SPC is an ocean,
capturing that in a one page nutshell is not a wise idea. Yet I have tried it
in such a way that everyone atleast understands the conceptual idea of SPC.
This article & seeing some more articles in our page will help everyone to
understand SPC perfectly. I have seen SPC is practiced almost everywhere in a
wrong way or just to satisfy the auditors, not to improve the process or
product.
To emphasize the
importance of SPC, we must know how the Japanese brought a quality revolution.
In 1954, they invited quality gurus like W. Edwards
Deming and Joseph M. Juran to help them improve their businesses. Japan
becoming world no.1 in product quality is the result of the lectures given by
two Americans W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran. Had Deming and Juran not
given those lectures, Japanese goods would still be of stone-age quality.
These
two quality gurus helped the Japanese to launch their quality revolution. The
senior executives of Japanese companies took personal charge of managing
quality. The companies trained their engineers to use statistical methods (SPC)
for quality control & quality assurance. The companies enlarged their
business plans to include quality goals. Each of these actions was
unprecedented in industrial history. Together, they added up to a massive
change in direction. Japanese companies evolved means of measuring customer
satisfaction, competitive quality and performance that challenged the entire
business community across the world. In contrast, CEOs of world’s leading
companies had long been detached from the quality function. The image below
shows renowned quality gurus & all of them are from USA & Japan. Why no
quality gurus from India? It is because India’s businesses & its CEO’s are
still detached from the crucial quality function, hence the seriousness of
making quality as the no.1 priority is still not happening.
Here
is the list of few things that we are using / used actively, yet will become
obsolete soon or already obsolete, it is due to the quality revolution or the
competitors have built better alternatives for these,
- Shopping malls
- Cash
- Public telephone booths
- Calculators
- Paper maps
- Print catalogues
- Business cards
- Parking meters (pay for parking cars)
- House keys
- Manual-transmission cars
- College textbooks
- Classroom chalkboards
- Post boxes
- In-person voting
- Plastic shopping bags
- Plastic, single-use straws
- Car keys
- Cheques
- Desktop computers
- Cursive writing
- Remote controls
- Fax machines
- Stand alone GPS devices
- Portable music players (iPod)
- Sharing school photos
- Print magazines
- Alarm clocks
- Headphones with cords
- Hotel room keys
- Landline phones (rotary or button telephones)
- Compact Discs CDs
- Paper receipts
- Movies on DVD
- Paper bills
- Paper airplane tickets and boarding passes
- Theatre tickets
- Internet Explorer
- 3G Phones
- BlackBerry Phones
- Encyclopaedias
- Typewriters
- Vinyl Albums
- Film rolls
- Answering Machines
- Slide Projectors
- Overhead Projectors
- Phone Books (Yellow pages)
- The Walkman
- Floppy Disks
- Bench Seats in Cars
- Pagers
- Calculator Watches
- Minidisc
- The Polaroid instant photo
- Video Home System (VHS)
- Dial-Up Modems
SPC helps businesses
attain a profitable quantity & quality. SPC is like a horoscope of a person
where the future can be predicted based on certain inputs in the present or
past. I am 100% sure that most of the owners believe in astrology & vastu, like this if they believe in SPC, they can
escalate their businesses to world class levels. Exactly this is what the
Japanese did, i.e, believing in SPC that made them world no.1 in quality. It is
important to quote about Mr.Aaron Levenstein (1913–86) who was an author and
Professor of Business Administration at Baruch College. In one of his most
memorable quotations he suggested that: Statistics are like a bikini. What they
reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. Basically, he is saying
that statistics can be used to confuse and mislead the reader. You can
understand these when paid media or fringe groups post a poor picture about
India & its economy by using irrelevant statistics. Hence it is advised to
be careful while interpreting statistics. Do it the right way, if not, you will
be trapped.