A Background To Total Quality Management

Now a day there are many companies are trying very hard not only to satisfy their customer’s requirements but where possible exceed them and also to reach a high standard of quality. This can only be achieved by improvement in product performance, cost reduction, customer satisfaction as well as reach world class organizations. The quality perspective is very significant from the point of view of organization. It is considered as fundamental aspect that exceed expectation level of the customers. As many approaches towards quality maintenance Total Quality Management is considered as a zero-error approach towards developing the quality of processes and systems in an organization. The paper examines the Deming, Juran and Baldridge models of TQM and what ways do they differ in their quest for Quality, which of these models is predominantly used in   practice. Moreover, I discussed how Awards bring detailed feedback for additional steps the organization can take to ensure that it meets today’s standards of quality. Finally my view about these three models and lesson Learned.

Background

Based on the principles of management, total quality management has a philosophical background. Rite from the time it was brought forward by greats like Deming and Juran, it has been adopted in significant manners by many top companies of the world. Such companies are of the likes of Toyota in Japan and Maruti in India. Much of the organizations today use it as the means to develop their objectives which govern their management in return. There are a number of areas that this concept looks to cover. It started from monitoring and control and today it includes commitment of management, satisfaction of customers, process management and employee management which look to manage the entire business in a holistic manner. The concept has a lot to do with continuous improvement, fast response, action based on facts and employee participation. Product development under this concept takes place in a conflicting atmosphere where each department is given the privilege to work independently. Japan awards Deming prize for excellence in quality management and execution. So, one can see the involvement of the organizations and Governments where these organization run with respect to total quality management. (A FEW WORDS ABOUT TQM, 2010). Nowadays, many companies also have a designation for total quality management owing to change in organizational structures.

Criteria

There are basically seven criteria that are significant in this context. They have been mentioned as follows:

The first is leadership. This is the most important criterion as an organization’s success is highly judged by virtue of its leadership qualities. In most cases today, it has to be situational in nature. Also, depending upon the degree of motivation, leadership can be judged.

Secondly, it is strategic planning. Based on the strategies that a company plans to take up in the future, a company’s operations run. Every function of an organization either short term or long term is based on this concept.

Thirdly, it is customer and market focus which has replaced profit as the bottom line for most of the companies today.

Information and data analysis is also required to know of the market conditions to take steps in this direction. The company’s future developments in terms of products and services are based on this criterion.

Next, is human resource management and development which is required to resolve existing conflicts within the company and improve conditions outside the company as well.

Next, in line is process management. The daily activities of every firm are highly complex in nature. It requires adequate process management. All these are dealt by the leaders of the company. Every small pre-requisite must be taken care of so as to ensure that there are no reasons to cross the time limit of delivery of a service.

Finally, it is business results. One can’t afford to judge the quality of a certain organization, marketplace, personnel or product without having a look at the business response. It is indirectly associated by the growth in word-to-mouth marketing of that activity or the increment in the gross income.

Obstacles in TQM

The major obstacles that come under way in total quality management have been mentioned as follows:

The strategic plans as mentioned on a number of occasions do not actually meet the product quality goals. In keeping up with the quality, much of the best practices of a company are benchmarked creating a non-significant outcome. Quality takes into account a number of layers in management which are not very friendly to deal within the organization. Measurement of quality is not effective and is generally dependent on customers which make it difficult for a company to define. Also, planning becomes difficult to adopt with the suppliers, so best quality is difficult to establish. On a number of occasions, there are a number of teams do not implement cross-functional teams which restrict a good quality. Also, because the employees are resistant to change, it becomes difficult to employ the best of qualities. Because of lack of resources, the companies do not have adequate training programs because of which the quality expected by the customers is not met properly. Also, compensation from the management is given only after achievement of a landmark which arises to many unhealthy competitions within the organization hence, decreasing quality.

William Edwards Deming:

William Edwards Deming was born in October 14, 1900, his an American statistician, author, professor, lecturer and consultant, he is well known as the father of the Japanese post-war industrial revival. In the US Deming was considered by many as the leading quality guru . His expertise was used during World War II to support the United States in its effort to develop the quality of war materials. At the End of World War II Deming was invited to Japan by Japanese engineers and industrial leaders. [1] 

His business philosophy is summarized in his famous “14 Points,” These points have inspired important changes through a number of leading US companies motivated to compete in the world’s increasingly competitive environment. [2] 

Deming’s 14 Points

Constancy of purpose

The new philosophy

Cease dependence on mass inspection

End lowest tender contracts

Improve every process

Institute training on the job

Institute leadership

Drive out fear

Break down barriers

Eliminate exhortations

Eliminate arbitrary numerical targets

Permit pride of workmanship

Encourage education

Top management commitment and action

Deming Awards

The Deming Prize is established in 1951 by the Japanese Union of Scientists and engineers (JUSE), It consider as Japan’s national quality award for industry. The Deming Prize is the world’s oldest and most important of such awards. Its principles are a national competition to seek out and commend those organizations making the best and greatest strides yearly in quality. The prize has divided in three award categories such as Individual person, the Deming Application Prizes, and the Quality Control Award for factory. The Deming Application prizes for private or public organizations, the subdivided into small enterprises, divisions of big corporations, as well as abroad companies.

