TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM)
OUTCOME 1
Total stands for the complete or whole, quality means degree of excellence or the quantum of value a product or service has, and management includes the techniques of organizing, controlling, directing, leading and coordinating various resources like men, machinery, money, and material.
TQM is achieved when the organization culture is defined by and supports the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through an integrated system of tools, techniques, and training. This involves the continuous improvement of organization processes, resulting in high quality products and services.
Total quality management in its modern form was evolved by Japanese industry in the 1940’s and 1950’s through concepts like quality circles and quality control. This approach helped
It was very successful in
Definition
Total quality management is a management approach of an organization centered on quality, based on the participation of all members, aiming at long term success through continuously improving product and service quality, to achieve high level of customer satisfaction, and provide benefits to all members of organization and society.
Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that affects its ability to satisfy stated or implied customer needs.
Total quality management is also a management strategy which is aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all employees and in all processes of an organization.
Why quality needs to be managed?
• Question of survival in an intense competitive environment. In these times of globalization and increased competition between company’s, an organization will only exist if provides its customers the best quality product or service which money can buy.
• Increasing Customer Consciousness. Customers are getting more accurate information about the products and services available and the companies offering them through internet, newspapers, television, and various other media. This information gives the customers knowledge and increases their power over companies.
• Need for earning profit instead of making profit. Companies are now expected to offer good quality product/service and charge a fair price in exchange. Gone are the days when firms made more money than they deserved.
Quality can be quantified as follows
Q = quality
P = performance
E = expectations
Q = P/E
If Q is greater than 1.0, then the customer has a good feeling about the product or service. Of course, the determination of P and E will almost likely be based on perception with the organization determining performance and the customer determining expectations.
Ingredients of TQM
• Leadership: Involvement by top management. The leadership of an organization should not only pay lip service to improving quality but also should set an example by enhancing the quality of their work too. The management should show commitment to improving quality and provide the employees with sufficient funds and resources to implement TQM. A quality council must be established to develop a clear vision, set long tem goals, and direct the program.
• Participatory: Every process, job, person must contribute to improvement of quality. TQM is an organization-wide challenge that is everyone’s responsibility. All personnel must be trained in TQM, statistical process control (SPC), and other appropriate quality improvement skills so they can effectively participate on project teams. All those who are affected by the plan must be involved in its development and implementation.
• System approach: It’s the integration of various aspects of an organization. Systems approach is a way of management in which the organization is broken down into smaller components and equal attention and importance is given to all the sub systems. This approach believes in improving the quality of the organization by improving the quality of each of its sub systems. All departments are equally important in an organization.
• Continuous improvement: Quest for progress and improvement is the focus in TQM. There must be a continual striving to improve all business and production processes. Quality improvement projects, such as on-time-delivery, order entry efficiency, billing error rate, customer satisfaction, scrap reduction, and supplier management, are good places to begin.
• Total customer satisfaction: This is a key objective of improving quality. The key to an effective TQM program is its focus on the customer. An excellent place to start is by satisfying internal customers. We must listen to the “voice of the customer” and emphasize design quality and defect prevention.
TQM Cornerstones
• TQM begins and ends with customers. Absolute customer focus is essential for the success of any quality improvement program and in particular TQM. Delighting the customer in exceeding his/her expectation is the aim of TQM. To achieve this aim, it is very important to anticipate customer expectation and to gather all information about their needs. Hence, before the TQM is designed and implemented it becomes essential that the customer is involved from the beginning.
• Decisions based on facts and data. Any decision related to quality improvement should be taken only after gathering all relevant data (customers, suppliers, materials needed, internal capabilities, dealers, owners, government, and the general public). An effort should also be made to be sure that the available information or data is true. Decision making based on half information or on untruths will be counterproductive.
• Improvement a thing of daily life. The workers, managers and all stakeholders in the production process should be trained in a way that will make them realize that constant improvement is very important. Whatever is the task, the employees should always strive for doing it in a better way than before, and this will automatically ensure better quality.
• Partnership with customers and suppliers. Unless a special relationship is established with both suppliers and customers, it will be impossible to improve quality. Suppliers are very important because they are the source of all raw materials, tools, and machinery which is used in the process of production. If they do not supply inputs of high quality then it will be impossible to improve quality of the final product.
• Empowerment of Workers. This perhaps is one of the most important factors needed to improve quality. Empowerment involves giving all the employees a say in planning, decision making and in allocation of resources. Empowerment makes the workers more committed to the organization and also helps in improving the morale of the employees thereby making them highly productive.
