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Quality Without Tears
Overview
| Title |
Quality Without Tears |
| Author |
Philip B. Crosby |
| Published |
Jan 1995 by McGraw-Hill/Ryerson (www.mcgrawhill.ca) |
| ISBN |
0-07-014511-3 |
| Pages |
205 |
| Category |
quality management |
| User Level |
novice to advanced |
| Reviewer |
Anthon Pang |
| Rating |
3 / 5 |
Synopsis
In "Quality Without Tears", Philip Crosby expands on his earlier work,
"Quality Is Free". According to the preface, "Quality Without Tears
came into being as the result of my desire to make it clear that the key to quality
improvement was understanding concepts, not implanting some complex system."
This book presents those concepts.
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1. The Profile of a Problem Organization
Chapter 2. The Quality Vaccine
Chapter 3. Demotivation
Chapter 4. A Quality Carol
Chapter 5. Determination
Chapter 6. THe First Absolute: The Definition of Quality is Conformance to Requirements
Chapter 7. The Second Absolute: The System of Quality is Prevention
Chapter 8. The Third Absolute: The Performance Standard is Zero Defects
Chapter 9. The Fourth Absolute: The Measurement of Quality is the Price of Nonconformance
Chapter 10. Education
Chapter 11. Implementation
Chapter 12. Team Actions
Chapter 13. Team Executions
Chapter 14. The Saving of Emory Spellman
Chapter 15. The Dehassling of Lightblue
Chapter 16. Some Success Stories
Chapter 17. Mixing the Vaccination Serum
Chapter 18. How Come Very Little Ever Improves All By Itself?
Guidelines for Browsers
Praises
Crosby observes the relationship between demotivation and hassle, motivation and hassle elimination.
Selected quotes from "Guidelines for Browsers":
- Management does not provide a clear performance standard or definition of quality,
so the employees each develop their own. (3)
- All nonconformances are caused. (7)
- Anything that is caused can be prevented. (7)
- Why do we need a special program to motivate our people? Didn't we hire motivated
employees? (14)
- Tell them to hire trained people. We're not a university. (37)
- "... the way to make money is to give the customers what they were promised
and eliminate the hassle for the employees." (41)
- "... senior management is 100 percent responsible for the problems with
quality -- and their continuance." (44)
- Companies don't do well with quality because they are just not determined enough. (53)
- Mistakes are caused by two factors: lack of knowledge and lack of attention. (83)
- Changing a culture is not a matter of teaching people a bunch of new techniques,
or replacing their behavior patterns with new ones. It is a matter of exchanging
values and providing role models. This is done by changing attitudes. (98)
- The real purpose of corrective action is to identify and eliminate problems forever. (112)
Criticisms
The "vaccine" analogy/metaphor doesn't work for me. And to a lesser
degree, neither does the profile of a problem organization, in which a perfect
score is an organization in denial.
Chapter 4's "A Quality Carol" is an adaptation of the Dicken's classic,
"A Christmas Carol" (and thus, a little too long, in my humble opinion).
Chapter 14 ("The Saving of Emory Spellman") could easily omit the
references without weakening the example.
While the Japanese have embraced the concepts of "Zero Defects", Crosby
continues to lament the low adoption rate (and the trend to return to the old ways)
in the U.S. This begs (raises) the question of what PCA does to market ZD in the U.S.?
Final Analysis
The quality concepts in "Quality Without Tears" neatly complements
"Quality Is Free", though neither offer specific guidance in software development.
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Anthon Pang.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".
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