It’s sometimes referred to as a housekeeping methodology, however this characterization can be misleading, as workplace organization goes beyond housekeeping.

The 5S’s are

Seiri or  Sorting: Going through all the tools, materials, all stuff, in the  work area and keeping only essential items. Everything else is stored or discarded.

Seiton or Straighten or Set in Order: Focuses on efficiency. When we translate this to “Straighten or Set in Order”, it sounds like more sorting or sweeping, but the intent is to arrange the tools, equipment and parts in a manner that promotes work flow.  For every thing there should be place and every thing should be in its place. (Labeling of place.)

Seis? or  Sweeping or Shining or Cleanliness: Systematic Cleaning or the need to keep the workplace clean as well as neat. At the end of each shift or period of time, the work area is cleaned up and everything is restored to its place. This makes it easy to know what goes where and have confidence that everything is where it should be. The key point is that maintaining cleanliness should be part of the daily work – not an occasional activity initiated when things get too messy.

Seiketsu or  Standardizing: Standardized work practices or operating in a consistent and standardized fashion. Everyone knows exactly what his or her responsibilities are.

Shitsuke or Sustaining the discipline: Refers to maintaining and reviewing standards. Once the previous 4S’s have been established, they become the new way to operate. Maintain the focus on this new way of operating, and do not allow a gradual decline back to the old ways of operating. However, when an issue arises such as a suggested improvement, a new way of working, a new tool or a new output requirement, then a review of the first 4S’s is appropriate.

In fact, 5S can apply to anything, not only shop floors and manufacturing facilities. They are so simple but yet insightful that you can use them for organizing your folders in PC or Email, your car, or your kitchen!

An example of 5S in TOYOTA Japan

Toyota Plant in Japan

Resources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S
• http://www.destinationinfinity.blogspot.com/2009/03/japanese-concept-of-5s.html

Kaizen - Continuous Improvement

In Quality Management, Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement for all functions of a business, from manufacturing to management involving everyone at all levels in the organization. Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses during the country’s recovery after World War II and has since spread to businesses throughout the world. Kaizen has been proven effective in a number of major Japanese and Western companies, and many large organization in America and Europe are adopting the Kaizen.

Unlike many Western management techniques, which treat employees as numbers to be crunched for maximum efficiency, kaizen takes the opposite outlook, proposing essentially that a happy employee is a productive employee.

The foundation of the Kaizen method consists of 5 elements:

1. Teamwork: A strong company is a company that pulls together everyone in every level. Kaizen aims to help employee and management look at themselves as members of a team, rather than competitors.
2. Personal Discipline: A team cannot succeed without each member commitment to personal discipline and everyone ensures that the team will remain strong.
3. Improved morale: Strong morale among the workforce is a crucial step to achieving long-term efficiency and productivity, and Kaizen sets it as a foundational task to keep constant contact with employee morale.
4. Quality circles: Groups which meet to discuss quality levels concerning all aspects of a company’s process.
5. Suggestions for improvement: By requesting feedback from each member of the team, the management ensures that all problems are looked at and addressed before they become significant.

In addition to the foundations, there are three key factors in Kaizen:

1. Elimination all the waste (muda) and inefficiency
2. Kaizen five-S framework for good housekeeping
   • Seiri – tidiness
   • Seiton – orderliness
   • Seiso – cleanliness
   • Seiketsu – standardized clean-up
   • Shitsuke – discipline
3. Standardization: standardizing as many aspects of the organization as is possible and by improving standardized activities and processes, Kaizen aims to eliminate waste.

Video about What is Kaizen on Youtube

Learn the concept of Kaizen from this video.

Resources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen
• http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/mgmt_kaizen_main.html

TQM has been widely used in all different organization, manufacturing, education,  government, service industries, as well as NASA space and science programs.

In a TQM effort, all members of an organization participate in improving processes, products, services and the culture in which they work.

The methods for implementing this approach come from the teachings of such quality leaders as Philip B. Crosby, W. Edwards Deming, Armand V. Feigenbaum, Kaoru Ishikawa and Joseph M. Juran.

A core concept in implementing Total Quality Management – TQM is Deming’s 14 points, a set of management practices to help companies increase their quality and productivity:

1. Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.
2. Adopt the new philosophy.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
4. End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimize total cost by working with a single supplier.
5. Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Adopt and institute leadership.
8. Drive out fear.
9. Break down barriers between staff areas.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
11. Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
14. Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.

