Armand V Feingenbaum

Introduction:

Feingenbaum argued that the contribution of the manufacturing function in isolation is not enough for the production of high quality products. Feingenbaum became known to the Japanese at the same time as Deming and Juran. As head of quality at General Electric he had extensive contact with Japanese companies such as Hitachi and Toshiba.

FEINGENBAUM Approach:

Feingenbaum argued that the contribution of the manufacturing function in isolation is not enough for the production of high quality products. He concludes that:

'The underlying principle of the total quality view, and its basic difference from all other concepts, is that to provide genuine effectiveness, control must start with identification of customer quality requirements and end only when the product has been placed in the hands of a customer who remains satisfied. Total Quality Control guides the co-ordinated actions of people, machines, and information to achieve this goal. The first principle to recognize is that quality is everybody's job.'

From a quality consideration, Feingenbaum argues that new products progress in the factory through similar stages of what he terms the industrial cycle. He refers to three categories of stages:

1 New design control;

2 Incoming material controls;

3 Product or shop-floor control

He also made a major contribution by studying quality costs. He identifies the various costs in what he calls the 'hidden plant' the proportion of the total plant capacity which specifically deals with re-work and corrections. He considers that the size of the hidden plant can amount to 15-40% of the total plant capacity.