• Ownership of responsibility. Business objectives should be clearly defined, they should be communicated to all employees, responsibilities should be clearly divided and all employees should be made accountable for their objectives. This is how objectives can be “owned” by all employees.
OUTCOME 2
Organization for TQM
A traditional structure will not be able to implement TQM, hence it is essential that a special structure should be created for TQM promotion. A structure which consists of highly specialized problem solving teams and clear and precise control points should be created.
It may be complicated in the beginning hence it is advisable that a basic structure is first created in which the CEO learns the concepts of TQM. The CEO needs a coordinator reporting to him and a steering committee which is given the responsibility of TQM implementation.
TQM Structure
A typical TQM structure consists of the following
• An Apex TQM steering committee, with all powers and organization wide responsibility, with a full time coordinator leading it.
• Divisional TQM steering committee with a full time coordinator which is responsible quality improvement in the respective division of an organization.
• Departmental TQM steering committee with part-time TQM champions, whose responsibility is restricted to the boundaries of a particular department.
Roles of TQM Coordinators
• As a coordinator the roles of the TQM coordinator may be many. Some of them are as follows; designing, planning, educating, facilitating, reviewing, building, convincing and acting as secretary.
• Steering committee provides direction and goals, allocates resources, conducts regular review and carries out tasks/events. A TQM coordinator plays a role in all these activities.
• As a leader of the TQM teams a coordinator plays the roles of a planner, organizer, controller, etc in all activates taken up by the teams. Examples of the TQM teams are certain steering committees, Quality Circles and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) circles, etc.
1. Sponsor. In this role the coordinator uses his influence over the members of the TQM team and educates them about all its processes and advantages. He also uses the authority given by the management to get the teams work done effectively.
2. Team Leader. A coordinator leads the team in all aspects and manages it.
3. Facilitator. The coordinator plays the role of a catalyst in a team. In this role he facilitates the processes and speeds up work. He gives new ideas, provides adequate resources whenever necessary, and helps in faster decision making.
4. Team Member. In this role a coordinator works with the team as a member to solve problems and to meet any crisis. Not only is a coordinator the leader of the team but also is a very active worker/member.
Training for TQM
Employees of any organization cannot be expected to become experts of TQM and begin to improve quality by just educating them about the advantages of TQM and disseminating information to them. The following are some of the mechanisms which can be used to train employees to adopt TQM.
• Class room education: Employees should be exposed to seminars, classes, theoretical sessions, etc wherein a resources person tries to give them all information about TQM and clear any doubts. These class room sessions can be held by an external resource person outside the organization or internally within the organization.
• Self development: The employees can also be encouraged to acquire knowledge in TQM through distance education from an open university or any other training institution. When promotions or increase in salary is linked to acquiring qualifications like these, it will be more effective.
• Mutual development: A team approach to problem solving is superior to individual approach because of the contributions from different people with different experiences and backgrounds. Hence, team problem solving is a technique in which employees can be trained in the processes of TQM.
• On the job training: It’s an effective way of training in which the employees are given TQM based assignments and they learn the TQM procedure by practice.
• Mentoring: In this method of training the employee is made to work under an experienced TQM expert, an advisor, in the hope that the employee learns the TQM process.
In most companies, managements use more than one of the above techniques to implement TQM in their organizations.
OUTCOME 3
Key Success factors of TQM
· Clear aims and objectives. There should be no confusion regarding the aims and objectives of the TQM process. The objectives should match the overall company objectives, the customers’ expectations, the aspirations of the employees and all other stakeholders too.
· Commitment of top management. Unless and until the top management shows long term interest and commitment to the TQM process it will not succeed. The top managers should act as role models for the rest of the employees and motivate them to enhance the quality of their output.
· Devotion of time and resources for TQM. Adequate resources like enough time, money, equipment, material, manpower, etc., should be made available to the people implementing the TQM process in the organization.
· Personal qualities of vision, courage, honesty and determination should be inculcated in all members of the organization. This will ensure that there is trust and understanding among the members of the organization. An ethical approach adopted by those implementing TQM will also contribute to better trust and enhanced confidence in the management.
· Careful analysis and planning is very essential to identify any problems which may hinder the implementation of TQM in the organization. Transforming an ordinary organization into one following TQM is uncertain; hence the changes should be implemented in a phase wise manner after a lot of analysis at every stage.
· Steering group to manage change. A steering group is a powerful group whose members are drawn from different departments of the organization and are given all powers and resources to implement TQM.
