Philip B Crosby
Philip Crosby is a particularly well-marketed and charismatic Quality Guru. An article in the Financial Times a few years ago described him thus:
'Florida has provided him with a year-round tan. That, and his thinning golden hair and snappy dress give him the look of a sunbelt Senator rather than a man from the quality department. He does have a campaign button in his lapel. It says ZD, of course, for Zero Defects.'
Rise to fame
Crosby is a graduate of the Western Reserve University. After naval service in the Korean War, he held a variety of quality control jobs starting as line inspector. One early experience was as quality manager on the first Pershing missile programme. He worked his way up within ITT and for fourteen years he was a Corporate Vice President and Director Quality of ITT, with world-wide responsibilities for quality.
In 1979 he published Quality is Free, which became a bestseller. In response to the interest shown in the book, he left ITT that year to set up Philip Crosby Associates Incorporated. At the Quality College established in Florida he started to teach organizations how to manage quality as advocated in his book.
Crosby published his second bestseller, Quality Without Tears in 1984, and he is also the author of The Art of Getting Your Own Sweet Way. More recently he has published a group of three management books, Running Things, The Eternally Successful Organization and Leading: The Art of Becoming An Executive.
Crosby's message
Crosby's name is perhaps best known in relation to the concepts of Do It Right First Time and Zero Defects. He considers traditional quality control, acceptable quality limits and waivers of sub-standard products to represent failure rather than assurance of success. Crosby therefore defines quality as conformance to the requirements which the company itself has established for its products based directly on its customers' needs. He believes that since most companies have organizations and systems that allow (and even encourage) deviation from what is really required, manufacturing companies spend around 20% of revenues doing things wrong and doing them over again. According to Crosby this can be 35% of operating expenses for service companies.
He does not believe that workers should take prime responsibility for poor quality; the reality, he says, is that you have to get management straight. In the Crosby scheme of things, management sets the tone on quality and workers follow their example; whilst employees are involved in operational difficulties and draw them to management's attention, the initiative comes from the top.
What zero defect means is not that people never make mistakes, he says, but that the company does not start out expecting them to make mistakes.
As indicated earlier, not everyone agrees with this approach to quality. As Crosby himself said:
'I never received any encouragement from the quality establishment. These are ideas whose time has come. This was an idea whose time had come, but it took 20 years d it.' before people realise
In the Crosby approach the Quality Improvement message is spread by creating a core of quality specialists within the company. There is strong emphasis on the top-down approach, since he believes, without reservation, that senior management is entirely responsible for quality.
His goal is to give all staff the training and the tools of quality improvement, to apply the basis precept of Prevention Management in every area. This is aided by viewing all work as a process or series of actions conducted to produce a desired result. A process model can be used to ensure clear requirements have been defined and understood by both the supplier and the customer. He also views quality improvement as an ongoing process since the word 'programme' implies a temporary situation.
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.
The Fourteen Steps to Quality Improvement are the way that the Quality Improvement Process is implemented in an organization. They are a management tool which evolved out of a conviction that the Absolutes should be defined, understood, and communicated in a practical manner to every member of the organization:
1. Make it clear that management is committed to quality.
2. Form quality improvement teams with senior representatives from each department.
3. Measure processes to determine where current and potential quality problems lie.
4. Evaluate the cost of quality and explain its use as a management tool.
5. Raise the quality awareness and personal concern of all employees.
6. Take actions to correct problems identified through previous steps.
7. Establish progress monitoring for the improvement process.
8. Train supervisors to actively carry out their part of the quality improvement programme.
9. Hold a Zero Defects Day to let everyone realise that there has been a change and to reaffirm management commitment.
10. Encourage individuals to establish improvement goals for themselves and their groups.
11. Encourage employees to communicate to management the obstacles they face in attaining their improvement goals.
12. Recognise and appreciate those who participate.
13. Establish quality councils to communicate on a regular basis.
14. Do it all over again to emphasise that the quality improvement programme never ends.
In Quality is Free, Crosby identifies additional quality-building tools, including the Quality Management Maturity Grid which enables a company to measure its present quality position. In Quality Without Tears he develops the Quality Vaccine which comprises twenty one ingredients for Executives to use to support the implementation process.
As his books on leadership reflected his broadening approach to improvement, he defined five new characteristics essential to becoming an Eternally Successful Organization:
1. People routinely do things right the first time.
2. Change is anticipated and used to advantage.
3. Growth is consistent and profitable.
4. New products and services appear when needed.
5. Everyone is happy to work there.
