A Brief History of Quality Control

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 First thoughts ............................................................................................... 2 Measurement ............................................................................................... 2 Legal ........................................................................................................... 2 Ancient China division of labour,.................................................................. 3 India............................................................................................................ 3 Mediaeval..................................................................................................... 4 Industrial Revolution ..................................................................................... 6 Statistical Methods ........................................................................................ 6 Japan .......................................................................................................... 8 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 10 References ................................................................................................. 10

Introduction
There is difficulty in trying to pin down the origins of Quality control mainly because you first have to identify the start of what we might call Quality before deciding when it progressed to organized systems for ensuring this quality was maintained the control element. In practice quality control has been around ever since man has been making things, there is even a school of thought that evolution itself is a form of quality control. One favoured term is survival of the fittest Charles Darwin summarized what might be a mantra for the CQIs quality professionals: As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

Charles Darwin 1809-1882

Another difficulty in charting the course of quality control over the years is to separate developments in quality control from changes in production efficiency driven by market need for more or cheaper product. Quality control has evolved as the need for increased quantities of goods, reduced in cost to satisfy a new market or the expectation for quality has increased. For the purpose of this element we will not attempt to identify the point of the big bang for the birth of quality control, instead confine ourselves to presenting

some edited highlights of organized control of quality in action through history. These will be presented in approximately chronological order. Quality control has been around whenever product has been required in numbers and to standard.

First thoughts
QC. One example of evidence of quality control is following excavation of a mine for producing flints in Denmark (believed to date from around 3500 BC) to be used in the production of Viking boats. The excavation work uncovered evidence of discarded part finished tools rejected at the mine and prior to sale to the travelling merchants. The reason was to prevent unsuitable flints being transported to Sweden, only to be rejected at point of use. An early example, perhaps, of a move to reduce the cost of non-quality by finding rejects in house.

Measurement
In around 3000 BC the Egyptians came up with a measure of length the Royal Egyptian cubit, it was deemed to be equal to the length of the forearm from the bent elbow to the tip of the extended middle finger plus the width of the palm of the hand of the Pharaoh or King ruling at that time. The master of this measure was carved onto granite and workers were given transfer standards in the form of wooden or granite copies. The calibration frequency was defined by the full moon and failure to bring their cubits back was punishable by death. These length measures together with other measuring equipment (including set squares and plumb bobs) were used to set up precise right angles to establish the orientation of the great pyramid at Giza built for King Cheops (whose reign was between 2551 2528 BC).

Legal
One of the earliest examples of legal invoking of control of quality was the code of Hammurabi (c2000 BC) in Ancient Mesopotamia. One of the many laws in the code calls for the death penalty for the builder of a house that later collapsed and killed the owner.

Ancient China division of labour,

Control over quality for handicrafts industries was evolved during the Shang Dynasty from the 16th to the 11th Century BC. The handicrafts involved included metallurgy, bamboo, woodworking and textile industries. The process of control was exercised by division of labour (predating the work of Frederick W Taylor in the 19th Century AD), material selection, excellent techniques and strict control by management. So the quality was ensured by dividing manufacturing operations into the main departments for: Collection, processing, storage, distribution of raw materials and work in progress Manufacture of product Storage and distribution of product Establishing standards for quality (among other things) Inspection and testing One example of how this affected production of articles and artefacts is a square bronze cooking vessel of Simu Wu over a metre high and weighing around 875 Kg. produced around the 12th Century BC. Its production apparently required between 200 and 300 workers and complicated processes including casting, repairs, and measurement including use of measuring equipment such as compasses and squares At the same time and leading into the Zhou dynasty a system of standardization of measuring equipment was set up including a twice yearly calibration by the state through an official organization parallels then with the trading standards / accredited calibration laboratories of current time. Control of quality in the Zhou dynasty (11th 8th Century BC) was further developed. The state produced and enforced rules for quality these rules were documented in the Records of etiquette typical specifications included utensils under standard are not to be sold on the market so specifying requirements for product before they can be sold. This process has parallels with the work carried out by the EU under the Treaty of Rome and the Directives specifying (largely) safety requirements.