In Japan, Total Quality Management – TQM comprises four process steps;

1. Kaizen– Focuses on “Continuous Process Improvement”
2. Atarimae Hinshitsu – The idea that “things will work as they are supposed to”
3. Kansei – Examining the way the user applies the product leads to improvement in the product itself.
4. Miryokuteki Hinshitsu – The idea that “things should have an aesthetic quality”

Total Quality Management – TQM started to appear in the 1980s and there are two theories of its origin:

1. One theory is that Total Quality Management – TQM was created as a misinterpretation from Japanese to English since no difference exists between the words “control” and “management” in Japanese. According to William Golomski (American quality scholar and consultant, 1924-2002) TQM was first mentioned by Koji Kobayashi at NEC (Nippon Electrical Company) in his speech when he received the Deming Prize in 1974.
2. The American Society for Quality says that the term Total Quality Management – TQM was used by the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command in 1984 to describe its Japanese-style management approach to quality improvement since they did not like the word control in Total Quality Control. The word management should then have been suggested by one of the employees, Nancy Warren. This is consistent with the story that the United States Navy Personnel Research and Development Center began researching the use of statistical process control (SPC), the work of Juran, Crosby, and Ishikawa, and the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming to make performance improvements in 1984. This approach was first tested at the North Island Naval Aviation Depot.

The term “Total Quality Management – TQM” has lost favor in the United States in recent years: “Quality Management – QM” is commonly substituted. “Total Quality Management – TQM” however, is still used extensively in Europe.

External Links:

• http://www.asq.org/learn-about-quality/total-quality-management
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Quality_Management

As you are preparing for your exams there is a lot of advice proffered on the best way in which to study, what sections to study more thoroughly than others, and so on. A lot of very good, solid, practical advice is provided. You know how much time to spend on each exam question, how to construct your exam answers, how to complete your exam, and so on. This is all essential information. But it is sometimes difficult to translate what you know you should be doing into actual reality. What is the real secret to having exam confidence? Confidence is, after all, the key which will unlock your ability to pass your exams easily and get good grades.

Some of us shine in the examination room, whilst others do not. Some people sweat, go blank or freeze. Exam stress is a common occurrence and it is not a pleasant experience. What advice are you proffered then? Usually this eventually is not even addressed. The irony is that the more you worry about freezing, or going blank, the more likely it is to happen; it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Fear of freezing creates even more exam stress. This is a natural effect of how your mind operates – whatever you focus upon you in effect attract into your reality.

Once you understand how your mind functions, it is easy to learn how to direct it in a more positive manner. You can learn to imagine yourself as you want to be whilst in the examination room – relaxed, calm and confident. Imagine what it would feel like to have exam confidence. Really picture it, allow yourself to visualize yourself sitting comfortably, pen in hand, exam paper in front of you, feeling calm and confident. I cannot stress too much the importance of really visualizing yourself as you want to be, as opposed to how you do not want to be.

Where there is a conflict between your will power and your imagination your imagination wins. Whatever you imagine you can create. A picture is very definitely worth a thousand words. Thus you can learn to use your imagination to create a relaxed state during the period before your exams and also whilst in the examination room itself. And you can learn to create this state of exam confidence easily and quickly with the help of hypnosis downloads.

It is worth remembering as well that when you are at your most relaxed your memory is at its best. The easiest time to learn something is also when you are in your most relaxed state. Thus relaxation is central to learning prior to your exams and also in remembering and eloquently describing your knowledge whilst in the actual exam. As you relax you will answer those exam questions more easily than you ever expected. Knowing how to relax and calm yourself is an essential skill if you want to pass your exams and get good grades.

Relaxation is easy when you know how, and hypnosis downloads (or a hypnosis cd) are the quickest and easiest method of retraining your brain to relax before and during your exams. Hypnosis is a state of relaxation, whilst also providing access to your subconscious mind. Distant memories are more easily recalled with the help of hypnosis and I’m sure you can appreciate how useful this can be when you are answering this exam questions. It’s just a shame that everyone is not taught hypnosis at school.

But you can get hypnosis downloads specifically designed to show you how to relax in an instant and create the most conducive state to give you exam confidence and enable you to pass your exams easily. It’s quick, easy and very inexpensive. This really is the top tip for passing exams and getting good grades. The more relaxed you are, the better your memory is and the more eloquent you will be. Exam confidence is just a hypnosis download away.

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in hypnosis downloads for exam confidence.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/top-tip-for-passing-exams-888182.html

About the Author:

With a degree in psychology and numerous qualifications in hypnotherapy, NLP and sports psychology, Roseanna Leaton is one of the leading practitioners of self-improvement. You can get a free hypnosis download from http://www.RoseannaLeaton.com and peruse her extensive library of hypnosis downloads for hypnosis confidence.

