(Originally published in Quality World (IQA), October 1995)
ACHIEVING WORLD CLASS QUALITY AND RELIABILITY:
Patrick D.T. O’Connor
HOW IS WORLD CLASS QUALITY AND RELIABILITY ACHIEVED?
If we think of the industries and products that set the world standards for quality and reliability (Q&R), among the ones that are most likely to come to the minds of both the person in the street and of Q&R professionals are cars, office equipment, commercial aircraft, and electronic components. These products all exist in very competitive international markets, in which the customer has a wide choice, and innovation, improvement and performance vs. price are all essential for survival of the suppliers. We note that new generations of product give increasing performance and complexity, at lower prices and higher Q&R.
For example, modern aircraft engines are more powerful and more economic than ever, and so reliable that twin engine aircraft have been certificated for long overwater flights. Modern integrated circuits such as microprocessors, memories and signal processors contain over a million separate components and tens of metres of interconnections, yet their Q&R are so high that systems that use large quantities, such as mobile phones, computers, and the huge range of modern electronic systems are built at low cost and with very high reliability. When modern electronic systems fail the cause is very rarely the failure of one of these complex components: it is far more likely to be due to something much more mundane like a solder joint or connector.
Why should it be necessary to describe these achievements, if they are so well known? I suggest that it is necessary in order to identify and concentrate on how such levels of excellence are attained, and to contrast the methods used with those that are applied in areas that do not achieve such levels.
These and other examples of Q&R excellence are all achieved by the application of four very simple principles. These are:
1. Excellent design.
2. Excellent production.
3. Continuous improvement of design and production so that excellence is driven ever upwards.
4. The realisation that such excellence and improvement actually reduce costs, by improving development and manufacturing productivity and market share. This last principle is, of course, at the heart of the teaching of the late W.E. Deming (Reference 1).
HOW IS LOW Q&R ACHIEVED?
The corollary of the above argument must be that relatively low Q&R is achieved by lower standards of design and production, and when improvement is slow or nonexistent. It is well known to all practical engineers that it is expensive, time consuming and heartbreaking to live with or to try to improve the reliability of a product that has been poorly designed or manufactured. Reliability improvement by modifications to in-service systems is particularly difficult.
Low Q&R is the result of failures. Failures, whether they occur during production or in use, are nearly always, when analysed to determine the root causes, the results of human errors. People make mistakes in design, manufacture, maintenance and use. Such mistakes are inevitable in the context of modern engineering, because of the inherent fallibility of humans, and the complexity and uncertainty of much of the work. Applying the four basic principles of excellence described above is not easy. Therefore the first responsibility of management of Q&R must be to reduce the possibilities of human error, throughout the product cycle. Because failures are caused by people, very high Q&R can be achieved only through management policy and leadership. This is in fact the foundation of the modern approach to Q&R, used by all of the world’s best companies.
THE ALTERNATIVE WAY?
At about the same time that Deming was explaining these principles in Japan, the US Department of Defence introduced a series of military standards on quality and reliability. The quality standard was MIL-Q-9858, which laid down requirements for suppliers to have in place a quality management system, which would be audited by DOD quality experts. It was thought that this approach would provide greater assurance that quality products were delivered. It would also remove the need for government inspectors to have to inspect all delivered products. ISO9000 is the direct descendant of MIL-Q-9858: the only significant difference is the system of third party assessment, rather than assessment by the customer.
In the reliability field, as a result of the work of the DOD Advisory Group on the Reliability of Electronic Equipment (AGREE), standards were produced for reliability programme management (MIL-STD-785), reliability demonstration (MIL-STD-781), reliability prediction (MIL-HDBK-217), and other activities such as failure modes and effects analysis and testing.
