Do It Right Segunda TimeQuality

Quality management has been around for many years, and many aspects of it are timeless. Reading the first edition of this book illustrates that truth very powerfully. In this second edition, I have captured many of the developments of the intervening years since the first edition. The initiatives that have gained the most attention are, of course, Six Sigma and lean. Six Sigma was developed and promoted primarily by Motorola and then by GE; lean was the child of Toyota.

Ishikawa pointed out that for successful implementation of quality management, between five and seven tools are needed. This book points you to those tools such as mapping, the measurement check sheet, and the basic tools of problema solving.

At the same time, there have been other advances in quality management, such as in ISO 9000, which has moved forward from its “down in the weeds” quality assurance thinking of the 1990s to system thinking in the new millennium. Six Sigma has been attractive to large corporations, as it has enabled them to show short-term cost savings related to a given process. However, remember the words of W. Edwards Deming: “90% of the problems on a process are caused by the system in which the process operates.” ISO 9000 has brought us this system thinking.

Many years later, when I was going through a period of huge turmoil, I met a passionate Welsh mystic named James Angove. In one of our conversations, I jokingly commented that my family had progressed downward, from grandfather being a full-time minister of the church, to my father being a part-time minister of the church, to myself, who, although I held strong beliefs, rarely, if ever, attended church. I had become a fulltime practitioner of quality management.

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