Whether you are fresh out of high school, returning to college after experiencing life or just starting college after seeing that not having a degree hinders finding a rewarding career, there are things you need to know about how to be successful. The first of which is that you are responsible for your own education. No one can do it but you, not your family, not your friends, and not your teachers. Regardless the circumstances of life, only you can ensure you learn what you need from each course. There are, though, several fundamental principles one can learn that will be helpful after deciding to choose to learn.

Over the last decade, I have had the opportunity to observe nearly 1400 students, mostly in groups of 20 or less, in the learning process. For most of that decade, I have also helped train teachers to be more effective in the classroom. I have also invested several years researching brain function and the role thinking about one’s thinking plays in one’s education. My learning, researching and observing continue, but several principles have emerged as part of the successful student’s mindset. The principles apply to teachers as well as students and have been discussed elsewhere [See Teach Like Water in Articlesbase.]

The most successful students operate from an internal set of values or beliefs that shape the learning experience. Whether the student is explicitly aware of the values or beliefs is not as important as that the values are present in the student’s thinking. It is, ultimately how the student thinks that is more important that what the student thinks. There is ample research by individual such as Deanna Kuhn and Marlene Schommer-Akins to affirm that the most educated individuals, those who excel academically, are those who are consistently engaged in higher order thinking. Doing so does not mean being able to recall all the facts, but being able to think properly about the facts when presented. The expert may not now all there is to know, but will know where to find the answers.

The principles below are, necessarily, just generalities. To be helpful, each principle will need to be considered as to how well the student is able to apply that principle. It should also be noted that none of the principles comes from direct observation alone. Each principle has been verified through the research of many qualified researchers. A list of the references for the assertions made here can be found at www.teachlikewater.info

Attitude is nearly everything

What you think about education in general, your education specifically, and your abilty to learn makes all the difference. It is well documented that unless the student has the will to learn, there is little any teacher can do. A student may have all the ability in the world, but unless the will is there, no learning will take place. Conversely, a student may have serious flaws in his or her ability to learn, but have high determination and a strong will to succeed. That person will learn more than the one who is capable but chooses not to apply him or herself. When you begin your studies know that where there is a will to learn, the skills will come. Where there is no will to learn, no skill will help.

As to your specifc education, you must determine why you are in school and the reason needs to relevant on a personal level. With education, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, but one needs to go through the tunnel before reaching the light. The tunnel represents the hard work, missed parties and events, and chosing to forego fun at times to be sure the learning takes place. If you do not see the relevance, it will be hard to continue. Remind yourself often why you are seeking a degree.

This relevance is not just about the degree one is seeking, but about each course taken. When one is trying to get a degree in English or Business Management, it may be difficult to see why taking a course in Algebra or in the Humanities is relevant. The truth is that some folk decided what should be a part of any accredited baccalaureate program and taking such courses are part of what produces a well-rounded graduate. The key to success, again, is you. If your teacher is unable to instill the sense of relevance for that course, find a way to do so on your own. Think of ways to apply what is learned in the workplace or home and see what happens.

When considering your ability to learn, you need to follow the suggestion to “know thyself.” You would do well to find assessments of learning styles and personality types and then seek to understand what you need to learn in an ideal situation. If you are a morning person who needs quiet to read with understanding, the last thing you want to do is meet study partners at 11pm in a coffeehouse. Learn about your nature and then pattern your studying around that nature.

Also, seek honest and open evaluation from your instructors. While it may not be fun getting a paper back loaded with comments or dripping in red ink, it is better for your development than getting a high grade with the sole comment “good paper.” Do not be afraid to ask questions. Having an instructor explain why the paper was good is just as important as seeing what was wrong. If your goal is learning, finding out how to do things better is part of the process.

Lastly. concerning attitude you have to be sure not to give anyone control over your life. Getting a poor instructor is always a possibility. How you react to that poor instructor is up to you. One of the saddest events I have witnessed over the years is a student who will quit school because of a low grade or a poor instructor. Doing so just gives that other person control over your life. Do not give that person this control. Only you are responsible for your education, do NOT give that responsibility to any other being.

Learning = Changing Beliefs

In brief, from early childhood, you have experiences that build memories in your brain. Those memories then form connections that become your beliefs. Your beliefs are nothing more than a web of connections between your memories. These beliefs, then act as filters for new experiences. When new or different information is encountered, the information is either rejected as conflicting too much with current beliefs, accepted and added to the web of memories making the belief, or shelved for consideration. The shelved information may conflict with your current beliefs, but not too much so as to be rejected outrightly.

