
– People who really control activities do so from
office, laboratory, studios, and other remote
places.