Philip B. Crosby

Quality Control Guru

ByMichael Roberts

Joe PratherBlas Tenorio

Andrew PetersonAndrew Sizelove

Summary

• History

• Philosophy

• Acknowledgements

• Case Study

History

• Was born in Wheeling, West Virginia on June 18, 1926• Crosby is a graduate of the Western Reserve University • One early experience was as quality manager on the first

Pershing missile programme • Crosby began his career as a quality professional in

1952 after serving in World War II and the Korea War. • Crosby was the corporate Vice president for the

international Telephone Telegraph, world-wide responsibilities for quality .

History

• 1979, he founded Winter Park-based Philip Crosby Associates, Inc. Helped to counsel organization and corporations prevent problems rather than fix them, through quality processes.

• In 1991, he retired from PCA and founded Career IV, Inc., provided training for executives

• In 1997, he purchased the assets of PCA and established Philip Crosby Associates II, Inc. http://www.philipcrosby.com/pca/index.html

History

• Crosby wrote 13 books, all of which were best-sellers.

• Quality is Free, Quality Without Tears, Running Things, The Eternally Successful Organization and Leading: The Art of Becoming An Executive, Zero Defects,

• His first business book, Quality is Free has been credited with beginning the quality revolution in the US and Europe. It sold over 2.5 million copies and was translated into 15 languages.

• He is the creator of the “zero defects” concept of quality management.

Crosby

Quality is not only free, it’s an honest to everything profit maker. Every penny you don’t spend on doing things wrong, over, or instead of, becomes half a penny right on the bottom line. In these days of “Who knows what is going to happen to our business tomorrow,” there aren’t many ways to make a profit improvement. If you concentrate on making quality certain, you can probably increase your profit by an amount equal to 5% to 10% of you sales. That’s a lot of money for free.

• Crosby advocated the "zero-defects" program adopted by the US federal government defining quality as "conformance to requirements". He emphasized prevention rather than inspection (audits) and promoted a definition of quality as "meeting the customers requirements the first time and every time"

Crosby's Quality Improvement Process is based upon the...

Four Absolutes of Quality Management:• 1. Quality is defined as conformance to

requirements, not as 'goodness' nor 'elegance'. • 2. The system for causing quality is prevention,

not appraisal. • 3. The performance standard must be Zero

Defects, not 'that's close enough'. • 4. The measurement of quality is the Price of

Non-conformance, not indices. http://www.simplesystemsintl.com/quality_gurus/

P_B_Crosby.htm#23

TQMTotal Quality Management (TQM) is a participative management style that stresses total staff commitment to "customer" satisfaction. It is a holistic approach to managing complex organizations and replaces top-down management with decentralized customer-driven decision making. Total Quality Management is an integrated management system for creating and implementing a continuous improvement process -- eventually producing results that exceed customer expectations. It is based on the assumption that 90 percent of problems are a result of process, not employees.

TQM page 2

• The development of TQM can be traced to several consultants including Deming, Juran and Crosby. TQM is a process and strategy that in certain situations can improve an organization's effectiveness and efficiency.

TQM page 3

• TQM places responsibility for quality problems with management rather than on the workers. A principal concept of TQM is the management of process variation which seeks to identify special and common needs. The objective of TQM is the continual improvement of processes, achieved through a shift in focus from outcomes (or products) to the processes that produce them. TQM achieves its objective through data collection and analysis, flow charts, cause and effect diagrams, and other tools which are used to understand and improve processes.

Crosby’s PhilosophyThe 5 Absolutes of Quality

1. Quality is defined as conformance to requirements, not as ‘elegance’ or ‘goodness’

2. There is no such thing as a “quality problem”

3. It is always cheaper to do it right the first time

4. The only performance measure is the cost of quality

5. The only performance standard is zero defects

14 Steps to Improvement1. Establish management commitment2. Form a quality team3. Establish quality measures for each activity4. Evaluate cost of quality and indicate where corrective actions will lead

to profit gains5. Create awareness in employees by training supervisors with

appropriate materials6. Instigate action by encouraging employees to fix defects or ntify

someoine who can fix them7. Designate a committee to find how to implement zero defects

program8. Train employees and supervisors so they understand the steps9. Hold a “ZD” day to demonstrate company commitment10. Employees set goals on a 30, 60 or 90 day schedule11. Identify the causes of errors and remove them from processes12. Initiate award programs to award employees who meet their goals13. Establish Quality Councils and hold regular meetings14. Do it all over again.