Have you ever watched some event and expressed your opinion on the event only to have someone who was standing right next to you, who watched the same event, express an opposite opinion? It is not because that person is ignorant, or that you are. It is that the two of you have a lifetime of experience and reinforced beliefs leading you to perceive the event in very different ways. The educated person, the person whose goal is learning, will recognize this and seek to understand the other’s beliefs and what lead to the different conclusion.

It needs to be noted that these beliefs are not just about religion or politics. The beliefs I am talking about are those pertaining to mathematics, learning in general and even seemingly mundane things like which cuisine or fashions are best. Your, as a person, are the sum of your beliefs even about everyday things. When you are learning, you must remember that your teacher and your classmates have all had lives different from yours and that higher order thinkers will seek to understand more than to judge.

It is NOT About You!

One of the most frequent mistakes students make is taking things too personally. While it would be great if all instructors took the time to treat all students individually and give 100% to each one, that is just not the case. Even with the best instructors, grading and teaching are subjective activities. That subjectivity needs to be kept in mind when looking at the grades you are receiving and when you are in the classroom.

Take any instructor and a stack of papers and the grade any paper will receive is impacted by the mood the instructor is in and the position of the paper in the stack. The grade may be different if the instructor just finished a great day than if he or she just had an argument with a significant other. The same paper may receive a different grade depending on whether it is the first graded, the tenth, or the thirtieth. If you do not agree with your grade, see if the instructor will re-grade the paper or explain it to you. With exams, there is often more than one way to answer a question and you should be able to discuss that with your instructor. If you find the instructor unwilling to work with you or reconsider the work you have done, you should just write that person off as a poor instructor and make the best of it.

In the classroom, keep in mind that the instructor is usually a content expert, which means he or she knows much more about the topic than you do. It is difficult for many experts to remember what it was like not to know all that information. Do not be afraid to ask for clarification or to seek help from classmates in understanding what transpires in the classroom. Also, keep in mind that you are just one of many in the same room. I have seen too many situations where a student will feel personally attacked when the instructor, in reality, had a hard time remembering the student’s name. Moreover, there could be times when an instructor will level verbal jabs at a student. In such cases, see if you can determine the intention behind the comments. If they are malicious, that instructor should be reported. If not malicious, which will most often be the case, the student should try to understand the point the instructor was trying to make.

The key is that in any classroom or grading situation you should not take the events personally. There are malicious instructors out there and some folk who should never be allowed in a classroom. They are a minority, however, and most instructors teach because they want to enrich the lives of students. There are, unfortunately, many who do not learn the science and art of teaching and are just doing the best they can do with what they know. Remember that teachers are humans and just as different from each other as individuals in any other group. You are responsible to learn and to get out of the classroom situation the knowledge you are looking for. Do not rely on the instructor. If you get a good one, great! If you get a poor one, do the best you can and move on. Again, you are responsible for gaining the knowledge regardless who claims to be teaching you. Try to make each class about learning, not about you.

Well, Maybe Just a Little

You will, if you take enough courses, find instructors who feel that proper writing is writing as the instructor would write and those who seem to think you should be able to read their minds when you take those multiple-guess tests they create. You may also encounter teachers who will hold a grudge because you remind them a bit too much of a wayward child, an ex spouse, or of someone else who has irritated them. If you have lived enough years, you should know that some personalities just clash.

I have, though, encountered very few instructors who are not sparked by a student who expresses the desire to learn. Aside from not taking the negatives personally, there are ways to be more proactive in the classroom. Specifically, you can get involved at the beginning of any course and seek to understand expectations and the personality of the instructor.

Ask the instructor what pet peeves might exist about writing. Sometimes learning that the person grading your writing dislikes the word “very” can positively impact your grade if you cease using it in papers. Finding out if the person grading your tests looks for facts and figures or for context will impact the way you should study and the grades you will receive. Make the effort to read the syllabus and understand what the instructor or grader is looking for in the assessments of learning and then work to meet those expectations. Different instructors will have different beliefs about assessments and seeking to understand that will positively impact your grades and your learning if you make the efforts to comply with those beliefs.

This is true about personalities as well. Understanding that personality could mean the difference between seeing a comment as a well intentioned joke or as a sarcastic attack against a student. It is not, though, always easy to uncover the personality of the instructor. What you will need to look for are attitudes expressed in the expectations. Then, as the course progresses, make adjustments with new insights. Be aware of a personality clash and if you see one, work to offset the negatives by meeting the expectations the best you can. As in the comments about attiude, learning about yourself is critical and understanding how to study and meet those expectations will mean the difference between success or failure. No matter what your instructor is like, whether you learn or not is still up to you.

