Lecture 21 International Organization for Quality

Lecture plan:

1 According to Deming, low quality results in high cost which will lead to loss of competitive position in the market. His approach can be summarised in his 14 point programme:

2 The work of Feigenbaum: He can be considered the originator of the concept of total quality control. His main contributions are two:

Today, TQM has become a part of corporate management on a global scale. Quality today is studied under the overall umbrella of ‘Total Quality Management’. The improvements brought about by TQM in the Japanese industry are too well known to merit repetition here. Quality as a concept has moved from being an attribute of the product or service to encompass all the activities of an

organization.

The core philosophy of TQM as it is understood today is that each step in a production process is seen as a relationship between a customer and a supplier (whether internal or external to the organization). The suppliers will have to meet the customer’s requirements, both stated and implied, at the lowest cost. Waste elimination and continuous improvement are ongoing activities.

The early development of total quality management was influenced by a few quality ‘gurus’: Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum, Crosby and Ishikawa. Their key contribuitions to the quality movement will now be looked at.

The work of Deming: The main thesis of Deming is that by improving quality, it is possible to increase productivity which results in improved competitiveness of a business enterprise.

According to Deming, low quality results in high cost which will lead to loss of competitive position in the market. His approach can be summarised in his 14 point programme:

1) Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.

2) Refuse to allow commonly accepted levels of delay for mistakes, defective material, defective workmanship.

3) Cease dependence on mass inspection to achive quality.

4) Reduce the number of suppliers. Buy on statistical evidence, not price.

5) Constantly and forever improve the system of costs, quality, productivity and service.

6) Institute modern methods of training on the job.

7) Focus supervision on helping people to do a better job.

8) Drive out fear.

9) Break down barriers between departments. Encourage problem solving through team work.

10) Eliminate numerical goals slogans, posters for the workforce.

11) Use statistical methods for continuing improvement of quality and productivity and eliminate work standards prescribing numerical quotas.

12) Remove barriers to pride of workmanship.

13) Institute a vigorous program of education and training.

14) Clearly define management’s permanent commitment to quality and productivity.

From these initial concepts, Deming later developed what he called the ‘system of profound knowledge’. This means appreciation of a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge and psychology. Deming said that only if the top management is able to understand the company as a complex system, are they able to successfully improve the structures of the system.

The work of Juran: Unlike Deming whose approach was more process oriented, the ideas of Juran were having a managerial flavour (Kruger 2001). His main contribution was that quality control must be an integral part of the management function. This broadened the understanding of quality. Visible leadership and personal involvement of top management is important in inspiring quality across the organisation.

According to Juran (1988), to demonstrate commitment to quality the management should establish a quality council which would coordinate the company’s various activities regarding quality. Further, the management should establish a ‘quality policy’ which should guide the managerial action. The management has to establish quality goals which should be expressed in numbers and should have a time frame. Once a specific goal has been

established by the management, it is the responsibility of the management to provide the necessary resources to achive the quality goals.

Juran developed the improvement spiral showing that quality improvement is a continuous process and not just a programme with start and end point. Later these very concepts were incorporated in the ISO 9000: 2000 standard.

The work of Ishikawa: He recognised that for TQM to be sucessful, the tools and techniques of using data to make decisions must be understood by the workers and first-line

supervisors /managers. Accordingly, his techniques and the explanation for application are simple and straightforward. For him, the ultimate purpose of data is to take action based on data. Thus data can be used for understanding the actual situation, analysis, process control and regulation as well as for the traditional acceptance and rejection decisions.

The work of Crosby: While Deming and Juran described the TQM philosophy and Ishikawa provided the tools and techniques, Crosby offered a detailed guide to implementation. He proposed a quality management grid that described the stages of TQM

implementation relative to management’s understanding and problem-solving techniques, the organisational approach, and the results achieved. Each stage of Crosby’s matrix represents

an increasingly mature implementation of the TQM philosophy (Crosby 1981).

The work of Feigenbaum: He can be considered the originator of the concept of total quality control. His main contributions are two:

1) Quality is the responsibility of everyone in an organisation. Quality is produced not only by the production department, but also by marketing, finance, purchasing, and any other department. It is the total participation of all employees and the total integration of all the company’s technical and human resources that will lead to long term business success.

Feigenbaum thus developed the concept of quality at source which means that every employee will have to do his/her work with perfect quality. In total quality control, where product quality is more important than production rate, the worker is given the power to stop the production if a quality related problem occurs.

2) He recognised the cost of non-quality which according to him consists of cost of control and cost of failure of control. Both have to be minimised. Cost of control should be measured by prevention cost (e.g. quality training of employee) which should keep defective part from occuring and appraisal cost (e.g. quality audit costs) which covers the costs of maintaining the quality level of the company. The cost of failure of control is also measured in two areas: internal failure cost (e.g. scrap) and external failure cost (e.g. customer complaints, reworked material).

Thus the emphasis of Feigenbaum is not so much to create managerial awareness about quality as to assist an organisation to design its own quality system which involves every employee.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 919