Total Quality Pioneers Paper

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Define Quality and its elements

The definition of quality according to the American heritage dictionary is the degree of excellence, a distinguishing attribute, and a social status or high rank. From a management and organizational perspective, there are several schools of thought that address the meaning of quality. The ISO 9000 defines quality as the totality of a product or service features and elements that assures the satisfaction of stated or implied needs or wants of customers. Edward Deming (1986), one of the renowned pioneers of quality management posits that quality is defined by the customer and consists of several measurement categories, each category is considered to be important to customers. Deming (1986) affirmed that quality is about people. In contrast, Juran (1989, p. 15-19) defines quality as "fitness for use,", whereby each product has customer desired features and lacks any deficiencies. In a different vein, Garvin (1987) defines quality as a product or service that meets customer satisfaction rather than protecting them against annoyances. Drawing from the aforementioned definitions, quality can be defined as the ability to effectively and efficiently produce or deliver what the customers need or want while minimizing errors throughout the process.
Describe how the quality pioneer's use of the total quality elements made the pioneer successful
Total Quality Pioneer: Edwards Deming

Edwards Deming's "quality movement" is one of such theories. It was developed in the 1940's for Japanese industrial leaders (Certo, 2009). Deming's theory was developed at a time Japanese products were perceived as cheap, defective imitations in the market-place (Certo, 2009). The Japanese industrial leaders identified this problem and invited a few quality gurus, one of which was Edwards Deming, to learn how to achieve the objectives of producing innovative high quality products (Certo, 2009). The quality movement theory focused on quality control and the role of management to ensure efficiency of workers and productivity (Certo, 2009). In the 1950 and 1960's, quality control and management evolved at a quick pace and ...