Before recent Quality Standards - History

[TPMB4]

What did companies do before quality standards like BS5750? Were there any companies out there with good quality practises before the frameworks of the various standards came along? Whether they were MIL specs or others.

I'm just curious and just wonder how far we have travelled, I'm guessing far but have some had a lot less distance to travel? I am sure there must have always been well run companies with good business systems so why not good quality systems even if they weren't recognised as such?

 

[Marc]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Many if not most companies were already doing what standards such as ISO 9001 require. This is my best thought with regard to how long ago there were written or unwritten quality "standards":

 

[Marcelo]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Standards are generally created to reflect the experience of an area - meaning, the best practices of the involved. BS5750 was created in a way that reflected the best practices related to quality management at the time.

 

[Colin]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Formal quality standards weren't generally needed by the 'masses' but those companies supplying to the military had to comply with such as Mil Std's and AQAP (Allied Quality Assurance Procedures) and also Def Stds.


The following is an excerpt from some notes:

'Standards for quality assurance systems have been around for quite some time and can perhaps be said to have been started by the issue of the Allied Quality Assurance Publication (AQAP) series of documents which were produced between 1968 and 1970. These were published as a means of standardising the basic ?organisation for quality? requirements for the member countries of NATO, many of who were producing ordnance and other materials for the military which had the need to be interchangeable across the member countries.

The Ministry of Defence Procurement Executive (MOD) in the UK then took these AQAP?s and adopted them, almost directly, as their own standards and named them as the Defence Standards (DEF-STAN) which became known as the DEF STAN 05-21 series of standards.

Many organisations that were involved in the manufacture of materials and equipment for the military were then required to work to these quality assurance standards and the benefits of such a regime became recognised by other industry sectors.

Soon after, the motor industry loosely adopted and modified the AQAP?s to make them more suitable for commercial use and the Society of Motor Manufactures and Traders (SMMT) produced their own standards. Other industry sectors such as the nuclear industry also began to adopt similar standards and it was becoming clear that a national standard was likely to be to the advantage of all.

Following the publication by the British Standards Institution (BSI) of BS 5179 ? ?A guide to the operation and evaluation of quality systems?, the government decided to call for a national quality assurance standard which was published in 1979 as BS 5750.

We now had a commercial quality assurance standard which could be applied to many different industries but was specifically aimed at the manufacturing sector. It was adopted and used extensively by many major procurement and assessment organisations throughout the UK and it became part of many major contract requirements that the supplier had to conform to BS 5750.'

 

[Marc]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Adding to Colin's post: In the US, military standards, such as they were then, go back to the US civil war. I'd have to dig up some stuff in the barn for reference, but I remember part of it was related to ammunition if I remember correctly. The ASQ cites WW II but I know it was the Civil War.

The introduction and use of "interchangeable parts" for weapons and such also very much required "standards".

From the ASQ:

The quality movement can trace its roots back to medieval Europe, where craftsmen began organizing into unions called guilds in the late 13th century.

Until the early 19th century, manufacturing in the industrialized world tended to follow this craftsmanship model. The factory system, with its emphasis on product inspection, started in Great Britain in the mid-1750s and grew into the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s.

In the early 20th century, manufacturers began to include quality processes in quality practices.

After the United States entered World War II, quality became a critical component of the war effort: Bullets manufactured in one state, for example, had to work consistently in rifles made in another. The armed forces initially inspected virtually every unit of product; then to simplify and speed up this process without compromising safety, the military began to use sampling techniques for inspection, aided by the publication of military-specification standards and training courses in Walter Shewhart’s statistical process control techniques.

See: http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/history-of-quality/overview/overview.html

As I pointed out above, however, in part how one tells the story with regard to "quality standards" depends upon ones definition of what a "quality standard" is. Standards were necessary in building the pyramids in Egypt, however one may not liken today's standards with those of the Egyptians.

 

[harry]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Also read the attachments and links in this thread: History of Quality

 

[Marc]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Good link. I forgot about that old thread.

 

[MIREGMGR]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Hundreds of years before there were organizations devoted solely to quality regulation, the usefulness of quality marks was recognized.

1. In many European countries and perhaps in other places as well, suppliers of goods and services to royalty were permitted to mark their premises and packaging, and reference in their marketing generally, that they were "Purveyors to the Queen" or whatever...the point being that they'd been chosen by responsible and knowledgeable persons as the best, and therefore could be trusted by persons with less ability to judge all the available offerings in similar depth to be of high quality and worth.

2. In many European countries and perhaps in other places as well, before the advent of mass manufacturing with its production lines and simplified operations, complex good were produced by craftsmen. Such craftsmen typically belonged to a self-governing organization...a craft or trade union...that had as its organizational location a building called a "hall". Members of that hall were permitted to place on the goods they made a "hallmark", indicating that the item in question had been made by a craftsman that had been judged by a recognized group of highly skilled masters and sometimes senior journeymen to have satisfactorily completed the apprenticeship requirements of the craft hall, and therefore the hallmarked object could be trusted by persons with less ability to judge all the available offerings in similar depth to be of high quality and worth.

The highest quality goods of all were those produced by journeymen wishing to advance to the master ranks. They would produce a special example-piece of their best work and submit it to the masters of their hall. If it passed muster they became a master; if it failed it was destroyed. These objects were marked not only with their hallmark but also as master-pieces, and commanded general respect as examples of the highest quality.

Hallmarks of course were the immediate antecedent of trademarks, applied by businesses instead of by the craftsmen they employed to indicate that the marked object met the quality standards of that business.

 

[TPMB4]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

Is the standardization of parts the same as standardization of processes in a quality assurance or just plain quality management system?

If you are looking back to standardization of product then IIRC it was a Brit who produced whole catalogues of standard sized screws, nuts, bolts, etc. in response to production issues. That was early in the industrial revolution. In my mind that is a side issue as that was not a formal management system only a series of product standards. It is undoubtedly part of it but not the whole. I guess the military standards are what I was curious about but I wondered if there was anything formal before them? Did companies have their own quality systems (written down) before any of these Mil Standards or Def Standards? Were written systems only developed as a response to military demands / requirements?

 

[PaulJSmith]

Re: Before recent Quality Standards

IIRC it was a Brit who produced whole catalogues of standard sized screws, nuts, bolts, etc. in response to production issues. That was early in the industrial revolution.

I believe that company eventually became known as Guest, Keen, and Nettlefolds, whose modern aerospace division gave me some wonderful paychecks up until about two years ago.