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QICID: 13406
Title: Quality in the 21st Century: Quality Profession Must Learn to Heed Its Own Advice
Copyright: 1999, ASQ
Author: Pyzdek, Thomas
Organization: Pyzdek Management Inc., Tucson, AZ
Subject: Professional development,Teams,Quality control (QC),Leadership,ISO 9000,History,Creativity;
Series: Quality Progress, Vol. 32, No. 6, June 1999, pp. 60-64
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Abstract: The quality profession has met many challenges in the 20th century. But it is time to think about improvement. Quality has its roots in the early 20th century growth of the middle class and the need for mass produced goods. The General Motors of Alfred P. Sloan established a multilayered bureaucracy built on concepts like top-down planning and command authority. Today's business organizations still reflect these ideas to some extent, especially in the concept of control. Control is the dominant paradigm of the quality profession, which still links itself to old philosophies and technologies. Examples of the profession's limitations include the following. The profession imposes one best way of doing things, as in ISO 9000 and the Baldrige criteria. It would be better to develop customized quality improvement strategies. Quality programs require too much of leaders. Approaches are needed that can be led by good people not only by gifted gurus. The results and payback from quality programs take too long. It would be better to develop programs that fit into short product development cycles and that do not hamper cash flow. The profession looks too much to the past, as in the popularity of the 1940's-era approach of ISO 9000. Creativity and innovation are needed, and they thrive in organizations that have redundancy, slop, and variability. Long-range planning is overrated, whereas strategic adaptation would be a better approach. Teams and other group activities are overemphasized. This is a sign of overefficiency. A more creative approach is to let individuals work on and have resources for their own special projects. This article is part of a series on the quality profession. New installments will appear monthly at the Quality Progress web site.
Number of pages: 5
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