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| After entering World War II in December 1941, the United States enacted legislation to help gear the civilian economy to military production. At that time, military contracts were typically awarded to manufacturers who submitted the lowest competitive bid. Upon delivery, products were inspected to ensure conformance to requirements. During this period, quality became a means to safety. Unsafe military equipment was clearly unacceptable, and the armed forces inspected virtually every unit of product to ensure that it was safe for operation. This practice required huge inspection forces and caused problems in recruiting and retaining competent inspection personnel. To ease the problems without compromising product safety, the armed forces began to utilize sampling inspection to replace unit-by-unit inspection. With the aid of industry consultants, particularly the Bell Laboratories, they adapted sampling tables and published them in a military standard: Mil-Std-105. The tables were incorporated into the military contracts themselves. In addition to creating military standards, the armed forces helped their suppliers improve their quality by sponsoring training courses in Shewhart’s statistical quality control (SQC) techniques. While the training led to quality improvements in some organizations, most companies had little motivation to truly integrate the techniques. As long as government contracts paid the bills, organizations’ top priority remained meeting production deadlines. Most SQC programs were terminated once the government contracts came to an end. |
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