PHILIP CROBSY

BACKGROUND

Philip Bayard Crosby, born in 1926 in Wheeling, West Virginia, joined the army and became a hospital corpsman. He graduated from the Ohio Podiatric Medicine in Cleveland. He later again joined military service and served as Marine Medical Corpsman.

In 1952, he worked for Crosley Corp as a junior electronic test technician, and in 1955 as a reliability technician and quality engineer, where he “investigated defects found by the test people and inspectors” for the Bendix Corporation. In 1957, with Martin Marietta Company, he was assigned as senior quality engineer. For eight years at MMC, Crosby built up his concepts on Zero Defects, wrote articles, and various journals in the topic and also started speaking on the topic.

In 1965, Crosby was hired by the International Telephone Telegraph (IIT) as its vice president in corporate quality. In those years Crosby interacted with “the world’s largest industrial and service companies, implementing his pragmatic management philosophy and found out it worked.”

After several years in the industry, Crosby established what he called the Crosby Quality College in Winter Park, Florida. He wrote numerous articles and authored books, among others are: Quality is Free (1979), Quality Without Tears (1984), and Completeness (1994)

PUBLICATION/S:

1. Quality is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain

“A simple guide to quality control, when managing a large plant or running a small business. This book advises on easy-to-implement programmes, using actual case histories to demonstrate how quality control works and pointing the way to success in business.”

2. Quality Without Tears: The Arts of Hassle-Free Management

“The author's objective is to show managers how to build quality into all aspects of a company's operations thereby lowering costs, increasing sales, and boosting profits and do all this without the typical bureaucratic controls and procedures that merely hassle people without producing the desired results. Real situation and amusing fictional case histories are used to demonstrate that problems of quality and hassle are caused by management action.”

3. Quality and Me: Lessons from an Evolving Life (1999)

“Hailed by Time magazine as the "leading evangelist of quality," Philip Crosby has emerged as one of the century's greatest management thinkers. Now, in this autobiography, the person most responsible for the quality revolution in American business shares the ideas and insights he's gathered over the course of an eventful, forty-year career. A talented storyteller, Crosby recounts his years as vice president of ITT, his working relationship with the legendary Harold Geneen, and the launch—and re-launch—of his own consulting practice. Quality and Me is an intimate, informative portrait of the man who changed the way quality management is practiced today.”

Other Books:

Cutting the Cost of Quality, 1967
Running Things: The Art of Making Things Happen, 1986
The Eternally Successful Organization, 1988
Let’s Talk Quality, 1989
Leading: The Art of Becoming an Executive, 1990
Completeness: Quality for the 21st Century, 1992
Reflections on Quality, 1995
Quality Is Still Free, 1996
The Absolutes of Leadership, 1997

CONTRIBUTIONS

1. Absolutes of Quality Management

Crosby’s solution to the quality crisis was to develop and promote the principle of “doing it right the first time” (DRIFT), he dissected this into four major principles:

1. Quality is conformance to requirements
2. The management system is prevention
3. The performance standard is zero defects
4. The measurement system is the cost of quality

2. Zero Defects

'Zero defects' does not mean that people never make mistakes, but that companies should not begin with 'allowances' or sub-standard targets with mistakes as an in-built expectation. Instead, work should be seen as a series of activities or processes, defined by clear requirements, carried out to produce identified outcomes.

3. 14 Quality Improvement Steps

Management Commitment: the need for quality improvement must be recognised and adopted by management, with an emphasis on the need for defect prevention. Quality improvement is equated with profit improvement. A quality policy is needed which states that '… each individual is expected to perform exactly like the requirement or cause the requirement to be officially changed to what we and the customer really need.'
Quality Improvement Team: representatives from each department or function should be brought together to form a quality improvement team. These should be people who have sufficient authority to commit the area they represent to action.
Quality Measurement: the status of quality should be determined throughout the company. This means establishing quality measures for each area of activity that are recorded to show where improvement is possible, and where corrective action is necessary. Crosby advocates delegation of this task to the people who actually do the job, so setting the stage for defect prevention on the job, where it really counts.
Cost of Quality Evaluation: the cost of quality is not an absolute performance measurement, but an indication of where the action necessary to correct a defect will result in greater profitability.
Quality Awareness: this involves, through training and the provision of visible evidence of the concern for quality improvement, making employees aware of the cost to the company of defects. Crosby stresses that this sharing process is a - or even - the - key step in his view of quality.
Corrective Action: discussion about problems will bring solutions to light and also raise other elements for improvement. People need to see that problems are being resolved on a regular basis. Corrective action should then become a habit.
Establish an Ad-hoc Committee for the Zero Defects Programme: Zero Defects is not a motivation programme - its purpose is to communicate and instil the notion that everyone should do things right first time.
Supervisor Training: all managers should undergo formal training on the 14 steps before they are implemented. A manager should understand each of the 14 steps well enough to be able to explain them to his or her people.
Zero Defects Day: it is important that the commitment to Zero Defects as the performance standard of the company makes an impact, and that everyone gets the same message in the same way. Zero Defects Day, when supervisors explain the programme to their people, should make a lasting impression as a 'new attitude' day.
Goal Setting: each supervisor gets his or her people to establish specific, measurable goals to strive for. Usually, these comprise 30-, 60-, and 90-day goals.
Error Cause Removal: employees are asked to describe, on a simple, one-page form, any problems that prevent them from carrying out error-free work. Problems should be acknowledged within twenty-four hours by the function or unit to which the problem is addressed. This constitutes a key step in building up trust, as people will begin to grow more confident that their problems will be addressed and dealt with.
Recognition: it is important to recognise those who meet their goals or perform outstanding acts with a prize or award, although this should not be in financial form. The act of recognition is what is important.
Quality Councils: the quality professionals and team-leaders should meet regularly to discuss improvements and upgrades to the quality programme.
Do It Over Again: during the course of a typical programme, lasting from 12 to18 months, turnover and change will dissipate much of the educational process.

4. Cost of Quality

Crosby makes the point that it costs money to achieve quality, but it costs more money when quality is not achieved. When an organization designs and builds an item right the first time (or provides a service without errors), quality is free. It does not cost anything above what would have already been spent. When an organization has to rework or scrap an item because of poor quality, it costs more. Crosby discusses Cost of Quality and Cost of Nonconformance or Cost of Nonquality. The intention is spend more money on preventing defects and less on inspection and rework.

5. Maturity Grid

The grid is a simple 6 x 6 matrix that shows different stages of maturity of the company’s quality management against six different quality management categories (management understanding of quality, problem handling, cost of quality, etc).

The lowest stage of maturity is called ‘Uncertainty’ – the organisation is inexperienced, quality management is a low priority and reactive, etc – then as quality management matures it goes through the stages of ‘Awakening’, ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Wisdom’, then the highest level, ‘Certainty’.

Each point – maturity versus category – on the grid has a brief description of how that combination appears in the company; for instance, in the ‘Uncertainty’ stage, Problem Handling looks like “Problems are fought as they occur; no resolution; inadequate definition; lots of yelling and accusations.”

6. Quality Vaccination Serum (from Quality Without Tears)

· Integrity for the Chief Executive Officer, all managers and all employees.

· Systems for measuring conformance, and educating all employees and suppliers so that quality, corrective action and defect prevention become routine.

Communications for identifying problems, conveying progress and recognising achievement.
Operations so that procedures, products and systems are proven before they are implemented and are then continually examined.
Policies that are clear, unambiguous and establish the primacy of quality throughout the organisation.

7. Characteristics Essential for an Organization to be Successful (from The Eternally Successful Organisation)