Elements of Strategic Quality Planning
Strategic quality planning is done at the apex level in an organization. Strategic level planning takes into account all departments, all employees and is generally aimed for the long term. It is essential to have a strategic quality plan in place before creating a TQM procedure. To create a successful strategic quality plan the following elements are essential.
· The first thing a firm should do is to listen to customer’s needs. Accurate feedback from the customer through various sources like surveys, questionnaires, observations, interviews, etc., is essential to know exactly what type of quality the customer wants in a particular product or service.
· Plan how to meet customer needs. A careful analysis of what the customer wants will tell the organization how it can meet those needs. Is the need met by a design change or by changing the inputs or by adding a new feature?
· Being aware of the organizational values and aligning them with that of the strategic quality plan is very important.
· Many forces influence an organization, some of which are economic, social, cultural, religious, political, etc., hence it is very important for the planners to be aware of these forces and their impact on the organization.
· The quality planners have to develop specific quality objectives so as to provide direction as well as to act as standards of measurement.
· The planners should consider various scenarios or alternatives which may meet the quality requirements of the customers.
· The planners generally identify the gaps between what is the desired quality and the actual quality and prepare a plan to close the gaps.
· After the strategic plan is formed the planners should create an action plan and implement the action plan to achieve the objectives.
· Reevaluate the efforts of the plan and renew efforts if necessary.
Work practices for promoting TQM
· Standards of quality are to be established, this will act as a guide for the employees and help in locking the learning in.
· The management should try to preventing recurrence of mistakes. It is very important that the employees should learn from past mistakes as well as successes.
· Making continuous improvements by creative problem solving.
· Benchmarking is a process in which the best practices in the company or industry are identified and communicated to all employees so as to create awareness about the best way to do work.
· Participating in 5 S campaign.
· Working in teams will lead to a better understanding and contribute to mutual development of all members involved in quality improvement.
· Experimenting with different situations, products, inputs, and other factors of production will enable the employees to learn by creation.
· Prevention is better than cure.
· Training and coaching is better than supervision and direction.
Dimensions of Quality
| Dimension | Meaning and |Example |
| 1. Performance | Primary product characteristics, such as the brightness of the picture |
| 2.Features | Secondary characteristics, added features, such as remote control |
| 3. Conformance | Meeting specifications or industry standards, workmanship |
| 4. Reliability | Consistency of performance over time, average time for the unit to fail |
| 5. Durability | Long life of the product, includes less repairs |
| 6. Service | Resolution of problems and complaints, ease of repair |
| 7. Response | Human-to-human interface, such as the courtesy of the dealer |
| 8. Aesthetics | Sensory characteristics, such as exterior finish |
| 9. Reputation | Past performance and other intangibles, such as being ranked first |
OUTCOME 4
Pioneers of Total Quality Management
Walter A. Shewart, spent his professional career at Western Electric and Bell Telephone Laboratories, both division of AT&T. He developed control chart theory with control limits, assignable and chance causes of variation, and rational subgroups.
W. Edwards Deming (1950’s) taught statistical process control and the importance of quality to the leading CEO's of Japanese industry. He is credited with providing the foundation for the Japanese quality miracle and resurgence of economic power.
Deming 's 14 principles of TQM
1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service. Quality...not profit, should be the primary purpose. Profit will come as by-product.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. Purpose needs to be shared by all.
3. Cease mass inspection, require evidence. Quality cannot be added on...it must be built in. Mass inspection assumes that quality can be achieved by identifying and then correcting errors. This means that workers are paid to make errors and then paid again to correct them. Instead almost all workers want to do work of high quality, in which they can be proud of.
4. Improve quality of supplies. End the practice of rewarding business on price tag alone; price should be a relatively minor factor in selecting a supplier.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service. Management has a never-ending obligation to seek out ways to improve quality.
6. Institute Training. Too much of the training budget is spent on management. Those who actually make products or deliver services like the workers are unprepared leading to errors and disloyalty.
7. Institute Leadership. Being a leader is different from being a supervisor. Supervisors tell workers what to do and then watch to make sure they do it. Leaders assume that workers want to do the best job they can. Helpful supervisors can become successful leaders.
8. Drive out fear. In far too many organizations, people are afraid to speak up, point out problems, or just ask questions. A concern for quality requires that people feel secure and not be afraid of change.
9. Break down barriers between staff areas. Traditional organizational structures encourage competition between units, making it difficult, if not impossible to achieve quality. Barriers between these departments and between the different levels of staff should be eliminated.
