The effectiveness of quality management systems in the construction industry

Abstract

The issue of quality, and subsequently quality management, has been at the forefront of the international business community's mind for the past two decades. This chapter explores the history of the quality movement to determine why. Today's obsession with quality can be linked directly to two major events of the past century. The Japanese quality revolution and the advent of the global market place. The Japanese quality revolution began in the post war economies of the 1950s. At this time in history, the United States dominated the world market place for manufactured products, whilst Japan was known as a purveyor of cheap and cheerful low quality goods. The poor quality of the Japanese products was so renowned, the US sent free quality control advice as part of their rehabilitation program of the Japanese economy (this was to help recoup the devastating effects of the second world war). Fortunately for the Japanese, the Americans sent Joseph Juran and W Edwards Deming, two engineers whose ideas and theories on quality management would underpin contemporary quality management theory and lay the foundations of the Japanese quality revolution Ross E J, 1995, pg4. In Japan, Juran and Deming found the Japanese audience very receptive to their ideas, as the Japanese knew if they were to regain their 'place in the sun' as a world power, they had to increase their quality levels to compete on a par with the Americans and Europeans. The two American engineers' theories had largely been ignored by American industry because their world beating economy offered no incentive to modify their approach to quality or to elevate its status in the operation of their businesses. Thus, the USA continued down their traditional path of investing in sophisticated 'quality appraisal' control -that is, concentrating their efforts on finding the defective goods after they were manufactured. Quality appraisal is where quality control remained the province of Production, which established acceptable levels of quality and then elaborate controls and test facilities to locate the non-conforming products which had been produced.