Strengths

• Approach is very clear and creative, and is supported by several tools that are easy to grasp

• Emphasizes worker participation (not just management), worker recognition

• Strong motivator

• Leadership

Weaknesses

• Considered by some to be gimmicky• Can be conceived as putting the blame on

workers, which may lead to negative attitudes• can mislead supervisors to think they have little

impact • 14 step plan is criticized for being too

management and goal oriented • “Zero Defects” can be misleading• Requires the organization to accept and

welcome changes

Crosby Acknowledgements•Vice President, Quality at International

Telephone & Telegraph (ITT)

•Philip B. Crosby has written numerous books on quality management and has had many

years of experience in this field. He is considered to be a leading Guru in quality

management. His systems have been successfully introduced in many

organizations, e.g. at ITT which saved $720 million as a result of implementing his quality process program, and at HPA Corporation

Appliance Division.

•Established Crosby College to train business people about his version of Quality.

•Famous for coining expression such as "zero defects" and "do it right the first time"

•Crosby has synthesized his views on Quality in a 14-point declaration.

•Strongly humanistic in his views, Crosby tells us that we should "always assume that people are vitally interested in the quality improvement

process"

•He then assures us that people will act to fulfill our conviction. "Assume the best and that is usually what happens" he encourages us.

Crosby Acknowledgements (cont)

• Phillip Crosby has also played an important role in popularizing the quality approach. He developed what was named the Quality College in 1980, where an estimated five million people eve attended courses

(Lewis and Smith 1994).

• More than 40 years as the developer and innovator of the principles of Quality Management

• He is considered the Father of “Zero Defects”.

• Some of Crosby’s own proverbs about quality are:1. Supervisors are always right. The supervised are always wrong,

even when they’re right. 2.When only a few know, nothing will ever get finished.

3.There’s nothing like a serious illness to stimulate the creative process.

Crosby Acknowledgements (cont)

•Crosby’s book “Quality is Free” has been written with the intention of convincing the reader that quality can be achieved with time, patience, hard

work, determination and putting the right systems in place. 

•Crosby considers himself to be a professional manager who communicates through writing and other means.

 •Throughout this book he explains that total quality management (TQM) is one of the most important ways of increasing the bottom line (profits) of a company and that a company’s target in quality should be to achieve Zero

Defects. 

•In the first part of his book, Making Quality Certain, he dealt with the aspect of people’s (particularly top management) paradigms in relation to quality

and communicating with them so that these can be altered.

Crosby Acknowledgements (cont)

• Crosby’s concept was developed to help managers of small businesses or large organizations see how well quality control can

work. 

• The Quality Management Maturity Grid is used so that we know where our organization is at and as a means to move from disbelief

and doubt to the conviction that quality is imperative to the success of our organization

• The three systems used by Crosby in his quality program are:1. Quality Management Maturity Grid - measures present

systems and pinpoints areas needing improvements 2. Quality Improvement Program - a fourteen-step procedure

that was established through his work at the ITT Corporation 3. Make Certain Program - a person-to-person, white-collar-

oriented improvement program to prevent defects

Crosby Acknowledgements (cont)

• Crosby states that, when establishing a quality improvement process, the requirements would be:

• Management participation

• Establishment of a professional quality team

• Quality improvement through prevention of defects

• Empowerment of all staff and recognition of all involved in this achievement

Crosby Acknowledgements (cont)

Nelson Nameplate Co.

• Location: Los Angeles, CA• Employment: Over 300• Industry: Nameplates,

graphic overlays

Company Motto

“Every employee of the company must have a complete education in the understanding of quality and what it means to him or her and the company”

QIP

• Quality Improvement Process was begun in 1990 based on Crosby’s concepts

• Why QIP?– Appraisal-based Prevention/continuous

improvement based quality system

ECR

• Error Cause Removal System

• Any employee can identify and easily report:

• Problems

• Errors

• Waste

• Opportunity

• Other concerns

Impact of QIP Over the Past Decade

• Revenue tripled• Cost of quality decreased from 30% to 18% of

sales• Employee turnover dropped fourfold

– Average employment period is now over 10 years

• Increased business for suppliers• Enabled Nelson to move to a state-of-the-art

117,000 square foot facility in the fall of 1999.

Nelson Today

• ISO 9002 certified• AS 9100 (pursuing)• QIP leaders changed every

two years• Open book management• Profit sharing based on team

performance

Any Questions???