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Editors note: Throughout this decade, J.M. Juran has worked on bringing together authors from around the world to chronicle the history of quality. In July, ASQC Quality Press released the sum of that work: A History of Managing for Quality. The following excerpts from the 688-page book include portions from four chapters, including Jurans concluding chapter.
J.M. Juran has edited a far-ranging book that studies qualitys worldwide evolution, trends, and future.
An empire of builders
The Romans developed highly sophisticated techniques, such as territorial surveying, division, and mapping. They used these to master the rural and urban lands incorporated into the empire. They developed quality standards, measurement methods, and tools. They employed sophisticated customer-supplier relationships to increase production. The execution of large construction projects required effective working relationships among the various parties as well as effective processes for producing the individual buildings and other structures. The administration of urban life and living conditions involved the balancing of needs for urban administration with requirements of the social hierarchy. In doing so, political considerations often dominated juridical considerations. Thus, aims common to the individual building yards or to the development of a particular technique were influenced by the wider context.
from the types of standards that later emerged in modern industrial processes. The Romans, however, came very close to matching those modern standards in their work in territorial planning and in various aspects of construction. Standardization was achieved in many fields. The first was units of measurement. A uniform measurement system was adopted throughout the empire. Its importance can be seen in land surveying, in construction work, and in stone quarrying. This achievement led to the development of highprecision instruments, the acquisition of technical skills, and the emergence of measurement as a specific component of the production process. A second example was size normalization for mass production of bricks and lead pipes to meet the growing demand for reliable and inexpensive building materials. The quality of bricks reached such a high level that they were considered more reliable than stone. A morphological normalization also developed to facilitate the use of certain architectural structures and construction techniques. Finally, a sort of housing standard existed with the building regulations that we know were in force at least from the time of Augustus. The Augustan period, during which the last republican political structures disappeared as imperial power achieved official status, is in fact a very important point in the history of Rome. It was after Augustus, for example, that mass brick production spread and the gradual move toward the imperial monopoly of the third century began. It was during the Julian-Claudian age, too, that masonry bridges began to replace boat bridges, and it became the rule rather than the exception to pave the major roads. Work on the majority of the monumental buildings, whose impressive ruins became centers of attraction for artists and tourists from the Renaissance to the present, also began at this time.
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Manufacturing bricks
The potteries were located on the estates of large landowners, generally close to waterways for ease of transportation, which would have been extremely arduous by road. Production was regulated by a locatio-condutio, a contract under which the owner supplied the raw material and the equipment, and the contractor undertook to produce a certain number of bricks and to supply the necessary manpower. Many shop foremen were slaves and freedmen, whose pecuniary obligations toward the landowner made them suitable candidates for running the potteries on a subcontract basis. This created a process of social mobility: With his earnings the slave acquired his freedom, after which he could stipulate other contracts. The pottery owners, many of whom were women, were often great landowners from one of the powerful families, who took no direct part in overseeing the production process (a function generally assigned to agents, proxies, administrators, and so on), but whose social position was of the utmost importance when selling the bricks. Toward the end of the second century, the names of the emperor or his family appeared increasingly frequently among the names of pottery owners. The imperial monopoly was actually achieved in the third century, through confiscations and bequests, making the control of brick production one of the elements of the increasing wealth of the emperors. The quality of a brick was specified in terms of its durability and the precision of its dimensions, anddepending on its composition and bakingcould be assessed by an expert eye from its weathering and the color acquired over the years. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a first century B.C. Roman architect and author, notes, Unfortunately it is impossible to assess the quality of baked bricks beforehand. They have to be laid: if they are of good quality they will withstand storms and the heat of the summer; but if they have been made from unsuitable clay or if they have been insufficiently baked, then they will reveal their defects. Therefore it is best to build roofs from old tiles; then the walls too will certainly be solid. This quality assessment, where the craftsman depended on the experience of his eye, was of prime importance in the process of quality management. In fact, old bricks were often called tegulae (tiles), because their greater exposure to atmospheric agents meant they had weathered better and were more reliable.
(tectores for ceilings and gypsiarii for the walls), lapidarii for marble decorations, tassellarii for floor laying, and musivarii for mosaic laying. Important roles were played in the building yard by the mensores aedificiorum, mechanici, and geometrae, all of whom were skilled in surveying operations. But the outstanding figures, particularly for public works or major urban works, were the machinatores and architectithe engineers and architects. Stone was handled by stone cutters and chiselers (lapicidinarii) and, for more refined works, by sculptors (marmorarii) and inlayers (sectores serrarii). Because the quarried blocks had to be dressed with the utmost precision, we know that measuring instruments were constantly used in quarrying work. The setsman used a regula, a 1-foot-long ruler marked off with all its submultiples, which were generalized under the empire. Setsmen also used bronze squares, bevel rules (T-bevels), and the plumb rule (libella cum perpendiculo), an instrument used to check that a surface was perfectly horizontal.
