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From: marick@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Brian Marick)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: industrial engineering and metrics (was Re: bridge building and discipline)
Message-ID: <1991May23.131739.11711@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 23 May 91 13:17:39 GMT
References: <1991May14.150350.2837@den.mmc.com> <1991May15.180943.6796@netcom.COM> <1991May15.223135.12381@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1991May16.151913.13770@weyrich.UUCP> <773@tivoli.UUCP>
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Lines: 41

I wrote:

>>>The modern approach, following Taguchi, Deming, and company, has (in
>>>principle) abandoned a measurement (cost of quality) and replaced it
>>>with a system of faith that asserts that increased quality is *always*
>>>cost-effective.  In this case, the faith has worked better than the
>>>metric.

alan@tivoli.UUCP (Alan R. Weiss) writes:

>This is actually incorrect.  Deming and other Modern Quality Theorists
>insist upon Statistical Process Control to measure the Cost of Quality. 
>I refer you to Crosby, Gilb, Demings, Juran, et al.

I think you may have misunderstood my point.  I was talking about
measuring cost of quality, which is different from measuring some
quality attribute.  You of course measure quality attributes; the
system of faith is that should you never stop improving them.  This
differs from the traditional approach where you measure the cost of
improvement and stop when the product is "good enough".  

Here are some references for those who are interested.  The first two
are pretty easy to understand.  The concentration on Taguchi is
accidental; these are what I had photocopied and ready to hand.  You
find the same ideas in Deming (his point 5 is "neverending
improvement"), Crosby (the title of his book, _Quality is Free_), and
as far back as Shewhart, who originated statistical quality control in
his 1931 book.

Thomas Barker, 'Quality Engineering by Design: Taguchi's Philosophy',
Quality Progress, December 1986

Raghu N Kackar, 'Taguchi's Quality Philosophy:  Analysis and
Commentary', Quality Progress, December 1986.

Raghu N. Kackar, 'Off-Line Quality Control, Parameter Design, and the
Taguchi Method',  Journal of Quality, October 1985 (with commentary).

Brian Marick
Motorola @ University of Illinois
marick@cs.uiuc.edu, uiucdcs!marick