10. Eliminate slogans. Quality does not come from motivation on the short term. This can actually make things worse if workers really want to do better but can't because they do not possess the tools.
11. Eliminate numerical quotas/standards. Quotas encourage people to ignore quality and focus on achieving the number. Standards also restrict the workers to follow a set pattern and curbs creativity.
12. Let workers be proud of their work. Eliminate the annual rating or merit system. People want to do a good job, it does not help when they are being constantly judged, ranked and rated; especially when they have little control of the product/service. Also every worker should be made to feel he/she is doing an important work for the organization immaterial of his/her level.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and improvement. Everyone needs a through grounding in the basics of quality control from tools to teamwork. Also employees should be encouraged to be self improving.
14. Take action to accomplish the transformation. Everyone must work together and try to improve quality constantly.
Joseph M. Juran, worked at Western Electric from 1924 to 1941. There he was exposed to the concepts of Shewhart. He emphasized the necessity for management at all levels to be committed to the quality effort with hands-on involvement.
Armand V. Feiganbaum, argues that total quality control is necessary to achieve productivity, market penetration, and competitive advantage. Quality begins by identifying the customer's requirements and ends with a product or service in the hands of the satisfied customer.
Kaoru Ishikawa, studied under Deming, Juran, and Fiegenbaum. He barrowed the total quality control concept and adapted it for the |Japanese. Ishikawa is known for the development of cause and effect diagram.
Philip B.Crosby authored his first book, Quality is Free, in 1979, which was translated into 15 languages. He argued that “that doing it right the first time" is less expensive than the costs of detecting and correcting nonconformities.
Genichi Taguchi, developed his loss function concept that combines cost, target, and variations into one metric. Because the loss function is reactive, he developed the signal noise ratio as a proactive equivalent. The cornerstone of Taguchi’s philosophy is the robust design parameters and tolerances.
The PDCA Cycle
Developed by Schewart and modified by Deming, the PDCA Cycle is a continuous improvement methodology which is very useful for implementing TQM.
Plan–Establish plan for achieving goal
Do –Implementing the plan or doing
Check –Measuring & analyzing results and identifying problem areas
Act-Implement corrective actions
OUTCOME 5
Quality Management Systems
Quality management systems (QMS) are standard procedures for improving quality in organizations. QMS are based on utilizing organizational resources to produce products and services that satisfy customer needs. The QMS standards are described by International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 9001:2008 series.
Elements of QMS
Management Responsibility
A management’s responsibility towards QMS is shown through the following; management commitment, customer focus, quality policy,
planning, responsibility and authority, communication and management review
Resource Management
Provision of adequate resources for quality enhancement, allocation of qualified and well motivated human resources, creation of proper infrastructure which is conducive for improving quality, and evolution of a good and positive work environment.
Product Realization
Product realization is the process that includes all the activities of a firm which are undertaken for developing, manufacturing and delivering products/services. The steps of this process are as follows, planning for product realization, starting customer related processes for gathering design information, the actual design and development of a product or service, purchasing the required inputs for producing, the actual production and service provision, and control and monitoring of measuring devices.
Measurement, Analysis and Improvement
For any system to function in an optimum way it is very essential to create a system of measuring its performance and also creating a mechanism to correct it. Hence the management should create clear and precise standards of performance, a monitoring and measurement mechanism, procedures to control non conforming product, accurate data analysis, timely and effective quality audit, and a mechanism to facilitate improvement of the system.
OUTCOME 6
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is the systematic search for best practices, innovative ideas, and highly effective operating procedures. Benchmarking will let you know about your firms performance and where it stands in relation with certain quality standards.
An organization which uses benchmarking considers the experience and performance of other department or organizations both within and outside the company, even the industry and uses it to increase its productivity and quality.
Types of Benchmarking
Benchmarking based on objects to be benchmarked
• Product Benchmarking: Comparison of products and services of different company’s or products/services of the same firm.
• Performance Benchmarking: Comparison of performance indicators of different departments or of different firms. Performance indicators maybe profitability, market share, cost of production, etc.
• Process Benchmarking: Comparison of the processes used for producing the goods or services.
• Strategic Benchmarking: This is a study of corporate level business strategies which will tell us which strategy is working and which is not.
Benchmarking based on organizations against which firms are compared
• Internal Benchmarking: This is comparison between departments, plants, subsidiaries within the company.
• Industry Benchmarking: This is comparison of organizations producing same class of products and services. Organizations producing the same product/service are called as an industry.
