TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT; More on TQM

The Principle of Total Quality management is key in driving organizations growth and customer loyalty,

several scholars like Juran and walter did a lot to further the advancement of total quality management principles..

 

I have this piece for you to show you more about Total Quality Management (TQM)

 

 

 

In the early 1980s when organizations in the West seriously became interested in quality and its management there were many attempts to construct lists and frameworks to help this process.

In the West the famous American ‘gurus’ of quality management, such as Dr. Walter Shewhart,  W. Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran and Philip B. Crosby started to try to make sense of the confusion of issues involved, including the tremendous competitive performance of Japan’s manufacturing industry. Deming and Juran had contributed to building Japan’s success in the 1950s and 1960s and it was appropriate that they should set down their ideas for how organizations could achieve success.

 

Dr. Walter Shewhart

TQM, in the form of statistical quality control, was invented by Walter A. Shewhart. Walter Shewhart, then working at Bell Telephone Laboratories first devised a statistical control chart in 1923; it is still named after him. He published his method in 1931 as Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product. The method was first introduced at Western Electric Company's Hawthorn plant in 1926.

• The Shewhart Cycle - PDCA Problem Solving Process:
• Plan – what changes are desirable? What data is needed?
• Do – carry out the change or test decided upon
• Check – observe the effects of the change or the test
• Act – what we learned from the change should lead to improvement or activity
• Referred to as the “Father of Statistical Quality Control”

Dr. Edwards Deming

W. Edwards Deming, trained as a mathematician and statistician, went to Japan at the request of the U.S. State Department to help Japan in the preparation of the 1951 Japanese Census. The Japanese were already aware of Shewhart's methods of statistical quality control. They invited Deming to lecture on the subject. A series of lectures took place in 1950 under the auspices of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers. Deming had developed a critical view of production methods in the U.S. during the war, particularly methods of quality control. Management and engineers controlled the process; line workers played a small role. In his lectures on SQC Deming promoted his own ideas along with the technique, namely a much greater involvement of the ordinary worker in the quality process and the application of the new statistical tools. He found Japanese executive receptive to his ideas.

Deming had fourteen points to help management as follows:

1.    Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service.

2.    Adopt the new philosophy. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective workmanship.

3.    Cease dependence on mass inspection. Require, instead statistical evidence that quality is built in.

4.    End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price   tag.

5.    Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the   system.

6.    Institute modern methods of training on the  job.

7.    Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers. The responsibility of foremen must be changed from numbers to quality.

8.    Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the   company.

9.    Break down barriers between departments.

10.     Eliminate numerical goals, posters and slogans for the workforce asking for new levels of productivity without providing methods.

11.     Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical  quotas.

12.      

13.     Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and his right to pride of workmanship.

14.     Institute a vigorous programme of education and  retraining.

15.     Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the above thirteen points.

Dr. Joseph Juran

Joseph Juran was one of the people trained in the technique. In 1928 he wrote a pamphlet entitled Statistical Methods Applied to Manufacturing Problems. This pamphlet was later incorporated into the AT&T Statistical Quality Control Handbook, still in print. In 1951 Juran published his very influential Quality Control Handbook.

Juran’s ten steps to quality improvement were:

1.    Build awareness of the need and opportunity for improvement.

2.    Set goals for improvement.

3.    Organize to reach the goals (establish a quality council, identify problems, select projects, appoint teams, designate facilitators).

4.    Provide training.

5.    Carry out projects to solve problems.

6.    Report progress.

7.    Give recognition.

8.    Communicate results

9.    Keep score.

10.     Maintain momentum by making annual improvement part of the regular systems and processes of the company.

Phil Crosby, who spent time as Quality Director of ITT, had ‘four   absolutes:’

•         Definition – conformance to requirements.

•         System – prevention.

•         Performance standard – zero defects.

•         Measurement – price of non-conformance.