Quality over Quantity

I have this principle here more for teachers than for students. However, in my years I have often asked students, “Would you rather get a C in a course from which you learned much or an A in a course from which you learned little?” The response is nearly always the same, the C with learning is better. While some students are obsessed with GPAs there are a few things you should know.

One is that institutions do not put your GPA on the diploma you frame and place on your wall. It shows that you graduated and that is it. The GPA does show on the transcript, but few employers will ask to see that document. In my professional life I read many resumes to look for new teahers and I work with many Human Resources personnel. The second point is that these HR professionals all say they shun folk with pefect 4.0 GPAs. Their resoning is simple, folk who graduate with a 4.0 are usually unable to take constructive criticism or are considered high-maintenance. Whether these assumptions are true or not remain to be seen. However, if you are looking for a job and like to flaunt a high GPA on your resume, you might want to consider these assumptions. A question I like to ask starting students is “What do you call a PhD who made nothing but B’s?” The answer is “Doctor.”

Think about your thinking

Have you ever had a conversation in your head in which you asked yourself what you were thinking when you did some action or made some statement? Have you ever paused to think out in your head what steps you will make to accomplish some action? Then you have engaged in metacognitive thinking. Metacognition is just a big word for thinking about one’s thinking and there is much research to demonstrate that folk who do it more and better will just do better academically, regardless the subject.

There are actually two kinds of metacognition, thinking about what to do and when to do it, and thinking about how successful the thinker actually is in any activity. In brief, the best way to employ metacognitive thinking is to learn about different strategies, learn when to use them, and learn to evaluate if the strategy worked. What that means is just as simple as the statement, but can be as complicated as one can imagine.

Think about it like this, no matter what the mountain, there is usually more than one way up that mountain. Competent instructors know this fact and will show you different strategies to use for any particular subject or assignment. You cannot always count on having a competent instructor. Below are two examples, but how you apply metacognitive thinking will depend on the course and the assignment.

When writing a paper, think about how you should put the paper together to meet the demands of the assignment. Write the steps down. When you get the paper back, see if the grade matches what you thought you would make. Take that and combine it with considerations about stress levels when writing and how much time it took. Chances are you could stand to learn new tips and tricks on writing. Read on writing strategies and see if you make improvements. Even the best writers can learn new tricks.

When taking a test, take mental notes about how you studied for that particular test. As soon as you are done, write down the grade you believe you have made on something you can keep. When you get the test back, see if your actual grade matched your expected grade. Whether it did or did not, think about if you are happy with the grade, how successful the method of studying was, and if there are things you can do to improve the efficiency in which you prepare for exams.

The best thing you can do to improve your metacognitive maturity is to talk to others about how they study and learn, even your instructors. By learning different strategies, you will be better able to find ones that work for you (and not all strategies will work for all students), and apply them as needed to be successful in learning and in the grades you receive.

Conclusion

The principles stated above are general principles, but they are exemplified in the most successful students I have encountered. They are also proven effective in the research that has taken place over the last few decades. Teaching is considered both an art and a science. If all of this could be boiled down to a single principle, it would be that You are responsible for your own education. The second bumper sticker would be It is more important how you think that what you think. If you keep these the thoughts in mind and work to apply the principles above, I believe you will amaze yourself at the level of academic success you can achieve.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/principles-for-successful-learning-in-college-936279.html

About the Author:

I have been teaching for the University of Phoenix for over eight years and have worked to train faculty for several campuses. I have taught Philosophy for another institution and currently teach primarily entry point courses and Easter Religions.

Mind mapping is a technique to keep a track of your thoughts and ideas through sketches and words that represent the flow of your mind when you are thinking. It can as simple as how your brain went from thinking about the local caf?o the great movie you saw last summer. The caf?ad a poster of the movie when you last visited and hence you thought of that movie. Or else it could be a complex process through which you realized that your company’s product could be effectively advertised in a particular niche.

Whatever your thoughts are, retaining them or remembering them is equally important and mind mapping can help you here. What you need to do is to cultivate a few habits so that whatever you read, see or hear, remains in your memory for a long time to come. Photographic memory is a rare gift and nothing can give you that kind of retention. But every one who has a great memory is not born with it; they have trained themselves to remember things better than other people.

There are many memory devices that are used by people for remembering facts and figures and these include things like mnemonics and rhymes. However, mind mapping can help you remember things even better because when you are using mind maps you are actively creating a flow of thought that is associating itself with the idea or fact that you are trying to remember.

