Quality management

Quality Management was seen as early as 1881 when Frederic Winslow Taylor introduced scientific management. He wanted to prove that man could ‘work smarter’. Taylor wrote, “In the past the man was first, in the future the system must be first.”

Taylor’s research led him to produce instruction cards so that workers did not need to think but instead followed written instruction cards on how to complete the required job.

In 1914 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line and his production went from 14,000 five years earlier to 230,000 cars. While Taylor tried to establish the maximum a man could produce, Ford’s assembly line had its own speed and the workers had to adapt to this.

Mary Parker Follet made emphasis on leadership in management as early as in the 1930s.She believed employees should have a say on how things should be done and share in the responsibilities.

Finance-driven management was introduced in the 60s and brought about the conglomerate era. Bigger was then believed to be better.

In the 1980s managers were forced to eliminate waste and reawaken the entrepreneurial impulse in bloated business.

Also in the 1980s, William Edwards Deming found that industry had moved on little from the mass production era of scientific industrial management. He emphasized time and time again that top executives must place considerable importance on improvements before their efforts to improve quality will have a considerable effect,

Michael Hammer and James Champy introduced management style by “Reengineering the Corporation” in the early 90s. Their system was the first large scale systematic application of information technology to management. This system reintroduced systems that Taylor and earlier management thinkers had pulled apart. Responsibility was once again introduced into the jobs and the “buck” stopped there.

Once again we are in the era where workers are empowered to use their initiative and to be innovative, while at the same time producing quality work.This is the result of the past experiences and acquired knowledge of management gurus such as:

Peter Drucker, who has done a lot to legitimize management as a profession.

W. Edwards Deming, who first developed an interest in management processes in the 1930s. He introduced quality management to Japan in 1950 using statistics.

Philip B. Crosby, who has had more than 40 years as the developer and innovator of the principles of Quality Management; he is considered to be the Father of “Zero Defects”.

Tom Peters is an American who has researched the secrets of successful American companies.

Crosby believes that quality can increase a business’s profits while Peters believes that innovation is the way to go if a business wants to succeed today.

Answer the following questions:

1. What is the difference between the position of the workers in the past and the present periods?

2. What must top executive do first: improve the production process or take efforts to improve quality?

3. What are the famous names of the quality management gurus?

Дата добавления: 2015-08-17