History of Quality Control

[little__cee]

You might not be able to use any of this, but I had a good laugh nonetheless:

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm

 

[Paul Simpson]

Thanks, I had a giggle - comes under the general heading of standards!

 

[Paul Simpson]

Thanks, Covers. You have set me going. Please have a look at the ASQ article.

http://www.asq.org/pub/sixsigma/past/vol2_issue4/ssfmv2i4folaron.pdf

 

[Wes Bucey]

Seems like you are on track for good resource material. The biggest challenge will be to aggregate the material and not be guilty of plagiarism.

 

[Randy]

History of Quality? Try this...

“If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make his work strong with the result that the house which he built collapses and so causes the death of the owner of the house ... the builder shall be put to death”

Hamorabi, Emperor of Babylon, c 1750 BC

Probably the 1st recorded quality (and safety) requirement unless the Egyptians or Chinese had something I haven't heard of.

 

[harry]

Would you agree that it goes back beyond the history of 'Man" where animals choose the best partner to mate in the hope of producing the best so as to survive in an environment where the fittest survive.

Shall we call that QC in nature! Sounds like Darwin's theory of evolution and PDCA in action.

Regards.

 

[Randy]

Yeah, it's amazing how intelligent animals are compared to stupid business owners and leaders.

 

[Paul Simpson]

Thanks again to all who have contributed. As Wes said the tough job ahead is to go thorugh all the suggestions and come up with a sensible article (Plagiarism, Wes - c'mon!). Be assured I will post here first for some constructive criticism.

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

I'm looking for information about the early days of Quality Control (pre 1970).

Interesting....

Ok, how about a timeline? Feel free to expand on this:

~1800: Just about all manufacturing is handicraft. Direct communication between Customer and supplier/operator.

1800 - 1900: Mass production becomes more common, but the methods can still be regarded as handicraft. In the year 1900 for instance, Peugeot was the biggest car manufacturer in the world with a production of appr. 2000 vehicles, all built using handicraft methods.

1900 - 1920: Mass produktion enters the scene in ernest. The car and telephone industries are good examples. Taylor, specialization, splitting tasks up in smaller components, interchangable parts,and tolerances are the buzz words of the day. The strategy is inspection. The customer is no longer in contact with the operator.

1920 - 1950: Mass production is refined. Inspection and measuring tchniques, as well as statistic methods are developed and established. The latter makes great progress during WWII. The strategy is inspection and measuring technique.

1950 - 1970: Further development of inspection and measuring technique. The concepts of Reliability and Quality control surfaces. The western strategy is heavily focused on production capability. Use of Quality Control standards take off in the US, and within NATO. Japanese companies begin to grab market shares.


/Claes

 

[Wes Bucey]

Thanks again to all who have contributed. As Wes said the tough job ahead is to go through all the suggestions and come up with a sensible article (Plagiarism, Wes - c'mon!). Be assured I will post here first for some constructive criticism.

What has happened to me and several of my colleagues still in Academia is that we find ourselves being struck by certain phrasing as we read through dozens, even hundreds of documents in our research. After months of research, we begin to write our own document. Out of hundreds of documents read, we may select only a couple of dozen to use as citations and those don't contain the phrases that still echo in our heads. When committing our own document to the written word, we inadvertently use those phrases without attribution, thus committing plagiarism. It may not be on purpose, but it is plagiarism nonetheless.

As I read through some documents posted on the web, I occasionally come across some of my own phrases used without attribution. Since there is no money involved, I don't get too excited. I am also aware of some folks who have simply cut and pasted some of my work and passed it off to their bosses as their own work. (Those folks are just pitiful and soon betray their inability to "walk the walk.")

The ones I keep my eye peeled for are the ones who publish books, plagiarizing my work or some of the work of colleagues. We don't look to the deep pockets of the direct plagiarist, but to the deep pockets of the publisher.

My point is, simply: it is easy to become an unconscious plagiarist.