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profile:
Dr. Armand V.
Feigenbaum,
SM ‘48
President & CEO General Systems Company
This excerpt is a reprint from the Winter 2008 issue of the
MIT Sloan News and Insight for Alumni…
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Dr. Armand Feigenbaum describes a list of "absolutes of business" that he kept on the dust jacket of one of his textbooks when he first arrived at MIT Sloan. "Before coming to a final decision," he wrote over 50 years ago, "you need to take into account the developmental consequences, the human consequences, the economic consequences, the social consequences, and the technological consequences." This list, still tucked away somewhere deep in his library, has more or less remained a guidepost for his growth in management and operations. And it is a testament not only to the kind of multidimensional thinking that Dr. Feigenbaum has always brought to management, but also to just how formative Dr. Feigenbaum’s time at MIT Sloan was for him.
He published his first book on quality and management while still a student at MIT Sloan, and since then he has gone on to become one of the world’s leading thinkers and leaders in the quality field. His seminal book, Total Quality Control, has been translated into more than a dozen languages, and his ideas have influenced the way companies approach quality around the world.
Dr. Feigenbaum is now the president and CEO of General Systems Co., an engineering firm that designs and installs operational systems for corporations worldwide. He travels extensively through Europe, the United States, the Far East, and Latin America. He has authored five books, including the most recent, The Power of Management Capital. He was the founding chairman of the International Academy for Quality, and president of the American Society of Quality Control. He has received dozens of awards recognizing his contributions to the field of quality control, and he remembers his time at MIT as an important cornerstone to his amazing success.
"What you do to make quality better makes everything better," he says. "Meaningful growth is a way of bringing the entire organization focused together, and I think that one of the great strengths of MIT Sloan, among others, is the fact that you are exposed on the one hand to the economics department, and on the other to the very significant range of technology."
"When I went back recently I hadn’t been in the Sloan building in a very long time and the thing that struck me about it is that the feel hadn’t changed at all. I saw the folks sitting in the front window and there was a sense of commitment. That may sound strange, but I have been at it quite a while in management and leadership and you learn to sense commitment and involvement. It gives you a greater confidence in the organization with which you are dealing, and it was there. It was there. And I’m sure it will continue on in the new building."
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