He also offered management fourteen steps to improvement:

1.    Make it clear that management is committed to  quality.

2.    Form quality improvement teams with representatives from each department.

3.    Determine where current and potential quality problems lie.

4.    Evaluate the cost of quality and explain its use as a management   tool.

5.    Raise the quality awareness and personal concern of all employees.

6.    Take actions to correct problems identified through previous steps.

7.    Establish a committee for the zero defects  programme.

8.    Train supervisors to actively carry out their part of the quality improvement programme.

9.    Hold a ‘zero defects day’ to let all employees realize that there has been a change.

10.     Encourage individuals to establish improvement goals for themselves and their groups.

11.     Encourage employees to communicate to management the obstacles they face in attaining their improvement goals.

12.     Recognize and appreciate those who participate.

13.     Establish quality councils to communicate on a regular  basis.

14.     Do it all over again to emphasize that the quality improvement programme never ends.

Philip Crosby:

 The Four Absolutes of Quality Management:

•  Quality is conformance to requirements
• Quality prevention is preferable to quality inspection
• Zero defects is the quality performance standard
• Quality is measured in monetary terms – the price of non-conformance

14 Steps to Quality Improvement:

1. Management is committed to quality – and this is clear to all
2. Create quality improvement teams – with (senior) representatives from all departments.
3. Measure processes to determine current and potential quality issues.
4. Calculate the cost of (poor) quality
5. Raise quality awareness of all employees
6. Take action to correct quality issues
7. Monitor progress of quality improvement – establish a zero defects committee.
8. Train employees in quality improvement
9. Hold “zero defects” days
10. Encourage employees to create their own quality improvement goals
11. Encourage employee communication with management about obstacles to quality
12. Recognize participants’ effort
13. Create quality councils
14. Do it all over again – quality improvement does not end

Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa

• Known as father of Japanese quality control effort
• Established concept of Company Wide Quality Control (CWQC) - participation from the top to the bottom of an organization and from the start to the finish of the product life cycle
• Started Quality Circles – bottom up approach - members from within the department and solve problems on a continuous basis
• The fishbone diagram is also called Ishikawa diagram in his honor
• Introduced concept that the next process is your customer

Quality award models

Quality frameworks may be used as the basis for awards for a form of ‘self- assessment’ or as a description of what should be in  place.

DEMING AWARD PRIZE

The earliest approach to a total quality audit process is that established in the Japanese-based ‘Deming Prize’, which is based on a highly demanding and intrusive process. The categories of this award were established in 1950 when the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) instituted the prize(s) for ‘contributions to quality and dependability of product’ (www.juse.or.jp/e/deming).

As the Deming Award guidelines say, there is no easy success at this time of constant change and no organization can expect to build excellent quality management systems just by solving problems given by others:

They need to think on their own, set lofty goals and drive themselves to challenge for achieving those goals. For these organizations that introduce and implement TQM in this manner, the Deming Prize aims to be used as a tool for improving and transforming their business management.

 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA).

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) was developed in the United States in the late 1980s. It is composed of two solid crystal pieces 14 inches high, is presented annually to recognize companies in the USA that have excelled in quality management and quality achievement. But  it is not the award itself, or even the fact that it is presented each year by the President of the USA which has attracted the attention of most organizations, it is the excellent framework for TQM and organizational self-assessments.

Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, as it is now known, aims  to:

•         help improve organizational performance practices, capabilities and results

•         facilitate communication and sharing of best practices information

•         serve as a working tool for understanding and managing performance and for guiding, planning and opportunities for learning.

The award criteria are built upon a set of inter-related core values and  concepts:

•         visionary leadership

•         customer-driven excellence

               

Figure 2.2

Baldrige criteria for performance excellence framework

•         organizational and personal learning

•         valuing employees and partners

•         agility

•         focus on the future

•         managing for innovation

•         management by fact

•         public responsibility and citizenship

•         focus on results and creating value

•         systems developments.

These are embodied in a framework of seven categories which are used to assess organizations:

1.        Leadership

•         organizational leadership

•         public responsibility and citizenship

2.        Strategic planning

•         strategy development

•         strategy deployment

3.        Customer focus

•         customer and market knowledge

•         customer relationships and satisfaction

4.        Measurement, analysis and knowledge management

•         measurement and analysis of organizational performance

•         information management

24              The foundations of TQM

5.        Work force focus

•         work systems

•         employee education training and development

•         employee well-being and satisfaction

6.        Operations focus

•         product and service processes

•         business processes

•         support processes

7.        Results

•         customer focused results

•         financial and market results

•         human resource results

•         organizational effectiveness results.

Figure 2.2 shows how the framework’s system connects and integrates the categories. The main driver is the senior executive leadership which creates the values, goals and systems, and guides the sustained pursuit of quality and performance objectives. The system includes a set of well-defined and designed processes for meeting the organization’s direction and performance requirements. Measures of progress provide a results-oriented basis for channelling actions to deliver ever- improving customer values and organization performance. The overall goal is the delivery of customer satisfaction and market success leading, in turn, to excellent business results. The seven criteria categories are further divided into items and areas to address. These are described in some detail in the ‘Criteria for Performance Excellence’ available from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in Gaithesburg USA (www.nist.gov/baldrige).

