Philip B. "Phil" Crosby, (June 18, 1926–August 18, 2001) was a businessman and author who contributed to management theory and quality management practices. June 18 is the 169th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (170th in leap years), with 196 days remaining. ... 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... August 18 is the 230th day of the year (231st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...

Crosby initiated the Zero Defects program at the Martin Company Orlando, Florida plant ^[1]. As the quality control manager of the Pershing missile program, Crosby was credited with a 25 percent reduction in the overall rejection rate and a 30 percent reduction in scrap costs. Zero Defects is a notional quality standard adopted within industry supply chains wherever large volumes of components are being purchased (common items such as nuts and bolts are good examples). ... The Glenn L. Martin Company was an aircraft company founded by aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin on August 16, 1912. ... Nickname: The City Beautiful, O-Town Location in Orange County and the state of Florida. ... The Pershing II Missile during a test flight The MGM-31 Pershing was a solid-fueled two-stage inertially guided medium range ballistic missile used by the U.S. Armys Missile Command. ...

In 1979 after a career at ITT, Crosby started the management consulting company Philip Crosby Association, Inc. This consulting group provided educational courses in quality management both at their headquarters in Winter Park, Florida and at eight foreign locations. Also in this year Crosby published his first business book, Quality Is Free. This book would become popular at the time because of the crisis in North American quality. During the late 1970s and into the 1980s North American manufacturers were losing to market share to Japanese products largely due to the superiority of quality of the Japanese products. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Management consulting (sometimes also called strategy consulting) refers to both the practice of helping companies to improve performance through analysis of existing business problems and development of future plans, as well as to the firms that specialize in this sort of consulting. ... Winter Park is a town located in Grand County, Colorado. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Crosby's response to the quality crisis was the principle of "doing it right the first time" (DRIFT). He would also include four major principles. First, quality is "conformance to requirements, second, management system is prevention, third, the performance standard is zero defects , and the measurement system is the cost of quality."

Crosby's prescription for quality improvement was a 14 step program. His belief was that a company that established a quality program will see savings that pays off the quality program and even more than expected. ("quality is free").

Books

• (c 1979) Quality is free: the art of making quality certain; New York: McGraw-Hill; ISBN 0-07-014512-1
• (1984) Quality Without Tears: The Art of Hassle-Free Management; New York: McGraw-Hill; ISBN 0-07-014511-3
• (1988) The Eternally Successful Organization: The Art of Corporate Wellness
• (1996) Quality is still free: Making Quality Certain in Uncertain Times; New York: McGraw-Hill; ISBN 0-07-014532-6
• (1999) Quality and Me: Lessons from an Evolving Life -- his autobiography published

References

1. ^ Harwood, William B (1993). Raise Heaven and Earth. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-0671-74998-6.

• The Five Pillars of TQM, Bill Creech, Truman Talley Books, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-452-27102-9 page 478
• The Quality Book, Greg Hutchens, published by QPE, Portland, OR, 1996 page 2-68

External links

• Philip Crosby's Essays and Writings
• Biography at the Philip Crosby website