India
In around the 4th Century BC in India the Arthashastra of Kautilya was produced for supervising the working of gold and control of its quality. These became the regulations by which (among other things) roles and responsibilities were defined. One example is detail of the work of the Superintendent of gold in the

workshop and aspects of gold production including specifications for gold workshops, test procedures and quality standards. These regulations and controls over production methods were further developed until the time of the Qin dynasty (221 BC) when the law: standardized shape and dimensions for groups of products specified guarantees for products such as city walls punishment for officials and craftsmen when product is found not to comply Control of measuring equipment carried on up to these times with development of acceptable tolerances for the (now) annual calibration and corrective action in the event of a tolerance being exceeded again normally by punishing an official perhaps 4.11 (g) of BS 5750.1979 and the new follow up requirements in ISO 9001 are not quite as onerous as some believe! Again in the Qin dynasty the state went further by producing large batches of standard measuring tools (transfer standards) distributed to all corners of the empire. Later in the Tang dynasty (618 907 AD) the laws required traceability of manufacture to the original craftsman by inscribing bows, arrows and other items with the workers full name. Develops in the calibration requirements in this time included an annual calibration in August and a seal to identify calibration status again with penalties if the procedures were not followed. In Ancient Greece the quality control of building included use of a straight flat surface to control the quality of joints the kanon stone which was used with vermillion a bright red pigment to identify poor fit between blocks. The worker was then required to improve the mating surface. Specifications were drawn up for contractors to clearly specify requirements an example is below, including use of the kanon. The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties. This exercise must occupy a complete lifetime. One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day. Excellence is a habit, not an event. Aristotle

Mediaeval
Although organizations of craftsmen are reported to have been in existence in India during the Veda-period from 2000 - 500 BC the next major development in

Europe (mirroring a lot of what had already taken place in China above) was the development of mediaeval guilds for control of product quality. In these times the majority of wealth and power was in the hands of a few kings and noblemen. They could afford the best and employed master craftsmen to produce their wares. Weapons including armour and swords were made by these men and guilds were formed to provide training for apprentices to learn these techniques and become the next generation of craftsmen. The training was long and demanding under the watchful eye of the master and the apprentice had to show evidence of their ability to create high quality products. By around 1100 AD these guilds or livery companies began to look very similar in structure to the organizations / institutes we see today. The guilds were built on the instructional capital or the process for transferring knowledge from the master to the apprentice. At around the same time the concept of product marking as evidence of quality was further developed in 1300 AD when Edward I instituted legislation for assaying (testing) by the officers of the Goldsmiths' Guild in London and subsequent hallmarking of precious metals before it could be offered for sale. The design adopted was the Leopard's Head. http://www.theassayoffice.co.uk/hallmarking_history.html The principle behind product marking remains the same today; protection of the consumer for the quality of goods purchased and of the trader from unfair (or inferior) competition. Venetian Arsenal (Need something from Juran) Shipbuilding had existed in Venice for many years. In 1320 a new (much larger) Arsenal was built to allow the state's navy and merchant ships to be constructed and maintained. In the Arsenal they developed methods of mass-producing warships, including the frame-first system to replace the Roman hull-first practice. The Arsenal grew from around 3,000 to 16,000 people at its peak and they were able to produce nearly one ship each day. The key to this productivity was the standardized parts and work methods that enabled a consistent product. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal

This idea of interchangeable parts developed over the years and moved from an industry where one a day was an achievement to industries producing much higher volumes examples here are the printing and arms industries. The idea of interchangeability goes back to Gutenberg's invention of movable type. Gutenberg lived around the turn of the 15th Century. He invented a process for making this type in quantity and with precision to enable a practical system for printing books. In the case of arms Americans like to credit Eli Whitney with inventing the idea of interchangeable arts for muskets in 1803. In practice this was first demonstrated by Frenchman Honor in around 1778.In his deomonstration Blanc had made a thousand muskets and put all their parts in separate bins. He called together a group of academics, politicians, and military men. Then he assembled muskets from parts drawn at random from the bins.

Industrial Revolution
The modern era of quality control developed in three stages of Industrial Revolution starting in Britain. The first wave occurred in the 18th century with the advent of steam power; the second stage in around 1850 with steam powered ships and railways opening up new markets for the goods produced by these large factories. The third stage was the advent of machine tools for producing components for assembly in the early 1900s. There is a lot of disagreement about when the phases started and even whether there were the three phases at all. Some say it was less of a three phase revolution more of an evolution over time!