The Baldrige Award led to a huge interest around the world in quality award frameworks that could be used to carry out self-assessment and to build an organization-wide approach to quality, which was truly integrated into the business strategy. It was followed in Europe in the early 1990s by the launch of the European Quality Award by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). This framework was the first one to include ‘Business Results’ and to really represent the whole business model.

Like the Baldrige, the ‘EFQM Excellence Model’, as it is now known, recognizes that processes are the means by which an organization harnesses and releases the talents of its people to produce results/performance. Moreover, improvement in performance can be achieved only by improving the processes by involving the people. This simple model is shown in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.4 displays graphically the ‘non-prescriptive’ principles of the full Excellence Model. Essentially customer results, people (employee) results and favourable society results are achieved through leadership driving strategy, people, partnerships & resources and processes, products & systems, which lead ultimately to excellence in key results – the enablers deliver the results which in turn drive learning, creativity & innovation. The EFQM have provided a weighting for each of the criteria which may be used in scoring self-assessments and making awards (see Chapter 8).

Through usage and research, the Baldrige and EFQM Excellence models have continued to grow in stature since their inception. They were recognized as descriptive

Models and frameworks for TQM                                                                                                                25

                                                               

Figure 2.3

The simple model for improved performance

Figure 2.4

The EFQM Excellence Model

26              The foundations of TQM

holistic business models, rather than just quality models and mutated into frameworks for (Business) Excellence.

The NIST and EFQM have worked together well over recent years to learn from each other’s experience in administering awards and supporting programmes, and from organizations which have used their frameworks ‘in anger’.

The EFQM publications on the Excellence Model capture much of this learning and provide a framework which organizations can use to follow ten   steps:

1.    set direction through leadership

2.    establish the results they want to  achieve

3.    establish and drive the strategy

4.    set up and manage appropriately their approach to processes, people, partnerships and resources

5.    deploy the approaches to ensure achievement of the strategies and thereby the results

6.    assess the ‘business’ performance, in terms of customers, their own people and society results

7.    assess the achievements of key performance results

8.    review performance for strengths and areas for improvement

9.    innovate to deliver performance improvements

10.     learn more about the effects of the enablers on the  results.

THE FOUR PS AND THREE CS OF TQM – A MODEL FOR TQM & OPEX

We have seen in Chapter 1 how processes are the key to delivering quality of products and services to customers. It is clear from Figure 2.4 that processes are a key linkage between the enablers of planning (leadership driving policy and strategy, partnerships and resources), through people into the performance of people, society, customers and key outcomes.

These ‘four Ps’ form the basis of a simple model for TQM and provide the ‘hard management necessities’ to take organizations successfully into the twenty-first century. These form the structure of the remainder of this  book.

From the early TQM frameworks, however, we must not underestimate the importance of the three Cs – Culture, Communication and Commitment. The TQM model is complete when these ‘soft outcomes’ are integrated into the four Ps framework to move organizations successfully forward (Figure 2.5).

This TQM model, based on the extensive work done during the last century, provides a simple framework for excellent performance, covering all angles and aspects of an organization and its  operation.

Performance is achieved, using a business excellence approach, and by planning the involvement of people in the improvement of processes. This has to  include:

•         Planning – the development and deployment of policies and strategies; setting up appropriate partnerships and resources; and designing in quality.

Models and frameworks for TQM                                                                                                                27

Figure 2.5

The framework for total quality management

•       Performance – establishing a performance measure framework – a ‘balanced scorecard’ for the organization; carrying out self-assessment, audits,  reviews and benchmarking.

•       Processes – understanding, management, design and redesign; quality management systems; continuous improvement.

•       People – managing the human resources; culture change; teamwork; communications; innovation and learning.

Wrapping around all this to ensure successful implementation is, of course, effective leadership and commitment, the subject of the next chapter.

28              The foundations of TQM

 

REFERENCES

BQF (British Quality Foundation), The Model in Practice and The Model in Practice 2, London, 2000 and 2002.

EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management), The EFQM Excellence Model, Brussels, 2013, National Institute of Standard and Technology, USA Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Criteria   for

Performance Excellence, NIST, Gaithesburg, 2013.

Pyzdek, T. and Keller. P., The Handbook for Quality Management; A Complete Guide to Operational  Excellence

(2nd edn), ASQ, Milwaukee, 2013.

Summers, D.C.S., Quality Management (2nd edn), Prentice Hall, London,  2008.