One sure way to improve your memory is to improve your listening skills. Listening with deep concentration is very essential to remember what is being said. If you are putting in an effort into listening, you are automatically engaging a greater part of your brain into the lecture, presentation or the conversation. Have a mind map planner handy and you can instantly start to associate the key phrases and terms on paper and thus make sure that you remember right from that point.

Another very important skill to develop is your reading skill. I cannot emphasize enough on how important a skill this is. When you are reading something, you are using a large chunk of your brain by using your vision and processing it to understand written or printed words. Due to this factor, you have a better opportunity to memorize something written and visual instead of just something you have only just heard. What you need to do now is to create a mind map of the logical flow of the items that you are reading. By doing this you will be engaging your brain and immediately recalling what you have only just read. You will also be processing the ideas that you have just absorbed. This will really help you improve your memory.

These are two of the most important ways through which you can improve your memory and you will find many basic methods of improving both of these areas using mind maps. Having a good mind map planner in front of you when you are doing this is very important. It helps you make the process more efficient and effective.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/mind-mapping-tips-for-improving-memory-941129.html

About the Author:

Bill Tyler is Founder of the Bubble Planner, which develops innovative planners and organizers. His passion is helping you discover your own unique talents to unleash the potential inside. Try one of our exceptional Daily Planners today and build unstoppable momentum toward your dreams.

Philip Crosby

Philip B. Crosby (1926-2001)
Philip B. Crosby was a legend of quality. A noted quality professional, consultant, and author known as the “Father of the Quality Revolution” or “The Guru of Quality Management”. His philosophies and concepts helped changes the way business is conducted worldwide. He is widely recognized for promoting the concept of “zero defects” and for defining quality as conformance to requirements.

Philip Crosby was born in West Virginia in 1926.

Crosby’s career as a quality professional began in 1952 after serving in World War II and Korea he has worked for Crosley, Martin-Marietta and ITT where he was corporate vice president for 14 years.

Crosby initiated the Zero Defects program at the Martin Company Orlando, Florida, plant. As the quality control manager of the Pershing missile program, Crosby was credited with a 25 percent reduction in the overall rejection rate and a 30 percent reduction in scrap costs.

During the late 1970s and into the 1980s North American manufacturers were losing market share to Japanese products largely due to the superiority of quality of the Japanese products.

Crosby’s response to the quality crisis was the principle of “doing it right the first time” (DIRFT). He would also include four major principles:
1. The definition of quality is conformance to requirements
2. The system of quality is prevention
3. The performance standard is zero defects
4. The measurement of quality is the price of nonconformance

Crosby’s prescription for quality improvement was a 14-step program. His belief was that a company that established a quality program would see savings returns that more than pays off the cost of the quality program (“quality is free”).

In 1979, he founded Philip Crosby Associates, Inc. (PCA), teaching management how to establish a preventive culture to get things done right the first time.
Crosby was recognized by corporations around the globe as a “guru” of quality management, and a business philosopher and innovator who changed the way organizations seek to achieve greater efficiency, reliability, and profitability.

Crosby’s first book, Quality is Free, has been credited with playing a large part in beginning the quality revolution in the United States and Europe. He published a total of 13 books, including The Absolutes of Leadership in 1996 and Quality and Me, an autobiography filled with lessons from life published in 1999.

Philipp Crosby died in August 2001, but his legacy will live on in better quality in thousands of organizations.

External Links

• http://www.asq.org/about-asq/who-we-are/bio_crosby.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Crosby
• http://www.philipcrosby.com/pca/index.html
• http://www.skymark.com/resources/leaders/crosby.asp

Joseph M. Juran?

Joseph M. Juran (1904-2008)

Juran was born to a Jewish family in 1904 in Romania. In 1912, he immigrated to America with his family, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In school, his level of mathematical and scientific proficiency so exceeds the average that he eventually skips the equivalent of four grade levels. Juran was a chess champion at an early age. He graduated from Minneapolis South High School in 1920.

In 1924, with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Juran joined Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works. His first job was troubleshooting in the Complaint Department.

In 1926, a team from Bell Laboratories made a visit to the Hawthorne factory. The team was made up of some of the pioneers of statistical quality control-including Donald Quarles, Walter Shewhart and Harold Dodge. Their intention was to apply some of the tools and methods they had been developing in the laboratory to operations in the factory environment. The team established a training program and Juran was selected as one of the twenty trainees, and then as one of two engineers for the Inspection Statistical Department. It was one of the first such departments established in industry in the U.S.

Juran was promoted to department chief in 1928, and the following year became a division chief. He published his first quality related article in Mechanical Engineering in 1935.