These standards were widely used in defence equipment procurement, not only in the USA but throughout NATO. Their use spread beyond defence systems, and they became the models for similar standards, company procedures, textbooks and teaching worldwide. However Japan, under the influence of Deming, resisted the use of these approaches, with results that are familiar to all. It is also interesting to note that NASA, then embarking on the man in space and planetary exploration programmes, likewise deliberately avoided using the Q&R standards, and set up their own system based on the philosophy mentioned earlier.
THE DIFFERENCE
What then is the difference between the people-oriented philosophy taught by Deming, and the approach based on standards and systems? The simple, fundamental difference is that the latter approach is based upon the principles of “scientific management”, introduced by F.W. Taylor early this century (Reference 2). Scientific management teaches that people work most effectively when given specific instructions, which they must follow. It is the task of managers to produce the work instructions, and to ensure that they are followed. In effect, working people are treated in the same basic way as machines. Scientific management led to work study, demarcation of work boundaries, the mass production line, and the separation of labour and management.
It was Peter Drucker (reference 3) who exposed the error of scientific management. Drucker explained that people at work are not at all like machines. Unlike machines, people want to make contributions to how their work is planned and performed, and they want to do their jobs well. Their motivation and effectiveness are ultimately determined by the way that they are managed. In principle, there is no limit to the quality of work that people, as individuals and in teams, can produce, so that continuous improvement is a realistic objective. Drucker stressed that management’s role is not merely to encourage improvement, but to demand it.
Everything that Deming taught in Japan in the 1950’s is based upon Drucker’s philosophy. The Japanese quality circles movement, and Deming’s instructions to remove quantitative targets from people at work, in his “14 points for managers” are consistent with Drucker’s teaching. The evidence of the effectiveness of the Deming approach to managing quality and productivity is overwhelming. By contrast, there is considerable controversy regarding the costs and effectiveness of ISO9000 (for example, Reference 4).
It is particularly interesting that Drucker wrote that “the countries that would lead the world in industrial and economic development by the end of the century would be those that understood and applied the “new management” “. Despite this, much management teaching in the West is still based on Taylor’s “scientific” principles. Engineers in particular often find it difficult to break out of this mould, since we are by nature and training scientists.
THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT ON Q&R
It is clear that the “standards” approach to Q&R is based on the principles of scientific management. The ISO9000 requirement that products (and services) must be delivered according to a “system”, to which all concerned must comply, is totally in line with the “scientific” view of people at work. It neglects the fact that if people are left out of the day-to-day decisions that affect the ways that they work, they will perform in ways that are below the levels that they could achieve if given the freedom and responsibility to participate in the planning and improvement processes. It implies that work is performed better if people do what they are told in written procedures, and if their managers have “visibility” of all methods and progress. Such thinking is clearly approprite to machines, and might not be too damaging when applied to simple mechanistic human processes such as maintaining calibration records. However, it is far from being the best way to manage knowledge-based work, as Drucker explained.
Of the many damaging effects of the standards-based approach, two should be emphasised. The first is that it generates very low expectations. We are all familiar with the ballyhoo that surrounds the award of an ISO9000 certificate, with presentations by dignitaries, press announcements, and statements about commitment to quality. Yet in fact the award signifies only that a third party organisation has been paid to declare that procedures are in place and that people are following them. The question of the actual quality of the product or service is not addressed. However, the recipients of the award and their customers often believe otherwise. There is nothing in the standard that prevents or discourages high quality and reliability, and there are of course many cases where the exercise of accreditation has resulted in improved processes and products. However, as reference 4 explains, the way that the standard is implemented does not assure the achievement of high quality. The quality journey is seen as the road to ISO9000, particularly as it involves so much effort and has to be retrod every year.
The second worrying feature of the standards-based approach is the cost involved. UK industry pays £80M per year to implement ISO9000. That does not include the internal costs of management time, procedures writing, etc. A very large number of people are employed in the essentially nonproductive business of ISO9000 auditing, consulting and training. By contrast, the Deming approach costs nothing, though of course it does not provide a certificate.
