UNIVERSITY OF GUAYAQUIL

MEMBERS:
GABY CARDENAS MEZA
IRINA CONTRERAS BELTRAN
KATHERINE RAMOS MORA
ARIANNA SANCHEZ TELLO

SUBJECT:
QUALITY MANAGEMENT

TEACHER:
SONIA AMBROSSI
COURSE:
8/12

THE EVOLUTION OF QUALITY AT XEROX

The Xerox 914, the first plain- paper copier, was introduced in 1959. During the 1960s
Xerox grew rapidly, selling a lilt could produce and reached $1 billion in revenue record
setting time. By the mid- 1970s its return on assets was in the low 20 percent range.
Facing a competitive Crisis
Several Japanese companies introduced high-quality, low volume copiers, that
Xerox had virtually ignored, the Federal Trade Commission accused Xerox of
illegally monopolizing the copier business, early 1980s it faced a serious
competitive threat from copy machine manufacturers in Japan; Xerox market share
had fallen to less tan 50 %.
Which in 1983 amounted to nearly 2 billion Xerox discovered that it had nine times as
many suppliers, twice as many employees, cycle times that were twice as long defects
in finished products.

Leadership through Quality

In 1983 Xerox needed a long- range, comprehensive quality strategy as well as a change
in its traditional management culture. He commissioned a team to outline a quality
strategy for Xerox, Xerox would initiative a total quality management approach, that
they would take the time to design it right the first time Kearns and the company top
25 managers wrote the Xerox Quality Policy, Xerox is a quality company. Quality is the
basic business principle for Xerox. Quality mean as providing our external and internal
customers with innovative products and services that fully satisfy their requirements.
This policy led to a process called Leadership through Quality, which have 3 objectives:
1. Still quality as the basic business principle in Xerox and to ensure that quality
improvement becomes the job of very Xerox person
2. - to ensure that Xerox people, individually and collectively, provide our external and
internal customers.
3. - To establish, as a way of life, management and work processes that enable all
Xerox.
Four goals in all Xerox activities:
- Customers Goals
- Employees goals
- Business Goals
- Process Goals
Bench arming Identifying and studying the companies and organizations that best
perform critical business functions and then in corporating those organizations ideas
into the firms operations.
Every month 40,000 surveys were mailed to customers, and administrative support. In
1988 about 79% of Xerox employees were involved in quality improvement teams.
Xerox worked with suppliers to improve their processes and support a just-in-time
inventory concept.
In 1980 the company signed a contract with the principal union, the amalgamated
clothing and textile workers, encouraging union members participation in quality
improvement processes. Managers were required to practice quality in their daily
activities and to promote Leadership Trough Quality among their peers and
subordinates. Reward and recognition systems were modified to focus on team work
and quality results.
Xeroxs business Products and Systems organization received the Malcom Baldrige
National Quality Award in 1989
Xerox learned that customer satisfaction plus employee motivation and satisfaction
resulted in increased market share and improved return on assets Crisis and Quality
Renewal.
At the turn on of the century, resulted in a significant stock Price drop and a new crisis.
In 2001 and leading to the currentLean Six Sigma initiative. Six sigma became more
popular across the United States; this approach was refined around a structured, Six
Sigma-based improvement process with more emphasis on behaviors and leadership to
achieve performance excellence.
The heart of Xeroxs Lean Six Sigma is the performance excellent process.

1. - Contrast Leadership for Quality and Lean Six Sigma as quality initiatives for
Xerox. How did their motivations differ? What differences or similarities are
evident in the principles behind these initiatives and the way in which they were
implemented?
The most important and primary motivation that wakened up Xerox and caused it to act
and apply the Leadership Through Quality initiative was losing the market shares to the
Japanese competitors. Due to its innovative products that gave it a competitive
advantage over other competitors in the marketplace during the 1960s, Xeroxs top
management got relaxed and ignored the subject of total quality in the following years,
and viewed quality as a technical discipline rather as a management discipline.
Eventually, the company sustained gross losses as a result of the absence of the total
quality management concept and its associated principles and practices as well. On the
other hand, the failure in mastering the new technology and predicting its social and
economical impacts plus the deficiency in training and educating the employees about
quality, which caused a decrease in the quality focus by the top corporate management,
led to the second crisis. Thus, Xeroxs top management feverishly strived to find cures
to recover the companys focus on quality which resulted in the birth of the Lean Six
Sigma initiative as a strategic plan.
The Leadership through Quality was considered as the magical recipe for the
improvement of the companys performance and bringing it from running at a loss to
profitability. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, Xeroxs products lacked quality and
failed in satisfying its customers needs as well as exceeding their expectations. So,
improving and assuring its products quality was the key aspect in the radical reform of
the organization. And to achieve this objective, the total quality managements
principles and practices were applied and put into the service of making a
comprehensive change in the companys traditional management, and consolidating
quality as a belief and a basic business principle in all Xeroxs activities and work
processes. This led to more encouraging working environment for the employees and
ultimately more customers satisfaction. However, this success didnt last forever.
Again, the market places roles had changed and Xerox failed to catch up. The modern
technology and the insufficient training of Xeroxs employees at all levels were the
reasons behind the second crisis. Yet Leadership Through Quality helped in increasing
the market shares and improving the returns on assets by achieving the customer
satisfaction and the employees motivation, it lacked the continuous inspection of the
customer values and business results based on both market trends and benchmarking. In
contrast, Lean Six Sigma initiative was more effective as a long term strategy and
provided more flexibility to adapt to the market variables and the customers behaviors
since it applied the performance excellence process based on the benchmarking and the
Six Sigma approach. Furthermore, by applying the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze,
improve, and control) methodology, Lean Six Sigma insured the business sustainability
in the market place with minimum coasts and waste as well.
Generally speaking, both initiatives have a number of differences, but they do have
something in common too. For instance, both strategies considered quality as a matter
of management, leading to quality assurance at all levels in the organization which
maintains the competitiveness in the market. Also, they targeted the internal and the