In 1937, he moved to Western Electric/AT&T’s headquarters in New York City.
During the Second World War, Juran served in the Lend-Lease Administration and Foreign Economic Administration. Just before war’s end, he resigned from Western Electric, and his government post, intending to become a freelance consultant. He joined the faculty of New York University as an adjunct Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, where he taught courses in quality control and ran round table seminars for executives.

Juran in Japan

The end of World War II compelled Japan to change its focus from becoming a military power to becoming an economic one. Despite Japan’s ability to compete on price, its consumer goods manufacturers suffered from a long-established reputation of poor quality. The first edition of Juran’s Quality Control Handbook in 1951 attracted the attention of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), which invited him to Japan. During his life Juran made ten visits to Japan to teach the principles of quality management.
Nearly thirty years after his first visit, along with W. Edwards Deming, Juran received Second Order of the Sacred Treasure award from Emperor Hirohito of Japan. It was bestowed in recognition of his contribution to “the development of quality control in Japan and the facilitation of U.S. and Japanese friendship.”

Dr. Juran published his lectures from Japan in his book Managerial Breakthrough in 1964. In 1979, Juran founded The Juran Institute to better facilitate broader exposure of his ideas. The Juran Institute is today one of the leading quality management consultancies in the world, and it produces books, workbooks, videos and other materials to support the wide use of Dr. Juran’s methods. The institute and the consulting practice continue to thrive today. Dr. Juran worked to promote quality management into his 90’s, and only recently retired from his semi-public life. One can obtain the papers, lectures, and tapes of Dr. Juran from The Juran Institute or other quality management educational providers. The Juran Foundation, which he founded, continues his work, exploring the social and industrial implications of quality improvement while making his and others’ valuable contributions more accessible.

External Links

• http://www.skymark.com/resources/leaders/juran.asp
• http://www.csom.umn.edu/Page5340.aspx
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M._Juran

Walter A. Shewhart

Father of statistical quality control

“Shewhart simulated theoretical models by marking numbers on three different sets of metal-rimmed tags. Then he used an ordinary kitchen bowl – the Shewhart bowl – to hold each set of chips as different sized samples were drawn from his three different populations. There was a bowl, and it played a vital role in the development of ideas and formulation of methods culminating in the Shewhart control charts.” – Ellis R. Ott, Tribute to Walter A. Shewhart, 1967

Walter Andrew Shewhart (1891-1967)

Shewhart was born in New Canton, Illinois, USA on 18th March 1891. He attended the University of Illinois receiving an A.B. in 1913, then an A.M. degree in 1914. He was awarded his doctorate from the University of California in 1917.

In 1918, Shewhart joined the Inspection Engineering Department of Western Electric Company, a manufacturer of telephony hardware for Bell Telephone. He worked there on statistical tools to examine when a corrective action must be applied to a process.

In 1924, Shewhart framed the problem in terms of “assignable-cause” and “chance-cause” variation and introduced the “control chart” as a tool for distinguishing between the two. The control chart techniques, which he developed, have been widely adopted. Shewhart stressed that bringing a production process into a state of “statistical control“, where there is only chance-cause variation, and keeping it in control, is necessary to predict future output and to manage a process economically.

Shewhart worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories from their foundation in 1925 until his retirement in 1956. He expanded his interests to a broader use of statistics over this period. During this period he published many articles in the Bell System Technical Journal. In addition, he published Random sampling in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1931. In 1939 he published the important book Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control.

Shewhart’s charts were adopted by the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) in 1933 and advocated to improve production during World War II in American War Standards. It was during this period that W Edwards Deming founded a systematic critique of data-based management, premised on Shewhart’s insights. Following the war, Deming went on to champion Shewhart’s methods, working as an industrial consultant to Japanese, and latterly US, corporations from 1950 to 1990. Deming’s systematic strategy for business improvement was responsible for a dramatic increase in Japanese productivity over that period.

Shewhart received many awards including the Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Statistical Society and American Society for Quality. For twenty years he was editor of the Wiley Series in Mathematical Statistics.
He died at Troy Hills, New Jersey, USA on 11th March 1967.

During the 1990s, Shewhart’s genius was re-discovered by a third generation of managers, naming it the “Six Sigma” approach.

External Links

• http://www.asq.org/about-asq/who-we-are/bio_shewhart.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_A._Shewhart
• http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Shewhart.html
• http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/fd80/light/shewhartbiog.htm

W. Edwards Deming

William Edwards Deming (1900-1993)
William Edwards Deming was born in Sioux City, Iowa, USA. He received a PhD at the Yale University, in Theoretical Physics.

