Philip Crosby’s Biography
Philip Crosby was born in the United States in 1926, in Wheeling West Virginia. In 1952 worked as engineer at Crosley Corporation and, in 1957 started as quality manager at Martin-Marietta. Was at this last one that he developed the famous concept “zero defects”. In 1965 was elected vice president at ITT, where he worked for 14 years. In 1979 founded Philip Crosby Associates and launched his famous work Quality is Free, a true quality classic that sold over 2,5 million copies and was translated into 15 languages. In 1991 created the training company Career IV, Inc. In 1996 released a new book entitled Quality Is Still Free.
His name will always be associated to the concepts “zero defects” and “do it right the first time”. In his opinion, quality means accordance with the specifications, which vary depending on the companies depending on the clients’ needs. The goal should always be to have zero defects and not only produce well enough. According to Crosby, this extremely ambitious goal will encourage people to continuously improve. Also defends that zero defects isn’t just a slogan but instead a true standard of management performance and justifies this idea with the question: “If mistakes are not permitted in financial management why it’s not done the same in the industrial area?”. Crosby considers prevention as the main quality originator, for that the non preventive techniques like inspection, test and control are little effective. As an alternative, presents a preventive “vaccine” that has three ingredients: determination, training and leadership. In his famous 14 points for the quality improvement Crosby faces this effort as a continuous process and not a program for that the quality improvement should be permanently pursued.
According to Crosby, the true responsible for the lack of quality are the managers, and not the employees. The initiatives for quality should come from up to bottom and for that it’s necessary the commitment of the top management and the employees’ technical training in instruments of quality improvement.