Statistical Methods
Experimental design had been around for a long time. One example was of a ships surgeon, James Lind in 1747 attempting to discover a cure for the shipboard illness, scurvy. He divided a group of 12 sailors ill with the disease into smaller groups and then carried out controlled experiments on their treatment before coming up with the conclusion that treatment with citrus fruit was the answer. Ronald Fisher was a Cambridge University educated mathematician. In 1919 he accepted a post as a statistician at the Rothamsted Agricultural Experiment Station where they study the effects of nutrition and soil types on plant fertility. At the station he studied design of experiments (DoE) whereby he arranged an experiment as a set of sub-experiments with a planned arrangement of variables to enable statistical analysis of the sub experiments and an overall assessment. This was a significant advance on varying only one factor in an experiment at a

time, which was a relatively inefficient procedure. This work was to become the foundation of all modern DoE. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Fisher.html At around the same time another Cambridge educated mathematician, Karl Pearson was developing theories that underpin many statistical methods in common use today. Some of his main contributions: 1. Linear regression and correlation. 2. Classification of distributions. Much of this work was used by later statisticians, in particular for the development of sampling methods and process controls. http://www.economics.soton.ac.uk/staff/aldrich/kpreader.htm A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one. Henry Ford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_A._Shewhart When Dr. Shewhart joined the Western Electric Company Inspection Engineering Department at Hawthorne in 1918, industrial quality control was limited to inspecting finished products and removing defective items. In 1924 he transformed quality control by introducing the control chart. Using this chart the process could be monitored and, where required, action taken to prevent quality problems through reduction of process variation. The problem of variation was also developed into terms of assignable cause and natural variation, the control chart was used as the tool for distinguishing between the two. This differed significantly from traditional views of normal distribution where all variation was natural. He also developed and first published (in 1939) the PDCA cycle sometimes known as the Shewhart cycle but more commonly referred to as the Deming cycle after the man who made it famous. The idea is that it is a continuous process of:

Plan Do Check Act as a continuous improvement activity until a process is continuously delivering product as it is required. Sampling plans produced at the laboratories by Harold F Dodge and Harry Romig were developed into MIL STD 105 to have a significant impact in the development of processes for sampling during WW II. They considered sampling on a risk based approach and suggested sampling of batches and taking a decision on the whole batch based on the results of the sample. The concept of acceptable quality level was directly as a result of this approach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_F._Dodge

Japan
Deming 1950 lectures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming William Edwards Deming was a mathematician and statistician who worked for the US Department of Agriculture and the US Census Bureau. He learnt from Walter Shewhart and, as part of the war effort lectured on statistical process control. With his experience Deming was asked to go to Japan to support their census. His experience of statistical quality methods led to invitations to lecture to members of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). So in 1950 he trained hundreds of engineers in the methods. Japanese manufacturers took his lectures to heart and with his encouragement to improve quality to reduce costs, improve productivity and market developed their systems around his principles. He returned home and practised as a consultant largely ignored in his native country while feted in Japan. In 1980 the US picked up on improvements in Japanese quality and productivity and one of the first companies to bring Deming in to help them was Ford, helped the with quality management and to transform their financial performance from a loss maker to the most profitable car maker in the US.

His management theories in the form of the famous 14 points for management were captured in the 1982 book Out of the Crisis. Juran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M._Juran Shewhart and Dodge were part of a team from Bell Laboratories made a visit to Western Bells Hawthorne factory (famous for the Hawthorne Effect when studies on factory lighting and its effect on proiductivity indicated the mere act of taking an interest in employees at work would affect their behaviour) with the intention of applying some of the laboratorys tools and techniques. They put in place a training program at the factory and one of the trainees was one Joseph Juran. He went on to join the Inspection Statistical Department, one of the first in the country. The rest, as they say, is history. In December of 1941, Juran led a team that successfully redesigned a shipping process thereby resolving a paperwork logjam that kept critical shipments stuck in the dock. In 1945, Juran left the war effort and Western Electric to work as an independent. In 1951, he published the Quality Control Handbook which was quickly to become the reference document of choice in US industry. On the back of the handbook and the reputation he had earned, Juran was invited out to Japan by JUSE to lecture about managing for quality. Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action. Joseph M. Juran A good rule in organizational analysis is that no meeting of the minds is really reached until we talk of specific actions or decisions. We can talk of who is responsible for budgets, or inventory, or quality, but little is settled. It is only when we get down to the action wordsmeasure, compute, prepare, check, endorse, recommend, approvethat we can make clear who is to do what. Joseph M. Juran

Quality control is applicable to any kind of enterprise. In fact, it must be applied in every enterprise. Kaoru Ishikawa

All of management's efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction. Masaaki Imai The ideas of control and improvement are often confused with one another. This is because the quality control and quality improvement are inseparable. Kaoru Ishikawa

Conclusion

References
A history of managing for quality: the evolution, trends, and future direction of managing for quality. J. M. Juran, editor-in-chief (1995) ASQC Quality Press, Milwaukee Out of the crisis. William Edwards Deming(1986) Massechusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Engineering Study, Cambridge (Mass) Kaizen, the key to Japans competitive success. Imai, Masaaki (1986) McGraw-Hill Wikipedia the online encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page