"Building/Destroying"
 By: Jeffrey  Croddy, Quality Assurance, ALCOA, Jeffrey.Croddy@alcoa.com
By: Bob Krone, PhD, ASQ Fellow Member, BobKrone@aol.com

We stretch our Quality Classics criteria for this essay.  We observe that Quality Professionals have always been concerned with building.  From Deming and Juran in the 1950s forward the goal of continual improvement has been consistently found throughout Quality Assurance and Management methods and tools.  Attention focused on the reduction and elimination of waste and destructive processes is also classic and the basis of, for example, Zero Defects, Six Sigma and Lean.

That formula refers to a much larger societal scope than the Quality Movement.  It represents a universal concept for progress.  When the denominator exceeds the numerator (i.e. the ratio equals less than “1”) progress is in reverse.  In physics entropy is a measure of energy in a system.  As entropy increases energy decreases to zero.  Negative entropy represents increasing energy.  The relationship is found in theology with good and evil; and in philosophy with ethical or unethical behavior.  In management it is linked to leadership taking optimistic or pessimistic attitudes toward people and work.  Macro Economics tracks the gains or losses of money in business and government.  This relationship also impacts business decisions based on personal or economic ownership and change relationship issues of maintaining or releasing hierarchical beliefs.  Personal growth and organizational successes are firmly linked to positive Building/Destroying ratios.  Applications are universal.

Our conclusion is that calculating and tracking over time the Building/Destroying Ratio could be a universal measurement valuable addition to the Malcolm Baldrige Award Criteria and to Quality Auditing.  A drop in the ratio’s trend would be an alert for leadership to search for needed changes or challenging changes made.  We welcome views from any reader.

Jeff Croddy & Bob Krone
January  2008

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"Quality Over Time"
 By: Bob Krone, PhD, ASQ Fellow Member, Colonel, USAF (Ret)*

Quality demonstrated over time provides strong evidence to establish a Quality Classic.  The B-17 Flying Fortress story is a perfect American Aviation Industry example.  The B-17 four-engine super bomber first model was designed in the early 1930s, made its first flight in 1935, put into production as the Y1B-17 in 1937 and ten years later 8,680 Flying Fortresses, the last model B-17G, had been manufactured.  Between 1935 and 1945 12,732 B-17s were produced.  It was one of the most modern aircraft in the U.S. inventory during Word War II.  It had a crew of ten, a ceiling of 35,600 feet, cruised at 263 mph, had thirteen M-2 50 caliber machine guns, and its bomb load could go as high as 17,600 pounds.  It flew mostly over Europe where 1000 B-17s could be assembled for mass combat missions, and 4,735 were lost on combat missions (www.b17.org).

On 4 April 2008, seventy-three years after its first flight, thirteen B-17s were still flying.  Our Son, Don Parker, booked Sue and me on a B-17G flight out of Gillespie Field Airport, near San Diego, to celebrate my 78^th birthday. 

The quality lessons learned from the B-17 seventy-three year history go far beyond the Boeing quality design, production, improvements and maintenance that kept the Flying Fortress operational and effective.  Here was a quality performance that played a major role in defeating Hitler’s Third Reich and terminated his vision of his Aryan-race world domination.  Without the quality performance of the B-17 Americans might be speaking German today. 

Quality over time of a national security system can have profound military, political and social implications.  I recommend that the American Society for Quality (ASQ) increase its historical analysis of the evolution of Quality Control and Sciences since 1950s using this perspective.  In this case, the quality of the B-17G changed history.

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"System Integration"
 By: By: Bob Krone, PhD, ASQ Fellow Member

When Dr. W. Edwards Deming, one of the Fathers of Quality Sciences, was asked during his seminars in the 1970s and 1980s "What is the first question you ask of corporate leadership?", his answer always was "Is there a system in place?"

I started teaching and administering in the University of Southern California’s Master of Science in Systems Management Degree Program (the MSSM) in 1976.  In traveling through Asia and Europe I used to check telephone books yellow pages for "Systems" in major cities.  In the late 1970s there was typically a sprinkling of companies with a System or Systems in their titles.  Today in 2008 when you search Google for "Systems" you get 67,200,000 hits.  Over the past fifty years the Systems Approach has penetrated every nation on Earth.  Systems are now an integral past of society as well as a Quality Classic.

In 1995 Mr. Raymond Tse, of Hong Kong, was joined with me, as a Ph.D. doctoral candidate super-visor for the International School of Business at the University of South Australia.  His thesis subject was Quality Management for the Hong Kong Aviation Department.  He was the manager for the construction of computer systems for the Chep Lok Kok Airport in Hong Kong -- at that time the largest construction project in the world.  Mr. Tse managed the creation of the most integrated civil airport aviation computer systems in the 1990s.  In one of our meetings in Hong Kong in 1996 he made the statement: "If systems are not integrated, failures will occur."

Leap forward ten years to America’s space program.  Systems integration is a well established practice in the International Space Station construction missions.  Over the past several years I have been working with professionals in the space community.¹  But space and global aviation are at the forefront of systems integration as the 21st Century begins.  The past failures caused by poor systems integration could fill a library and are occurring globally with increasing frequency.  

There is a principle invented by W. Ross Ashby that explains the failures.  Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety² states that the solution to a problem must have an equivalent set of variables as the problem.  Ashby created his law for cybernetics with an aircraft autopilot as one example.  For every possible change in the airplanes environment the autopilot sensors need to create a response.  My favorite air-plane was the F-105D Thunderchief.  It’s autopilot was so sophisticated that I could engage it in close formation flying with other F-105Ds.  It followed Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety perfectly.

At the 17 September 2008 Inland Empire ASQ Section 0711 meeting in Riverside, California, Quality Manager Paul Dougherty commented: "An airliner can land safely without a pilot, but there is no way to stop two trains on a collision course." It wasn’t a hypothetical statement.  He was referring to the head-on collision of a metrolink commuter train with a Union Pacific freight train in Chatsworth, California on 12 September 2008.  Twenty-five people died and 135 were injured in the worst light rail accident in United States history.  A rail safety professional was also at that meeting – Mr. John Schulz.  I asked Paul and John "Was poor systems integration a contributing cause of the accident?" There occurred an interesting discussion about the differences between the United Kingdom and US rail safety systems but the bottom line was "Yes, a lack of systems integration was a contributing factor in the Chatsworth accident."