Quality Management

Sakura Haruno

IME415

Professor Rosenkrantz

Topic Paper on Philip Crosby

Philip B. Crosby is an internationally known quality expert. He is best known for popularizing the Zero Defects concept that originated in the United States at the Martin Marietta Corporation where Crosby worked during the 1960s. Crosby, an engineer, began his career as a junior technician in a quality department, working his way up through that company and several others until eventually he became Director of Quality and Corporate Vice President of ITT Corporation, where he spent 14 years. In 1979, Crosby s book Quality is Free was published and became a best seller in the field of management. That same year, he established the consulting firm PCA and, with it, the Quality College. Crosby is also the author of Leading (1990); Let s Talk Quality (1989); The Eternally Successful Organization (1988); Running Things: The Art of Making Things Happen (1986); Quality Without Tears: The Art of Hassle-free Management (1984); and The Art of Getting Your Own Sweet Way (1972). Crosby s books have been translated into 10 languages. In 1985, PCA went public, and, in 1989, merged with Alexander Proudfoot. The company has 350 employees working in 15 countries. It is now the world s largest management consulting and teaching firm.

To Crosby, quality means conformance to requirements (Crosby, 1979). Quality must be defined in measurable and clearly stated terms to help the organization take action based on tangible targets, rather than on hunch, experience, or opinions. To Crosby, quality is either present or not present. There is no such thing as differing levels of quality. Management must measure quality by continually tracking the cost of doing things wrong. Crosby refers to this as the price of nonconformance. To aid managers in tracking the cost of doing things wrong, he developed the following formula: Cost of Quality (COQ) = Price of Conformance (POC) + Price of Nonconformance (PONC). The...