During the long history of clock making there has been continuing growth in precision of timekeeping. This growth, initially slow, later faster and faster, is the result of numerous improvements derived from multiple sources: a few great inventions; discovery of the underlying laws of stress and strain; a steady increase in craftsmanship; and incremental improvement in construction processes. Collectively these and other improvements have increased the precision of timekeeping by over 10 orders of magnitude during the current millennium. The chief quality feature of clocks is precisionprecision of timekeeping. There are also other quality features. Clocks may serve as a public spectacle and a source of pride to the community. They may serve as a piece of jewelry that incidentally is able to keep time.
led out. Greek and Roman writings seem to indicate that it was used for limiting the length of speeches, which resembles the use of the still well-known hourglass. Clepsydras are very old in Egypt and Babylon they were in use from at least the 16th century B.C. The earliest surviving Egyptian one dates from circa 1400 B.C. In the course of the ages, the clepsydra developed into a quite complicated clock. Ctesibios of Alexandria (300-270 B.C.) is known for his work on advanced and complicated clepsydras. 4 He used the feedback principle to obtain a constant water flow rate, and he might have been the inventor of the rack and pinion driving the hour hand. 5 Vitruvius, writing about Ctesibios, mentions toothed racks and drums causing various motions that in turn move figures, cause balls to fall, trumpets to sound, and so on. 6 Archimedes designed a water clock that indicated time in three ways: a metal ball dropped every hour from a birds beak onto a bell, the irises of the eyes of a human face changed color every hour, and rings were continuously moved along pillars with hour divisions on them. 7 Furthermore, he applied a worm and worm-wheel and a hypoid transmission in his clock, and he introduced a means of regulating the speed of the constant rate of flow of the water.8 The clepsydra given by Haroun el Raschid, king of Persia, to Charlemagne in 807 A.D. is well known. 9 Every hour another little door opened and let through a number of balls, which dropped on a bell in order to strike the hour. At 12 noon or 12 midnight, 12 miniature horsemen appeared and closed the 12 doors. The timekeeping accuracy of clepsydras was rather low, one of the causes being that the viscosity of water changes considerably with the temperature. But there was no need for high accuracy in those times. The length of the hour differed with the daily duration of light and dark, and the clepsydras were constructed and adjusted to indicate such differing hours. A great step forward was the invention of the mechanical, weight-driven (later spring-driven) clock. It was so successful that in medieval Europe it pushed the clepsydra aside. It could now indicate equal hours throughout the year, thus marking the beginning of our present notion of time. 10
References
1. Ludvig Borchardt, Die alte gyptische Zeitmessung ( Die Geschichte der Zeitmessung, ed. E.V. Bassermann-Jordan, Bd I.1g.B), Berlin & Leipzig, 1920. 2. Histories II, 109.3. tr. A.D. Godley. 3. Sharon L. Gibbs, Greek and Roman Sun-dials, New Haven, London, 1933. 4. A.G. Drachmann, Ktesibios, Philon and Heron, Acta Historica Scientiarum Naturalium et Medicinalium IV (1948). 5. A. Wegener Sleeswijk, De waterklok van Archimedes, Histechnicon, jrg 16, Sept. 1990, 5-15. 6. Vitruvius Waywiser, Archives Internationales dHistoire des Sciences 29 (1979); and Plinius (Pliny) Historia Naturalis VII. 7. D.R. Hill, On the construction of waterclocks, Kitb Arshimdas fiamal al-binkamt, London (1976); and B. Carra de Vaux, Notice sur deux manuscrits arabes, Journal Asiatique 8, srie 17 (1891). 8. Sleeswijk, De waterklok. 9. Willis I. Milham, Time and Timekeepers, New York (1947). 10. M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England, 10661307, Oxford, 1979.
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This trend toward the supervision of the manufacturing process applied also to weapons used by the army. In 1765, Jean-Baptiste Wacquette de Gribeauval appointed to each factory an artillery officer whose job it was to supervise the manufacture of war material from the very start of the manufacturing process. The officer did not depend on the arsenal because he reported directly to the director general of forges.
