Data Warehouse Design Solutions

7

QUALITY

Total Quality Management, or TQM, made great waves in the business world in the 1980s. U.S. and European corporations rushed to implement principles and practices that were common in Japan, where they were evangelized by the late Dr. Edward Demmings, an American. Dr. Demmings went to Japan in the postwar period after his ideas were met with skepticism in the United States. The resulting increases in productivity and quality transformed Japan into an economic powerhouse.

As Japanese companies entered and often dominated markets once thought impenetrable, U.S. and European companies began to pay attention to quality. Improvements in manufacturing quality created goods of continually increasing reliability. The quality and reliability of automobiles increased to a level once thought impossible. Warranties, once limited to 12 months or 12,000 miles, now start at 36 months or 36,000 miles. Similar improvements in other consumer and industrial products are common.

Quality, at least in the world of manufacturing, has become a fundamental value. TQM, sometimes grouped with Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and other buzzwords, has become less prominent simply because it is a fact of life for global manufacturers. As such, tracking quality is critical and has been incorporated into many Computer Integrated Manufacturing applications at the operational level. The availability of data on supplier quality, process quality, and costs of nonconformance is continually improving. ...