A History of Quality Control: Consumer Power and Technical Change, 1920-1980

Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA

Investigators

Abstract

SES 99-11512 - Gail A. Cooper (Lehigh University) " A History of Quality Control: Consumer Power and Technical Change, 1920-1980" This analysis of quality control from 1923 to 1980 builds on a vibrant literature in the history of production methods and systems. From armory practice to mass production to flexible production, scholars have argued that how we produce goods is as important as what we produce. Though each study focuses on the factory -- an important arena for issues about economics, labor, and engineering expertise -- what happens there has broader implications for a national consensus on the proper role of industrial production in a democratic society. Quality control has been picked up again and again in the decades since its beginnings at AT&T Bell Laboratories to anchor distinctive production needs: it has been a central element in the emergency wartime expansion of production in World War II, in the rise of the postwar defense industry, in the new production systems in postwar Japan, and in domestic and international trade in general. Each of those systems depends upon a network of contracting. Quality control's continuing relevance to manufacturing comes not only from its promise of cost savings and better products, but also from the way in which it ties businesses together. It is the lynch pin of contracting, establishing a new agreement on acceptable standards for quality. This study will focus on the role of quality control in contracting networks. Such an approach is calculated to not only document its technical contributions but it explores the way in which it realigns the social relations in manufacturing. If quality control is important to contracting, contracts are a shaping influence on the spread of this new technology. Building on the premise that technical change is a disruptive element in the established social relations of manufacturing and commerce, The PI will examine the use of contractual obligations by buyers to force their suppliers to adopt the new technology. Thus this study follows a recent trend in the history of technology of examining industrial production within the context of the marketplace, yet it breaks new ground in its approach to consumerism. Rather than focusing on the buying power of a corpus of citizen-shoppers, this history explores the impact of contracting by corporate and military purchasers -- a vast economic exchange that rivals traditional consumer spending. By appraising the power of these institutional buyers to establish standards of quality, the PI hopes to capture the formative developments of the decades 1940-1980, when massive public expenditures on national defense begun during World War II were continued at heightened levels throughout the Cold War. This study will broaden our understanding of Cold War technology beyond new weapons systems to include new methods of industrial production, and critically examine the policy of promoting technical innovation through defense spending. The PI will conduct summer research in personal papers, company records, the archives of professional engineering societies, military procurement agencies, and engineering journals with the ultimate objective of producing a history of quality control. Such a history should be of interest to historians of American technology and business, in particular, and to historians of American culture, in general. In addition, it should be useful to policymakers who evaluate the role of quality manufacturing in international competitiveness, and corporate executives who employ national and international quality standards in their transactions with suppliers and customers.