Modern quality assurance began in China during the Zhou Dynasty, where specific governmental departments were created and given responsibility for supply chain management, production and manufacturing, formulating and executing quality standards, and supervision and inspection. Central control was implemented and the central government issued policies and procedures to control production across China; products such as Utensil, carts, and cotton and silks t hat are under standard quality are not allowed to be sold on the market.
During the Age of Craftsmanship, the craftsperson served both as manufacturer and inspector to dealt directly with customers and to ensure that craftspeople are adequately trained to ensure that the quality was built into the products. In the middle of eighteenth century, Thomas Jefferson brought the idea of a French gunsmith named Honore Blanc to supply its armed forces with standard pattern of muskets, and Eli Whitney designed special machine and trained unskilled employees to make parts of the musket in fixed designed. However, because Whitney has underestimated the effect of variation in the production process, he spent more than 10 years to complete the project, thereby the importance of quality assurance was recognized.
In the early 1900s, Frederick W. Taylor separated the planning function from the execution function, companies were also focusing on increasing efficiency, and the quality assurance fell into the hands of inspectors. Moreover, manufacturing companies created separate quality department, concluding that the quality was the responsibility of the quality department, therefore upper managers gained little knowledge about quality, they were unable to deal with the quality crisis when the quality crisis hit. Time turns to 1982, when Ford executives visited Japan to study Japanese management practices, a book written by