Introduction to Standard Specifications

- The Concept of Standards:

A standard is a document that provides requirements, specifications, guidelines or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose.

- What are the benefits of the Standards?

The Standards ensure that products and services are safe, reliable and of good quality. For business, they are strategic tools that reduce costs by minimizing waste and errors, and increasing productivity. They help companies to access new markets, level the playing field for developing countries and facilitate free and fair global trade.

- History Standards:

The history standards stems from the history of quality. It read the history of quality can easily learn the history standards, and to you as follows history of quality/

In a broad sense, quality assurance refers to any action directed toward providing consumers with

products (goods and services) of appropriate quality. Quality assurance has been an important aspect of production operations throughout history. Egyptian wall paintings from around 1450b.c. show evidence of inspection and measurement activity. Stones in the pyramids were cut so precisely that it is impossible to put a knife blade between the blocks. The Egyptians' success was due to uniform methods and procedures and precise measuring devices. The Egyptians also entertained the idea of interchangeable bows and arrows. Since variation in materials, craftspeople, and tools existed, some method of quality control was necessary.

During the Middle Ages in Europe, the skilled craftsperson served both as manufacturer and inspector. Since the "manufacturer" dealt directly with the customer, considerable pride in workmanship existed. Craft guilds, consisting of masters, journeymen, and apprentices, emerged to ensure that craftspeople were adequately trained. Every effort was made to ensure that quality was built into the final product. These themes are important foundations of modern quality assurance efforts.

During the middle of the eighteenth century, a French gunsmith, Honore Le Blanc, developed a system for manufacturing muskets to a standard pattern using interchangeable parts. Thomas Jefferson brought the idea to America, and in 1798 the government awarded Eli Whitney a contract to supply 10,000 muskets to the government in two years. The use of interchangeable parts necessitated careful control of quality. While a customized product built by a craftsperson can be tweaked and hammered to fit and work correctly, random matching of mating parts provides no such assurance. The parts must be produced according to a carefully designed standard. Whitney designed special machine tools and trained unskilled workmen to make parts to a fixed design that were measured and compared to a model. However, Whitney underestimated the effect of variation in production processes (the same obstacle that continues to plague American managers to this day). Because of the resulting problems, it took more than 10 years to complete the project. However, the concept of interchangeable parts eventually led to the industrial revolution, and made quality assurance a critical component of the production process.

In the early 1900s, the work of Frederick W. Taylor, the Father of Scientific Management, led to a

new philosophy of production. By decomposing a job into individual work tasks, inspection tasks were separated from production tasks, which led to the creation of a separate quality department in production organizations.

The Bell Telephone System was the leader in the early modern history of quality control. An inspection department was created in the Western Electric Company in the early 1900s to support the Bell Operating Companies. Quality assurance was applied to design, manufacturing, and installation. In the 1920s, employees of the inspection department of Western Electric were transferred to Bell Telephone Laboratories. The duties of this group included the development of new theories and methods of inspection to improve and maintain quality. The early pioneers of quality assurance—Walter Shewhart, Harold Dodge, George Edwards, and others—were members of this group. It was here that the term "quality assurance" was

coined. The development of control charts by Shewhart, sampling techniques by Dodge, and economic analysis techniques for quality problem solving laid the foundation for modern quality assurance.

During World War II, the U.S. military began using statistical sampling procedures and imposing strict standards on suppliers. Thus, statistical quality control became widely known and gradually adopted by other industries. Sampling tables labeled "MJL-STD" for "military standard" were developed and are still widely used today. In 1944, Industrial Quality Control was first published, and professional societies, notably the American Society for Quality Control, were founded soon after.

During the 1950s two noted American consultants, Drs. Joseph Juran and W. Edwards Deming, introduced statistical quality control techniques to the Japanese during Japan's rebuilding period. Improvements in Japanese quality did not occur overnight; some 20 years passed before the quality of Japanese products exceeded that of Western manufacturers. While the Japanese were improving quality and their methods of quality assurance, quality levels in the West remained stagnant. During the 1970s, Japanese companies made significant penetration into Western markets, primarily due to the higher quality levels of their products.

The decade of the 1980s was a period of remarkable change and awareness of quality byU.S. chips was up to 27 times higher. In a few short years, the Japanese had penetrated a major market that had been dominated by American companies.

consumers, industry, and government. Consumers began to notice a difference in quality between Japanese and American-made products. One of the more startling facts was reported in 1980 by Hewlett-Packard. After testing 300,000 l6K RAM chips from three U.S. and three Japanese manufacturers, Hewlett-Packard found that the Japanese chips had an incoming failure rate of zero compared to rates of 11 and 19 failures per 1,000 for the U.S. chips. After 1,000 hours of use, the failure rate of the

Extensive product recalls mandated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the early 1980s and the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 increased awareness of ourU.S. companies, such as Ford Motor Company, in a concerted effort to revolutionize their approach to quality.

quality gap with the Japanese. In 1980 NBC aired a white paper entitled "If Japan Can . . . Why Can't We?" Because this program revealed his key role in the development of Japanese quality, the name of W. Edwards Deming became a household word among corporate executives. He then led

In 1985, NASA announced an Excellence Award for Quality and Productivity. The goal of total quality excellence has been identified by top managers and promoted throughout industry as one of the keys to worldwide competitiveness. Most major companies embarked on extensive quality improvement campaigns. In 1984, the U.S. government designated October as National Quality Month. In 1987, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, aJapan's coveted Deming Prize for quality. The emphasis on quality has shifted from a purely technical methodology of inspection, sampling, and control to a managerial obsession that affects every employee.

statement of our national intent to provide quality leadership, was established by an act of Congress. By the
end of the decade, Florida Power and Light became the first overseas company to win

However, not every company has developed an obsession with quality, and the implications for competitiveness are startling. A recent study by Ernst and Young and the American Quality Foundation found that while 55% of U.S. firms use quality information to evaluate business performance monthly or more frequently, 70% of Japanese firms do. Eighteen percent of U.S. businesses look at the business consequences of quality performance less than once each year; the comparable figure in Japan is 2%, and in Germany, 9%, Financial and sales reviews occur much more frequently in the United States. Quality must be integrated with traditional management practices if any business is to be competitive in today's global marketplace.