Quality and IT Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Quality and IT Management - Essay Example 2. Role of Quality Gurus Some of the most famous quality gurus include Armand Feigenbaum, Edwards Deming, Philip Crosby, Kaoru Ishikawa, Genichi Taguchi, and Shigeo Shingo (Beckford 2002, p. 54). All of these gurus brought different concepts of quality which not only helped the companies achieve competitive advantage in the past but also provide appropriate directions towards success to the companies belonging to the present world. We can take example of Masaaki Imai who came up with the concept of Kaizen in 1986, which led Japan’s way to huge success in the field of technological development. Kaizen is an umbrella, which includes all Japanese practices related to quality management. Imai focused on continuous improvement in all departments of a company. Shigeo Shingo was a Japanese quality guru who focused on zero quality control and brought the concept of Poka-Yoke which means to identify the errors before they become some real defects. Kaoru Ishikawa was another Japanese qu ality guru who also believed in some other concepts other than just provision of quality products to the customers. He focused on after sales service, company and the customers, and quality of the management. One of the main teachings of all quality gurus was quality control, which means to ensure quality in all stages of a product development. In the engineering domain, quality control results in accepting or rejecting a manufactured product (Unhelkar 2003, p. 303). In the view of quality gurus, the process of quality control includes certain actions which are necessary for the control and verification of required characteristics of any product or services provided by a company. Fryman (2002, p. 6) found that the main purpose of quality control is to eliminate all factors which can result in unsatisfactory product performance. Along with quality control, some American quality gurus, such as, Dr. Joseph Juran and Dr. W. Edwards Deming also focused on quality management that leads a company’s way towards success. The primary objective of quality management is to increase customer satisfaction with the company’s products and services. Deming’s quality cycle comprised of some key steps, which included Plan, Do, Study, and Act. Deming focused on bringing improvements in quality of products and services by reducing the elements of variability and uncertainty in design and features of the products and services. On the other hand, Juran believed in the philosophy of ‘fitness for use’ and advocated the use of ‘quality cost measurement’. Philip Crosby was a Western American quality guru who believed in the concept of ‘conformance to requirements’. Crosby came up with four main concepts related to quality management. The first one was that quality is not goodness or elegance rather it is conformance to the requirements of the customers. The second concept was that the system for creating quality has nothing to do with appraisal rather it is concerned with prevention. Third concept was the zero defects standard of quality whereas the fourth concept was that measurement of quality should be the price of nonconformance. Crosby focused on reducing the manufacturing expenses by doping things right at the first time instead of correcting them. In the past, the teachings of quality gurus really helped companies become more competitive in nature, lower the product manufacturing costs, improve