3.4.3 Crosby
Crosby came into prominence much later than Deming and Juran. He worked with ITT for several years before founding his own company, Philip Crosby Associates, in 1979. This company offers a range of quality related courses. The basic principles he promotes in quality practice are determine, educate and implement. Determine means that top management must determine the necessity of quality in their organisation (thus making top management commitment a starting point). Educate is to do with accepting what he calls his "absolute principles", which he says can only be achieved through education. When this is done, every member of management must understand the process for implementation .
According to Crosby , the "absolute principles" of quality are:
- Conformance to requirements. Requirements must be clearly articulated by management so that there is no scope for misunderstanding.
- Non-performance is the responsibility of those doing so, not the quality department or management, once step 1 has been completed.
- It is cheaper to do it right the first time rather than fixing mistakes after the work is done. (This is the theme and title of his book Quality is Free .)
- The only measurement of performance should be the cost of quality, i.e. the cost of putting right what has been done incorrectly. (Deming's/Shewhart's cycle says the same thing.)
- The target for performance is zero defects. This means do it right the first time, a slogan that is commonplace today.
We see from these principles that, unlike Deming and Juran, Crosby is not so focused on systems as he is on individual performance, once the expectations of management are clearly explained to the workforce. The apparent weak point in this approach is that the steps are not clearly defined. However, each organisation has to define them in their own context. This allows the principles to be completely absorbed into the organisation's management practices. Many large organisations (e.g. Petronas) follow the Crosby approach.
Activity 3.6
Visit Crosby Associates at http://www.philipcrosby.com and explore Crosby 's philosophies and their implementation.
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