Refresh Your Knowledge: Quality and Continuous Improvement Pioneers

The history of Six Sigma

Based on existing theories and quality concepts, Six Sigma grew from small beginnings into an internationally acclaimed quality philosophy. Several key pioneers played pivotal roles in
developing the quality theory upon which Six Sigma is based.

Dr. Joseph Juran

Dr. Joseph Juran authored many books on quality management and received numerous awards for his contribution to developing the field of quality management. Dr. Juran's ideas were
instrumental in the development of the total quality management (TQM) theory, which is now a well-known base for quality initiatives.

Dr. Juran's work "The Quality Control Handbook" became the reference work for quality managers, and remains so to the present day. His influence can be felt in almost every initiative aimed
at quality and process improvement, including Six Sigma.

Dr. Juran was one of the first people to recognize that the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of problems are caused by 20% of potential causes, applies to quality management and process
improvement. From his observations, he developed Pareto analysis using a Pareto chart. Both Pareto analysis and Pareto charts are fundamental quality tools used in the application of Six
Sigma.

Dr. Juran also taught in Japan, where he influenced top management in its move to adopt Six Sigma principles. He played a key role in developing the Japanese economy during the 1950s. His
Juran Institute has also influenced top management in the US.

Dr. Juran also developed the Juran trilogy for quality management, which has three basic principles:

quality planning – Managers need to design and create the process that will meet quality goals. This means specifically creating a quality plan with specific goals in mind. Managers
cannot expect quality to just happen without proper planning.

quality control – Once a process has been planned, and is running properly, it needs to be monitored to ensure the correct standards are achieved. This is done through metrics, with sigma
being a common metric.

quality improvement – The result of controlling a planned and established process is that you can see where it needs to be improved. Improvement leads to better control and better
quality.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming

Dr. W. Edwards Deming was a prolific writer on the subject of quality management. Dr. Deming, a leader in the field of statistical methods of quality control, began his career working for the
US Census Bureau, and later started his own company that offered statistical control services to industry.

Dr. Deming's work was influential in Japan. He only became well known in the US much later in his career when he proposed his "14 points" and "7 deadly diseases of top management"
guidelines. The guidelines aim to create constancy in purpose – meaning that an organization's quality effort must be focused on a single goal. This is a major feature of Six Sigma – that there is
a single performance goal that all employees must strive toward. Dr. Deming's 14 points are:

1. Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service.

2. Adopt a new philosophy. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, and defective workmanship.

3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Require, instead, statistical evidence that quality is built in.

4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone. Instead, minimize total cost by working with a single supplier.

5. Find problems. It is management's job to work continually on the system.

6. Institute training on the job.

7. Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers.

8. Drive out fear.

9. Break down barriers between staff areas.

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce.

11. Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas.

12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship. Eliminate the annual rating or merit system.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.

14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.

Dr. Deming's theories focus on system improvement. Most notable of his contributions is his support of the PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle as a method of system improvement. This method is
still used today and is similar to other process improvement tools used in Six Sigma, such as the DMAIC model.

Dr. Walter Shewhart

Born in 1891, Dr. Walter Shewhart was one of the earliest pioneers in the field of quality management and control, and led the way for the use of statistics for quality management. During the
1920s, Dr. Shewhart noticed that engineers needed to reduce the rate and occurrence of failures. This was necessary to improve production processes and make them more economical.

Dr. Shewhart described this problem of reducing errors in a process in terms of process variation, which is also the deviation from the mean, or sigma. Dr. Shewhart described process variation
as one of two types:

Assignable cause variation is process variation that can be traced to a specific root cause. It can be reduced or eliminated completely from a process through good management and the
use of statistical control methods.

Chance cause variation is process variation that cannot be traced to a specific cause. It is random and cannot be controlled through statistical methods. According to Dr. Shewhart, a
process is optimized when the only variation is chance cause variation.

The idea of reducing variation through the application of statistical methods was the basis for the Statistical Process Control method (SPC) – another fundamental quality theory underlying Six
Sigma. The theory states that in order for a process to be most economical, it must be brought into a state of control where the only variation is random.

Dr. Shewhart was the first to use control charts to indicate where variation occurs in a process, and when to act on it. Control charts are used in a similar way today, and form the basis of SPC.
He also made noteworthy contributions to the development of the PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle, together with one of his pupils, Dr. Deming.

Dr. Genichi Taguchi

Dr. Genichi Taguchi, known as the "father of quality engineering," was instrumental in developing quality engineering techniques that reduce cycle time, which is a large part of Six Sigma
process improvement. Dr. Taguchi is well known for his theory that manufacturing processes are influenced by external factors, which he called "noise." He said that to improve a process and
reduce the costs involved, managers need to identify and eliminate noise from the "process signal" – the vital elements of the process.

Dr. Taguchi's theory for quality management consists of two major parts:

quality loss function – This function is essentially an equation to calculate how much money is lost because of variability in a process. The equation is used to show what benefits are to
be gained when Six Sigma is applied in an organization. The development of the quality loss function marked the first time cost and quality were related to one another.

design robustness – Systems and processes must be designed to be able to withstand noise – a process must be able to produce high-quality products consistently regardless of external
factors. Not all noise may be eliminated, yet the process must still meet quality expectations – it is not good enough to produce high-quality products only some of the time.

Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa

Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, considered the "father of Japanese quality control," was the first to distinguish the Japanese approach to total quality control, which he called company-wide quality control
(CWQC), from the Western style. Western managers realized the value of his ideas and adopted some of them for use in the US. Dr. Ishikawa's ideas, such as the concept of quality circles and
"next operation as customer", are evident today in quality management.

Dr. Ishikawa's major contribution to the development of the quality management theory at the base of Six Sigma is the development of the cause-and-effect diagram. His simple method and
graphic made it easy to identify the root causes underlying process problems without using complicated statistics. The cause-and-effect diagram is known as the Ishikawa diagram in his honor.

Dr. Armand Feigenbaum

Dr. Armand Feigenbaum has written many books on quality control and is credited with establishing the current concept of total quality control (TQC) from the earlier work by Dr. Juran. Dr.
Feigenbaum's concept of TQC insists that all employees in a company are involved in quality control, which is the same theory underlying Six Sigma.

Dr. Feigenbaum also said that quality is not just about process improvement – producing faster and more economically – but it is also about being able to sell faster. This relates to the Six Sigma
concept that process improvement is not the only focus for an initiative – quality efforts must be a company-wide endeavor with total quality management being the focus. Dr. Feigenbaum was
the first person to promote the idea of zero defects as a performance goal, which is one of Six Sigma's main goals.

Philip Crosby

Philip Crosby consulted, wrote, and spoke about quality management for most of his career. He is well known for making seemingly complicated statistical methods easily understood and
accessible to ordinary managers. Crosby was instrumental in making Six Sigma accessible to everyone, and not just a preserve of academia.

Crosby is well known for saying that the cost of quality must be separated from other financial costs and for saying that measuring quality is vital to its maintenance. This supports and promotes
the use of Six Sigma, as sigma is a metric as well as a philosophy and methodology.

Crosby also outlined the four absolutes of quality management:

quality means conformance to requirements

quality comes from error prevention

the quality performance standard must be zero defects

quality should be measured in terms of the price of nonconformance