Choosing suppliers
The major reference in this area is a famous letter that Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), fortifications commissioner, addressed in 1685 to his minister, Mr. Louvois. This eight-page letter concerning public markets underlined the importance of the choice of suppliers in order to obtain a quality construction. As a military architect, Vauban insisted particularly on the fact that cheapness should not be the sole selection criterion, as such a selection process in the long run ended up by being more expensive: There still remains a number of buildings of previous years which are not yet terminated, and which shall never be, if we are to believe the builders. All this is due, Monseigneur, to the confusion caused by the frequent reductions in price which are attributed in your construction contracts. It is a fact that all the broken contracts, agreements not kept, and renewal of adjudications only attract the people who know nothing about the business, rogues and ignoramuses as contractors, while those who know what they are doing do not even attempt to sign such contracts. I say that in addition they increase the price and delay the construction of the buildings which is thereby much worse. 1 The last sentence of this text already mentions the three parameters that should be taken into account to make a quality product: delay, cost, and performance. The end of Vaubans letter is clear: This should suffice, Monseigneur, for you to see the inconveniences of this way of doing business; stop now, and in the name of God reestablish the notion of good faith; pay the correct price for a construction and do not deny an honest salary to an entrepreneur who is doing his work correctly. It will always in the long run be the cheapest deal you could make. The army was interested not only in having dependable suppliers, but also in the raw materials it bought from them, as can be seen from Article 3 of Louis XIVs decree, which specifies the task of the naval commissioners in charge of receiving the wood for naval construction.
ority effective. Most upper managers decided to avoid making managing for quality yet another semiautonomous function. Instead, they opted to make managing for quality a part of managing the business. The emerging method for doing this is often called strategic quality planning (SQP). The Japanese term is jishu kanri. The concept of SQP follows closely the approach long used in managing for finance. The application to quality involves the following: The business plan is enlarged to include goals for quality. These goals are deployed to lower levels in order to determine the resources needed, agree on the actions to be taken, and fix responsibility for taking the actions. Measures are developed to permit evaluation of progress against the goals. Managers, including upper managers, review progress regularly. The reward system is revised to give appropriate weight to meeting the quality goals. Application of SQP in the West is quite newit did not emerge noticeably until the 1980s. The parallel to managing for finance has appealed to upper managers. The likelihood is that SQP will emerge as the dominant approach toward making managing for quality a part of managing the business.
Reference
1. Letter from Vauban to Louvois, dated 1 September 1685.
ity initiative. Such has been the conclusion from study of what happened in those companies that did attain such leadership. In every case the upper managers took charge. They did not just make the speeches and then delegate all else to subordinates. Instead, they personally carried out certain nondelegable roles: Serve on the quality council. Establish the quality goals. Provide the needed resources. Provide quality-oriented training. Stimulate quality improvement. Review progress. Give recognition. Revise the reward system. It should be emphasized that these roles are nondelegable they must be carried out by the upper managers, personally. 1
quality vs. financial results. Standardized reports will evolve to provide a summary of the quality achievement record of companies as well as their current status. Financial analysts will use achievements in quality as inputs for rating creditworthiness as well as for judging the financial potential of companies. National, industry, and other quality indexes will be evolved, paralleling those already available on productivity, prices, and so on. Degree-granting colleges oriented to quality will proliferate among universities, business schools, and engineering schools. (This movement became evident during the 1980s.) The K-12 schools (kindergarten through 12th grade) will evolve courses relating to managing for quality. (Here again, a trend was already evident during the early 1990s.) With the emergence of college faculties oriented to quality, research will intensify. This will produce standardized terminology, a consensus on how to divide up the subject, and so on. Professionalism among quality specialists will grow. This has already happened at the technical level (quality engineers, reliability engineers) but not at the business level. There will be national examinations for the right to use the resulting broad professional title whose name has yet to be invented. Comparable titles in other fields include professional engineer, CPA, and so on. A corresponding title in the quality field might be professional qualitist or certified public qualitist. (We need to find or coin a new generic term to describe someone active in the quality field, paralleling generic terms such as accountant, engineer, and economist.) It is conceivable that future laws will extend the use of licensing in the quality field, on the ground of protecting the public interest. Licensing is already widely required for technician jobs that involve risks to human safety and health or to the environment. Examples include laboratory technicians in hospitals or welders in the aircraft and nuclear industries.
Reference
1. J.M. Juran, Made in USA, a Renaissance in Quality, Harvard Business Review, July-August 1993. A History of Managing for Quality (order number H0876) is available through Quality Press for $36 (ASQC member price) or $40 (list price). To place an order, call ASQCs Customer Service Department, 800-248-1946 or (414) 272-8575.
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