• Competitive benchmarking: Its the comparison of performance with your immediate competitors.
• Best in class benchmarking: It’s the comparison of best practices irrespective of products or services or the industry.
• Relationship Benchmarking: This is comparison with the company’s which already having good or positive relationships with different stakeholders like customers, suppliers, dealers, public, government, etc.
Benchmarking Process
1. Decide what to benchmark – Processes causing trouble, processes contributing to customer satisfaction, processes differentiating from competitors
2. Understand current performance – Quantify and document current performance
3. Plan – type of benchmarking, type of data collection, method of collection
4. Study Others – how best in class processes are practiced and measurable results of these practices
5. Learn from Data – gaps in performance, what gap and how much, why gaps, resulting improvement on closing the gap
6. Use the findings – specify tasks, sequence tasks, determine resource needs, establish task schedule, assign responsibility for each task, describe expected results, specify methods for monitoring results.
OUTCOME 7
ISO 9000
Definition of ISO 9000
ISO 9000 is a set of quality assurance standards related to Quality Management Systems, formulated by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) applicable to all types of industries and organizations (both goods manufacturing and service providing). The implementation of the prescribed quality standards leads to a certification by ISO. These quality standards are very high and are monitored and tested by ISO before the certificate is given.
Features of ISO 9000 Quality Standards
• ISO 9000 provides international basis for evaluating processes which gives a uniform global criteria to measure quality.
• If a firm acquires ISO 9000 certification it will facilitate global operations because exporting its products/services to other countries (both developed and developing) becomes easier since the firm gains trust and confidence of all customers.
• The ISO 9000 certification focuses on processes and not products. If the process of production is of a very high quality automatically it will generate products/services of high quality too.
• Majority of the companies which have acquired this certification are Europe and
Steps of ISO 9000
1. Formulation of a quality policy.
2. Documentation of procedures.
3. Verification and compliance with ISO.
4. Implementation of procedures.
5. Reviewing implementation through internal quality audit.
6. Compliance audit by a third party.
7. Taking corrective actions.
8. Assessment and certification by the certification body.
9. Continuous observation.
Elements of ISO 9000 Documentation
• Policy: It’s a document that defines what will be done and why. This gives the firm an overview of the required quality systems and the reason why they are needed.
• Procedure: This is a document defining who should perform specific tasks, when the task should be done, and where and by whom the documentation will be made.
• Work Instructions: These are specific instructions of how a machine should be operated, how a task is to be performed, how a product should be manufactured, or how a service is to be delivered. These are highly detailed and have a step by step description.
• Records: These are evidences which show whether the employees are following the procedures and work instructions given for improving quality. These records can be in the form of written or typed documents, audio, video, etc.
Benefits of ISO 9000
• Clarity of customer requirements
• Clarity of roles and responsibilities
• Clear business objectives and company targets
• Control over quality operations
• Assurance on quality of outsourced materials
• Continued up gradation of knowledge & skills of people
• Efficient and effective work methods
• Efficient review of process
• Independent audit of all operations
• Improved confidence and pride
• Increased efficiency, productivity and profitability
OUTCOME 8
Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement means constantly improving the way the organization does things so that customer needs are better satisfied.
Continuous improvement consists of small incremental changes that make the process more efficient, effective, under control and adaptable. Improvements are usually accomplished with little or no expense without sophisticated techniques or expensive equipment
Elements of Continuous Improvement
• Improvement should be process driven and not results driven. Efforts should be made to get the process under control.
• Standardization of all procedures, processes, material and output is important.
• Getting things right the first time because it saves the organization a lot of money and resources if mistakes are avoided.
Quality Control
Quality control is the measurement of products and services against a set of predetermined standards. The purpose of quality control is to satisfy customers. Therefore, quality control is a concern of everyone in the organization, not just the concern of quality control department at the end of the production process. Quality control begins by analyzing the market to see what quality standards need to be established. Quality is then designed into products, and every product must meet those standards every step of the way in the production process.
Quality Audits
• Quality audits are evaluations of quality performance to ensure that quality standards are being followed and expected results are achieved
• This is accomplished through internal quality audits done by people within the organization cross functional and external audits by the certifying agencies.
Objectives of Quality Audits
• Determine whether the actual performance conforms to the documented QMS.
• Initiate corrective actions in response to deficiencies.
• Follow-up on non compliance items from previous audits.
• Provide continued improvement in the system through feedback to the management.
• Cause the one who is audited to think about the process, thereby encouraging possible improvements.
Steps of Quality Audit
