Learning is a universal component of every Quality Management pioneer’s concepts since the movement began in the 1950s by Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Joseph Juran. Dr. Deming’s 13th Principle for Transformation of Western Management was: “13. Encourage education and self-improvement for everyone.” (1) He amplified on that principle by writing: “What an organization needs is not just good people; it needs people that are improving with education…Management must go through new learning.” Dr. Juran documented “Lessons Learned” and “The Learning Curve” as basic quality tools. (2)

So learning is clearly a Quality Classic. And “Continuous Learning for Improvement” is a 20th Century Quality Movement contribution to business, government and society. But the benefits to individuals and to society of learning have been recognized for thousands of years before Quality Control formally kicked off in Japan after World War II. Aristotle believed the purpose of learning was to make people virtuous and argued that education was the State’s highest duty. Some Medieval theologians saw learning as purifying the soul while others, and many military and political leaders, saw education of the populace as a threat to their power bases. During the 18th Century Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Rousseau considered learning as the media for understanding self and society. Universal public school systems emerged in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Now, in the 21st Century learning is one concept that has no global enemies. There are no anti-quality protest groups in the streets, no political controversy or debate over the value of quality programs, and no grassroots societal criticisms. There is now conviction that only through quality performance, learning and education will individuals succeed, businesses remain viable, governments create the capacity to respond to increasing expectations of its citizens, hospitals keep up with changing health care challenges, churches sustain membership, and schools meet the needs of students to function in our era’s environments characterized by novelty, uncertainty, adversity and complexity.

WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED FROM THE QUALITY MOVEMENT? AND WHAT LEARNING IS NEEDED?
The merging of quality theory and tools with technology advances over the past fi fty years has been a much more powerful positive impact than generally recognized. Probably the most important quality contribution has been to increase productivity. Learning how to accomplish more with fewer material and human resources combined with the exponential implementation of international quality standards (the ISO phenomenon) has, in my judgment, avoided global depression which would have otherwise resulted from the combination of the Asian Financial Crisis beginning in 1997, the subsequent U.S. recession, the September 11, 2001 aftermath of required Homeland Security, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the SARS economic impacts. United States technology, led by Bill Gates, whose breakthrough software permitted computers to communicate with each other followed in 1995 by the Internet global takeoff were the catalysts for globalization of trade and commerce. Those two factors, “Quality + Technology,” produced a paradigm shift in productivity. A 15 December 2003 online search through ProQuest on the American society for Quality (ASQ) Quality Progress professional journal publications from 1990 to 2003 revealed 127,980 publications that included “Learning.”

The fundamental quality tools of statistical analysis, cost of quality, process mapping, defects and failure quantification, root cause analysis, continuous improvement and learning from the organizational bottom-up (i.e. from those who do the work), rather than exclusively from the top-down, have permanently changed the world of work for the better. The quality professionals around the world who created, expanded, and implemented the Quality Sciences and Management Movement over the past 50 years can take pride in the economic, industrial, social, defense, environmental , healthcare and education advances which are clearly results of that movement. The fact that the United States has progressed in those fifty years to be the clear super-power in the world has the quality movement as one of its key success factors.

So what quality learning is still needed? The most critical need relates to the fact that the quality of life for too much of earth’s humanity is low (3). The achievements of the Quality Sciences have to date been with the quality of products and services. Healthcare and education have only been formally added in the last few years. Quality Policymaking remains an area outside of the scope of the Quality Movement up to now (see the “Quality Policymaking” essay in this Quality Classics series). Productivity improvements have actually contributed to an increasing “Rich-Poor Gap” in the world since the developed nations were the first to capitalize on quality. That gap contributes to major economic, social, political and military problems yet to be solved. Malnutrition, starvation, homelessness, illiteracy, poor quality healthcare, crime, drugs, terrorism, mass-killing weapons, auto fatalities, national transportation infrastructure planning are only some of the problems needing higher quality thinking and programs.

We can take pride in the first 50 years of the Quality Movement. But it is too early for complacency. Let’s avoid taking another 50 years to make quality breakthroughs in those areas not adequately addressed as of 2004. We have much learning still to do.
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“Quality Classics” is a project of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Inland Empire Section 0711. This Quality Classic was published in the Inland Empire Quality Newsletter, Vol 11, Issue 3 (Jan-Feb-Mar 2004). Quality Classics meets the criterion of documenting a concept, model, tool, formula or algorithm that has 50 years or more validated utility in the Quality Movement begun in the 1950s. Readers can access the entire series of Quality Classics at: http://www.asq711.org.

1 W. Edwards Deming. 1982. Out of the Crisis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., p. 86.

2. J.M. Juran, Editor in Chief. 1951. Juran’s Quality Control. McGraw-Hill, Inc., Section 6.28 and 13.12.

3. For expanded analysis on this point see Yehezkel Dror. 1994. The Capacity to Govern: A Report to the Club of Rome
  Frank Cass, Portland, OR; and Robert M.

4. Krone. 2003.”Science and Technology for What?”
  http:/ www.lasierra.edu/schools/sbm/researchguidelines/index.html

                  http://www.lasierra.edu/schools/sbm/researchguidelines.