After university, Deming worked in the Department of Agriculture for ten years. At the time, the yields in agriculture had made big progress due to a new science, modern Statistics. In addition, Deming gave lectures of Statistics at the Department of Agriculture for agricultural engineers.

In 1927, Deming was introduced to Walter A. Shewhart of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Deming found great inspiration in the work of Shewhart, the originator of the concepts of statistical control of processes and the related technical tool of the control chart, as Deming began to move toward the application of statistical methods to industrial production and management. Shewhart’s idea of common and special causes of variation led directly to Deming’s theory of management. Deming saw that these ideas could be applied not only to manufacturing processes but also to the processes by which enterprises are led and managed. This key insight made possible his enormous influence on the economics of the industrialized world 25 years later.

In 1939, Deming joined the Bureau of the Census in Washington. Using his knowledge of Statistics to help in the development of a new kind of survey based on sampling. Later on the statistical techniques of the Census were adopted worldwide.

In 1946 he became consultant in Statistical Studies and Professor of Statistics at New York University.

During the Second World War, Deming stayed in Washington and used his knowledge for the service of the arms industry. Jointly with his friend Walter A. Shewhart, he organized management seminars at the Stanford University with the aim of improving productivity and the quality of military equipment. The seminars were attended by several thousands of engineers and managers from arm factories. Unfortunately, it had a limited impact because the senior executives did not commit themselves.

Deming in Japan

In 1947, Deming was sent to Tokyo as advisor to Allied Forces Headquarters on the application of his sampling techniques. While in Japan, Deming’s expertise in quality control techniques, combined with his involvement in Japanese society, led to his receiving an invitation from the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE).

JUSE members had studied Shewhart’s techniques, and as part of Japan’s reconstruction efforts, they sought an expert to teach statistical control. During June–August 1950, Deming trained hundreds of engineers, managers, and scholars in statistical process control (SPC) and concepts of quality. He also conducted at least one session for top management. Deming’s message to Japan’s chief executives: improving quality will reduce expenses while increasing productivity and market share.

A number of Japanese manufacturers applied his techniques widely. The improved quality combined with the lowered cost created worldwide demand for Japanese quality products.

Deming declined to receive royalties from the transcripts of his 1950 lectures, so JUSE’s board of directors established the Deming Prize (December 1950) to repay him for his friendship and kindness. The Deming Prize—especially the Deming Application Prize, which is given to companies—has exerted an immeasurable influence directly and indirectly on the development of quality control and quality management in Japan.

In 1960, the Prime Minister of Japan (Nobusuke Kishi), acting on behalf of Emperor Hirohito, awarded Dr. Deming Japan’s Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class. The citation on the medal recognizes Deming’s contributions to Japan’s industrial rebirth and its worldwide success.

Back to the U.S.

In 1980, an American journalist, Clare Crawford-Mason, made Deming known by the public by a TV program called “If Japan can, why can’t we?” about the increasing industrial competition the United States was facing from Japan.

As a result of the broadcast, the American top management could not ignore Deming anymore. At the request of many senior managers, Deming started to give seminars open to the public. From 1981 to 1993, he gave 250 seminars. It has been stated that 120,000 people attended these seminars. He also gave many lectures in American companies, which had adopted his management philosophy.

Ford Motor Company was one of the first American corporations to seek help from Deming. In 1981, Ford’s sales were falling. Between 1979 and 1982, Ford had incurred $3 billion in losses. Deming to helped Ford by questioned the company’s culture and the way its managers operated. Deming talked about quality and management and told Ford that management actions were responsible for 85% of all problems. In 1986 Ford came out with a profitable line of cars. In a letter to Autoweek Magazine, Donald Petersen, then Ford Chairman, said, “We are moving toward building a quality culture at Ford and the many changes that have been taking place here have their roots directly in Dr. Deming’s teachings”. By 1986, Ford had become the most profitable American auto company.

Over the course of his career, Deming received dozens of academic awards, including another, honorary, Ph.D. from Oregon State University. In 1987 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology: “For his forceful promotion of statistical methodology, for his contributions to sampling theory, and for his advocacy to corporations and nations of a general management philosophy that has resulted in improved product quality.” In 1988, he received the Distinguished Career in Science award from the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1993, Dr. Deming published his final book, The New Economics for Industry, Government, and Education, which included the System of Profound Knowledge and the 14 Points for Management. It also contained educational concepts involving group-based teaching without grades, as well as management without individual merit or performance reviews.
In December 1993, W. Edwards Deming died in his sleep at the age of 93 in his Washington home at about 3 a.m. due to “natural causes.” His family was by his side when he died.

External Links

• The French Deming Association, http://www.fr-deming.org
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming