The previous articles are laid out in the appendix.
Chapter 1 -- A history of quality, which the air conditioning industry missed
The 60's was an era of hippies and poor quality. Planes fell out of the sky, boilers exploded, and elevators dropped.
Aircraft - The first serious effort at quality was with aircraft parts and assemblies. At that time, the Toronto airport was a puddle, and TWA ruled the skies with two planes. The chance of a 'lemon' airplane (falling out of the sky) was one in a thousand per year. The industry realized that if they were to expand to thousands of jets, then they would be getting one major air disaster per year (or per day). But then, nobody would fly. So, they had to up their game.
This involved a huge effort with engineers and very smart people. Everything was done, from the sourcing of the metal to maintenance and overhaul. Today, there is nothing like the quality control of aircraft parts, and prices to match.
Boilers and elevators followed the aircraft industry.
Cars -- Old Detroit built cars like tanks, with the material stressed at 1% of capacity. No need for quality, but the Japanese had a problem Their stuff was regarded as shit, and they could never sell cars. They called in Demming, the quality expert, and he became their god. He knew a simple trick -- that quality issues were a binomial distribution with many inputs.
That distribution ensured that there was a 'jitter' to quality, such as the fit of a door. So, if you were plotting door gap, there would be a long history of a jitter. But binomial distribution ensured that you would expect an excursion of 3 times the jitter. That's when the door wouldn't fit, and the assemblers would bang it in with a hammer.
-to be continued
Appendix
Air conditioning cartel in Toronto
Lemon-aide for Air Conditioning, or 'Get l'aide'
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