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Armand V FeigenbaumRise to fameDr Armand V Feigenbaum is the originator of Total Quality Control. The first edition of his book Total Quality Control was completed whilst he was still a doctoral student at MIT. His work was discovered by the Japanese in the 1950s at about the same time as Juran visited Japan. This discovery came about firstly via his role as Head of Quality at the General Electric Company, where he had extensive contacts with such companies as Hitachi and Toshiba. Secondly, it was associated with the translation of his 1951 book: Quality Control: Principles, Practices and Administration and his articles on Total Quality Control. Feigenbaum argued for a systematic or total approach to quality, requiring the involvement of all functions in the quality process, not just manufacturing. The idea was to build in quality at an early stage, rather than inspecting and controlling quality after the fact.From 1958 to 1968 Armand Feigenbaum was worldwide Director of Manufacturing Operations and Quality Control at General Electric Company before becoming President of General Systems Company Inc. He was the founding chairman of the International Academy for Quality and is a past president of the American Society for Quality Control, which presented him with the Edwards Medal and Lancaster Award for his international contribution to quality and productivity. In 1988 he was appointed to the board of overseers of the United States Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Programme. Feigenbaum's messageIn his book Quality Control: Principles, Practices and Administration, Feigenbaum strove to move away from the then primary concern with technical methods of quality control, to quality control as a business method. Thus he emphasised the administrative viewpoint and considered human relations as a basic issue in quality control activities. Individual methods, such as statistics or preventive maintenance, are seen as only segments of a comprehensive quality control programme. Quality control itself is defined as: He stresses that quality does not mean 'best' but 'best for the customer use and selling price'. The word 'control' in quality control represents a management tool with 4 steps:
Quality control is seen as entering into all phases of the industrial production process, from customer specification and sale through design, engineering and assembly, and ending with shipment of product to a customer who is happy with it. Effective control over the factors affecting product quality is regarded as requiring controls at all important stages of the production process. These controls or jobs of quality control can be classified as:
Feigenbaum argues that statistical methods are used in an overall quality control programme whenever and wherever they may be useful. However such methods are only part of the overall administrative quality control system, they are not the system itself. The statistical point of view, however, is seen as having a profound effect upon Modern Quality Control at the concept level. Particularly, there is the recognition that variation in product quality must be constantly studied within batches of product, on processing equipment and between different lots of the same article by monitoring and critical quality characteristics. Modern Quality Control is seen by Feigenbaum as stimulating and building up operator responsibility and interest in quality. The need for quality-mindedness throughout all levels is emphasised, as is the need to 'sell' the programme to the entire plant organisation and the need for the complete support of top management. Management must recognise that it is not a temporary quality cost-reduction activity. From the human relations point of view, the quality control organisation is seen as both:
Feigenbaum's preface to the third edition of Total Quality Control in 1983 emphasises the increased importance of buyers' perceptions of variation in quality between companies and also the variation in effectiveness between the quality programmes of companies. Quality is seen as having become the single most important force leading to organisational success and company growth in national and international markets. Further, it is argued that: 'Quality is in its essence a way of managing the organisation' and that, like finance and marketing, quality has now become an essential element of modern management. Against this background, Total Quality Control is seen as providing the structure and tools for managing quality so that there is a continuous emphasis throughout the organisation on quality leadership: genuine investment in, and implementation of, modern technology for quality throughout sales, engineering and production: and top-to-bottom human commitment to quality and productivity. As Feigenbaum says: 'In effect, quality and its costs are managed and engineered and motivated throughout the organisation with the same thoroughness and depth with which successful products and services are themselves managed and engineered and produced and sold and serviced.' Such Total Quality Control programmes are highly cost-effective because of their results in improved levels of customer satisfaction, reduced operating costs, reduced operating losses and field service costs, and improved utilisation of resources. By-products such as sounder setting of time standards for labour may also be most valuable. Thus a Total Quality System is defined as: 'The agreed company-wide and plantwide operating work structure, documented in effective, integrated technical and managerial procedures, for guiding the co-ordinated actions of the people, the machines and the information of the company and plant in the best and most practical ways to assure customer quality satisfaction and economical costs of quality.' Operating quality costs are divided into:
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Feigenbaum todayThe new 40th Anniversary edition of Dr A V Feigenbaum's book, Total Quality Control, now further defines TQC for the 1990s in the form of ten crucial benchmarks for total quality success. These are that:
These are the ten benchmarks for total quality in the 1990s. They make quality a way of totally focusing the company on the customer - whether it be the end user or the man or woman at the next work station or next desk. Most importantly, they provide the company with foundation points for successful implementation of its international quality leadership. Dr Feigenbaum emphasises that there are three keys to achieving the quality competitive leadership that is so crucial in the global markets of the 1990s. First, is a clear understanding of international markets and of how people buy in these markets; second a thorough grasp of a total quality strategy that provides the business foundation for satisfying these customers; and third, the hands-on management know-how for creating the necessary company environment for quality and for establishing the stretch goals required for quality leadership. Dr Feigenbaum consistently emphasises in his work that total quality programmes are perhaps the single most powerful change agent for companies today. As a result, company management must assume the responsibility to make a uniquely important leadership contribution that is essential to the growth of their respective companies, to the growth of national economies of which they are part, and, indeed, to improved standards of life for consumers everywhere.
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