Throughout company history, the initial attempts at quality control have been inextricably associated with inspection. Quality management is defined as the set of measures that an organization takes to ensure that its products are fault-free and meet the needs of its customers (Michel, 2010, p3). This means that before the products are released to buyers, the entire manufacturing is examined against specified standards. When the standards are not met, many corrective actions can be taken. Inspection, according to Michel (2010, p3), is not the sole way to execute quality management. As a result of human error that was realized by early manufacturers, experimentation of product took over which enables the employees to check the quality of their work. Additionally, in the past, an inspection was focused on fixing and detecting the quality failure, but unquestioning the reason for the failure. It turned out to be clear that quality management was merely one phase in the quality control programme, a stage that fed other processes of quality management composed of quality improvement, quality planning as well as quality assurance.
Quality management as an inspection was a straightforward process. However, current quality management, as an exercise, is a complex process and depends on some complicated analytical tools. Michel (2010, p4) writes that these tools of quality management include: The Taguchi loss function, quality training, quality circles, acceptance sampling, effect and cause diagrams, run charts, histograms, checklists, Pareto diagrams and scatter diagrams.
The growth of quality management concepts began from the 1930s in the United States study laboratories (Michel, 2010, p5). The 1950s and 1960s marked the peak of attention in quality management in Japan. The key individuals in the advancement of quality management comprise of Genichi Taguchi, Kaoru Ishikawa, Philip Crosby, Armand Feigenbaum, Joseph Juran, W. Edwards Deming and Walter Shewart.
References
Michel, L. (2010). Key Concepts in Operations Management: SAGE Publications Ltd
