Armand Vallin Feigenbaum

ARMAND VALLIN FEIGENBAUM Armand Vallin Feigenbaum born in 1922 is an American Quality Control expert and businessman. He received a bachelor’s degree from Union College, and his master’s degree and Ph.D from MIT. His career began with General Electric in 1937 as an apprentice toolmaker and management intern with the turbine, engine and transformer group. He went to Union College in Schenectedy,NY, in 1938 to study engineering while continuing his work at G.E. He focused on mathematics, statistics, engineering and economics. In 1942 he graduated and joined GE as a full-time design engineer. He was named manager of quality control for the Schenectady Works plant in 1943 at the age of 23. He went onto graduate school at MIT and was later promoted to corporate head quarters to serve as the executive champion for quality. Feigenbaum served as the world wide director of manufacturing operations and quality control at GE f0r 10 years (1958-1968). He later became president of general systems company Inc. In 1988 he was appointed to the board of overseers of the united states malcolm baldridge national quality award program. While at GE he applied the lessons he learned at MIT to examine observations about how productivity improvement could be achieved by driving quality in a different way than it had been . Dr.Armand Feigenbaum was the originator of Total Quality Control. He proposed this theory of TQC by using the lead of Demings idea of quality as a yardstick for success. His ideas came from his experiences being in charge of quality at GE. He was in constant contact with companies such as Hitachi and Toshiba during this time. By studying the quality procedures at these companies he realized the need for total approach to quality. Meaning that all processes and units related to quality must aim at creating a high quality end product. He believed that high quality could be achieved only through organizational support and that quality must be a priority