external customers satisfaction as an ultimate goal to reach the predictable business

results.
2. - What lessons might Xeroxs experiences particularly in responding to the
new crisis have for other organizations?
The lessons that are evident in this experience are that excellence in quality requires
excellence in management, that you cant take your eye off the ball if you aspire to
high levels of quality, and that new competitive challenges require new approaches.
In Xeroxs first lesson, a repeat of what happened in the early 1980s with different
players, there were a number of management problems that occurred at Xerox in the late
1990s and early 2000s that distracted them from what was happening with customers,
employees, and the competitive environment. As a result (the second lesson), not much
attention was paid to maintaining, much less improving, quality approaches that had
been so successful several years earlier. Results were spotty, and efforts were pointed
toward making the bottom line look good. The third lesson that became painfully
clear was that simply training employees, without management commitment and
involvement no longer worked.
A Business Week article on March 5, 2001 detailed the many woes of Xerox, especially
as it related to top management power struggles and failures to adapt to a rapidly
changing technological environment. If one accepts the premise that changing the
corporate culture is a necessity for TQ to take root in organizations, then it appears to an
outsider that their culture was never really changed, despite their quality successes in
the past. Their succession of CEOs, from Kearns to Allaire to the recently fired
Thoman, made necessary changes to fix problems that were evident at the time, but
none of these senior leaders were successful in changing the culture of the copier
bureaucracy, the Burox, as they were called, inside the company. Also, as stated
earlier, it is much easier to build and sustain TQ when management has a clear vision, a
focus on customers and continuous improvement, strong measurement systems, a crossfunctional orientation, and high employee morale. Recently, that has not been the case
at Xerox. Both Allaire, who never made a clean break after retiring as CEO, and
Thoman, who was an outsider brought in from IBM, were accused of having their
reach exceed their grasp when it came to grand strategies that could not be successfully
carried out at an operating level. Can one place blame on its quality management
approaches? Probably not, since the TQ approach was highly successful in helping to
turn the company around in the 1980s when it was properly implemented. But due to
recent strategic and management failures, it was not sustained in the rapid sweep of
technological change that Xerox was caught up in.
As the new Chairman and CEO, Ann Mulcahy, settled in and made what some
considered being radical changes, the jury was (and is) still out on whether her new
quality initiatives will contribute substantially to a new turnaround.
3. - Discuss the meaning of quality is a race without a finish line. What is its
significance to Xerox, or to any organization?
Quality is a race with no finish line, this means that we live in a constantly changing
world and therefore everything is in motion.

Nowadays people have ideas that are surrounded by the environment around them, then
what for a time was perfect morning or after it is no longer, so the market is constantly
evolving to meet the needs of persons.
From the initiation of leadership through quality, until the organization of products and Xerox
Business Systems won the National Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award in 1989, some the
impacts of greater value leadership through quality included:
Rejection rates of the assembly line were reduced from 10,000 parts per million300
parts per million.
95% of the parts received from suppliers no longer required inspection; 1989, 30 US
suppliers had no defect throughout the year.
The number of suppliers was reduced from 5,000 to less than 500? The cost of parts or
pieces acquired 45% reduction.
Despite inflation, manufacturing costs were reduced 2O%.
The product development time was reduced by 60%.
The overall product quality improved 93%.

Xerox has learned that customer satisfaction, more motivation and satisfaction employees,
resulting in increased market penetration and higher profits. In 1989.