Thursday, 21 April 2016

Impact of World War II in Quality

World War II(September 1, 1939 – September 2, 1945) war field,

There was a soldier from USA with gun in his hands and in the middle of his opponents. He triggered his gun when the opponent soldier tried to shoot him. Unfortunately the gun did not work. He keep on pressing the gun trigger meanwhile the opponents’ bullet went inside his body he collapsed there and then. Alas! A man died because of poor quality gun.


This was the situation almost all soldiers in World War 2 faced. If gun fires that’s good he will be saved if it’s not then he will be destroyed. At that time, military contracts were typically awarded to the manufacturer that submitted the lowest bid. Products were inspected on delivery to ensure conformance to requirements.

In the middle of the war i.e., at 1941 people realized the importance of quality in human safety. Then US took a decision on weapon selection. Unsafe military equipment was clearly unacceptable, and the U.S. armed forces inspected virtually every unit produced to ensure that it was safe for operation. This practice required huge inspection forces and caused problems in recruiting and retaining competent inspection personal.

To ease the problems without compromising product safety, the armed forces began to use sampling inspection to replace unit-by-unit inspection. With the aid of industry consultants, particularly from Bell Laboratories, they adapted sampling tables and published them in a military standard, known as Mil-Std-105. These tables were incorporated into the military contracts so suppliers clearly understood what they were expected to produce. The armed forces also helped suppliers improve quality by sponsoring training courses in Walter Shewhart’s statistical quality control (SQC) techniques.

But while the training led to some quality improvement in some organizations, most companies had little motivation to truly integrate the techniques. As long as government contracts paid the bills, organizations’ top priority remained meeting production deadlines. What’s more, most SQC programs were terminated once the government contracts came to an end.

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