The reliability standards are also based on the application of “scientific” thinking to people. An engineered system or a component has no intrinsic property of reliability, expressible for example as a failure rate. Scientifically based properties of systems and components include mass, power output, etc., and these can therefore be predicted and measured with credibility. However, whether a missile or a microcircuit fails depends upon the quality of the design, production, maintenance and use applied to it. These are human contributions, not “scientific”. Therefore standard methods and “databases” that have been developed for reliability measurement and prediction are without true scientific foundation, and are therefore not admissable in engineering.
The reliability standards similarly generate low expectations. The reliability predicted according to standards such as MIL-HDBK-217 is very much lower than can be achieved by modern systems, at lower costs of development and production than for less reliable equipment. System reliability demonstrations based on wrongful assumptions such as statistical independence of failures, constant failure rates and the inevitability of failures can only be misleading. The arguments against the unwise use of quantitative methods in reliability are stated in more detail in reference 5. In retrospect we should wonder why we ever allowed ourselves to embrace such meta-engineering.
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Total quality management (TQM) is the integration of all activities that influence the achievement of ever-higher quality. In this context quality is all-embracing, covering customer perceptions, reliability, value, etc. TQM is the philosophy that drives the quality revolution described in the first section of this paper. In the engineering companies that embrace this philosophy we do not see any demarcation between “quality” and “reliability”, in organisations or in responsibilities. The
present Q&R standards, however, and nearly all Q&R teaching, perpetuate this unhelpful division. The planned “improvements” to ISO9000, and the series of new “dependability” standards from bodies such as ISO and CENELEC continue to do so.
The BSI has produced BS7850, the UK standard on TQM, in an attempt to provide guidance on the subject. This is analogous to attempting to produce a standard on how physicists should search for new theories, or how engineers should design a new product. As reference 4 states, “the very nature of a standard is antithetical to the philosophy of TQM”.
CONCLUSIONS
Standards for Q&R almost always have the opposite effect to that intended. Costs rise, and quality and reliability are not generally improved, and never attain world class levels. Against the improvements that are claimed must be counted the high direct and indirect costs of implementation, and the fact that improvements generated are small compared with those attainable by other methods.
Therefore, we should cease to develop and use the standards that I have discussed. ISO9000 should be relegated to a guidance document to describe a minimal quality system, and the whole structure of accreditation and certification should be abandoned. The quantitative reliability standards and related documents and databases should likewise be reviewed, and should not be imposed or given “scientific” status. Work on similar standards currently underway, e.g. in ISO/IEC, should be stopped.
It is interesting to note that there is already a trend away from the standards. The European Federation for Quality Management (EFQM) has produced guidelines for achieving world class Q&R, based on self assessment and the TQM philosophy. The UK MoD has relegated MIL-HDBK-217 and other “parts count” reliability prediction methods to a non-preferred status in the 1993 update of Def Stan 00-41. The US DOD has recently instructed its project offices to cease the requirements to comply with Military Standards. To these must be added the large number of excellent suppliers, as discussed earlier, who have never used such methods but have set the world standards for the achievement of Q&R.
Engineering is based on science, so scientific principles must be applied where they are appropriate. Quality and reliability are the results of human performance, which is not governed by the laws of science. Therefore the levels of quality and reliability that are necessary today cannot be achieved by “scientific” management methods. The only, proven, way is through the “new” management. This is an art, not a science.
References:
1. W.E. Deming, Out of the Crisis, MIT University Press 1986.
2. F.W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, Harper and Row 1911.
3. P.F. Drucker, The Practice of Management, Heinemann 1955.
4. UK Science and Engineering Policy Studies Unit, UK Quality Management – Policy Options, 1994.
5. P.D.T. O’Connor, Quantifying Uncertainty in Reliability and Safety Studies, paper presented to Society of Reliability Engineers’ Symposium Arnhem 1993.
©P.D.T. O’Connor 1993
Patrick D.T. O'Connor 