Page "Quality management system" Paragraph 14

The concept of quality as we think of it now first emerged out of the Industrial Revolution.

Previously goods had been made from start to finish by the same person or team of people, with handcrafting and tweaking the product to meet ' quality criteria '.

Mass production brought huge teams of people together to work on specific stages of production where one person would not necessarily complete a product from start to finish.

In the late 19th century pioneers such as Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford recognized the limitations of the methods being used in mass production at the time and the subsequent varying quality of output.

Birland established Quality Departments to oversee the quality of production and rectifying of errors, and Ford emphasized standardization of design and component standards to ensure a standard product was produced.

Management of quality was the responsibility of the Quality department and was implemented by Inspection of product output to ' catch ' defects.