THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: A LIVELY PERIOD FOR THE QUALITY CONTROL

It is generally agreed that management and accounting can only be understood in its organizational and social context (Miller, 1994). In this sense, several case studies have addressed management techniques in specific eighteenth-century organizations with regards to the improvement of the quality in the factory (Cox, 1990; and Gutiérrez and Romero, 2001). Concretely, the present work shows the regulation and several examples about quality decisions taken ad hoc in the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville in the second half of the 18th century. These decisions affected to the full production process. Therefore, some of them affected to the beginning of the process (i.e. Tobacco cultivation in America); while others dealt with the machinery of the factory; and finally others were taken having in mind their effects in the customers taste. Thus, this study provides a more precise perception about what quality meant in the operational decision process. This study should help shed some light on the genesis of present quality control practice and should be especially useful to professionals in quality control or anyone else interested in control or manufacturing processes.