Introduction
While dealing with customer services, one knows that the customer is always right. That is the usual concept accepted by most companies and businesses nowadays. However, it was not always the same.
The history of the idea of quality in services and production appeared in the 26th century BC when the earliest forms of design, planning, inventory management and bookkeeping came into play. However, it was not until 1900s when management realized the importance of quality control in business operation.
Up until the early 1980s, the quality was not really a priority in the West. The order of the day back at the time said: “Build it and they will come”. Yet, with the increase of competition among companies, quality and cost have become more and more compatible. The first to set the approach of this compatibility were the Japanese companies. Quality and customer service since the late 1970s have become major concern of most businesses worldwide, including the Airlines.
The first company to show compatibility of quality and price was Toyota Motor. The recent trenches of maintenance and other operation within the company evidence that the company can simultaneously take breakthroughs in cost and quality. Moreover, both areas were constantly improved by the management teams. This phenomenon is known as the “first paradox” of Toyota Motor. The whole system of production of the company was named lean-production.
Theory
In business world, the ideas of management were taking stronger positions since BC times. Homer described specialization into roles according to birth and merit. In the 4th century people were talking of hierarchy based on ability to reason. In such a way, rulers were educated, and their assistants were trained, as Plato wrote. In the middle ages, Descartes came up with the idea that complex thoughts should be decomposed into elementary ones, in such a way providing for logical reasoning.
Only in the 1900s the term management and quality management appeared in the form we perceive it nowadays. It was management that decided that customers know better, and that quality is essential. While observations and decomposing of complex ideas into elementary ones was the task of officers, the management was to decide on the analysis, basic execution, direction of the business. Management chooses techniques for the company to operate and deal with customers, and what role to give to quality. It was in the 1920s that Stewart described the Statistical Process Control. In the 1940s humanity was involved in the war effort, where standartization was all that mattered. A decade later Deming introduced the Statistical Quality Improvement and Continuous Improvement to Japan. Though an American scientist himself, the areas of his discovery in quality management and services made Japan’s market lead in the customer services and as a result – in sales, too. After Japan’s breakthrough, Western companies became concerned with their roles in the market. The famous talk-show at that time was “If Japan can, why can’t we?”. The show proved that “quality” as a management concept became a Western slogan in …