I. WHAT IS QUALITY CONTROL?
Japanese quality control is a thought revolution in management. ' It is an approach representing a new way of thinking about management.
The Japanese Industrial Standards a (JIS) define quality control as follows:
"A system of production methods which economically produces quality goods or services meeting the requirements of consumers. Modern quality control utilizes statistical methods and is often called statistical quality control."
My own definition is as follows:
"To practice quality control is to develop, design, produce and service a quality product which is most economical, most useful, and always satisfactory to the consumer."
To meet this goal, everyone in the company must participate in and promote quality control, including top executives, all divisions within the company, and all employees.
Setting aside the definition, I should like to outline a number of pointers in implementing quality control:
1. We engage in quality control in order to manufacture products with the quality which can satisfy the requirements of consumers. The mere fact of meeting national standards or specifications is not the answer. It is simply insufficient. Japanese Industrial Standards or international standards established by the International Organization for Standard¬ization (ISO), or International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) are not perfect. They contain many shortcomings. Consumers may not be satisfied with a product which does meet JIS. We must also keep in mind that consumer requirements change from year to year. Generally even when industrial standards are modified, they cannot keep pace with consumer requirements.
2. We must emphasize consumer orientation. Heretofore it has been acceptable for manufacturers to think that they are doing consumers a favor by selling their products to them. Let us call this a "product out" • type of operation. What I propose is a system of "market in" in which