Quality Management System Of Hammurabi

EVOLUTION OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT Quality has always been an issue in any industry since human history. It was found to be started since the Mesopotamian era (Rumane, 2011). A code of laws was established during the hegemony period by Hammurabi (1792 – 1750 BCE) or simply called as “First Dynasty of Babylon”. Hammurabi was well-known in his remarkable horrifying punishments (Andrews, 2013). The Code of Hammurabi consists of 282 laws and standards, all written in if-then form, which contains rules that shall be prevailed by the citizens in that era, such as commercial interactions and impose fines and punishments, as to resolve disputes and to achieve requirements of justice (Staff, 2009). One of these codes complied on the builders of this

Taylor (ASQ). His concept of quality management was to increase productivity of workmen instead of increasing the number of workmen. Skilled labour, or specialised experts were assigned to supervise the manufacturing process. However with the remarkable increase of productivity among workmen it brought a drawback on quality. Thus quality control department was born. This department was in-charged by quality inspectors in controlling quality of product in manufacturing

Manufacturers in Japan began producing civilian goods for trading of goods rather than military products. The reputation of Japanese products was poor at the international levels, and the products were sold at extremely low prices. This led Japanese organisations to modify and improve the quality of their products. The introduction of the concepts and techniques of modern quality control was made from US immediately after World War II (ASQ). Foreign expertise were highly welcomed to Japan for quality improvement, including two American quality experts, those are W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran. A new quality approach named total quality was then presented as Japan’s strategies in product quality improvement. Japanese companies paid attention on the improvement of all organisational processes instead of product inspection through the users. There comes the birth of higher-quality exports at lower prices by Japan (ASQ).

Such strategy gloomed the US market. Many of the US companies thought that Japan’s strategy was just giving lower prices for the product quality of that time during World War II. However they could not deny that the total quality approach applied on Japanese companies was effective, and thus induced the improvement on