Check list of application for Deming Award

Item

Particulars

Item

Particulars

1. Policy

Policies pursued for management quality, and quality control

Method of establishing policies

Justifiability and consistency of policies

Utilization of statistical methods

Transmission and diffusion of policies

Review of policies and the results achieved

Relationship between policies and long- and short-term planning

6. Standardization

Systematization of standards

Method of establishing, revising, and abolishing standards

Outcome of the establishment, revision, or abolition of standards

Contents of the standards

Utilization of statistical methods

Accumulation of technology

Utilization of standards

2. Organization and its Management

Explicitness of the scopes of authority and responsibility

Appropriateness of delegations of authority

Interdivisional cooperation

Committees and their activities

Utilization of staff

Utilization of QC Circle activities

Quality control diagnosis

7. Control

Systems for the control of quality and such related matters as cost and quantity

Control items and control points

Utilization of such statistical control methods as control charts and other statistical concepts

Contribution to performance of QC circle activities

Actual conditions of control activities

State of maters under control

3. Education and Dissemination

Education programs and results

Quality- and control-consciousness, degrees of understanding of quality control

Teaching of statistical concepts and methods, and the extent of their dissemination

Grasp of the effectiveness of quality control

Education of related company (particularly those in the same group, sub-contractors, consigness, and distributers)

QC circle activities

System of suggesting ways of improvements and its actual conditions

8. Quality Assurance

Procedure for the development of new products and services (analysis and upgrading of quality, checking of design, reliability, and other properties)

Safety and immunity from product liability

Customer satisfaction

Process design, process analysis, and process control and improvement

Process capability

Instrumentation, gauging, testing, and inspecting

Equipment maintenance, and control of subcontracting, purchasing, and services

Quality assurance system and its audit

Utilization of statistical methods

Evaluation and audit of quality

Actual state of quality assurance

4. Collection, Dissemination and Use of Information of Quality

Collection of external information

Transmission of information between divisions

Speed of information transmission (use of computers)

4. Data processing statistical analysis of information and utilization of the results

9. Results

Measurements of results

Substantive results in quality, services, delivery time, cost, profits, safety, environments, etc.

Intangible results

Measures for overcoming defects

5. Analysis

Selection of key problems and themes

Propriety of the analytical approach

Utilization of statistical methods

Linkage with proper technology

Quality analysis, process analysis

Utilization of analytical results

Assertiveness of improvement suggestions

10. Planning for the Future

Grasp of the present state of affairs and the concreteness of the plan

Measures for overcoming defects

Plans for further advances

Linkage with the long-term plans

Edited by Subcommittee of Implementation Award for Deming Prize, 1992 Revision

Deming Cycle:

Malcolm Baldridge:

These are a set of guidelines that a number of organizations use these days in order to assess whether they meet a certain level of business excellence. The criteria under this context re often reviewed and as per the needs of the culture, it is adopted. The obstacles in this respect have been mentioned as follows:

The competitive environment: On a number of occasions, a company is not able to meet the business excellence level because of immense amount if competition in the market. It has to adapt itself accordingly getting deviated from its own goals on many occasions. This acts as an obstacle to a highly significant extent in many companies these days.

Strategic Challenges: In this context every management department acts as an obstacle. This could wither be in the form of operations, human resource, marketing, finance or even IT for that matter. The reason is that every department looks to provide its best quality which is not synchronized with the company’s strategies.

Performance Improvement System: Companies tend to deviate from following systematic evaluation in this context. Some of the key processes including organizational learning and knowledge sharing become challenges to be followed. (How to use Baldrige Criteria to implement Total Quality Management (TQM) stay ahead of competitions ?, 2001)

Malcolm Baldridge Award:

In 1987 the Baldrige Award was established to promote and support quality awareness, understand the requirements for quality excellence, as well as to share information about successful quality benefits and strategies. There are three different categories: manufacturing, services, and small firms. There are five companies who won this prize. The Baldrige Award principles are the role of quality data collection and analysis as the basis for managerial decisions. Additionally, quality efforts should not focus only on the elimination of defects but also include creative and innovation activities which will affect customer satisfaction.

Check list of application for Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award

Maximum score

Percentage of sub-total

Leadership 150

Leadership of top-ranking managers 50

Policy 30

Management control system and quality improvement process 30

Allocation and utilization of resources 20

Responsibility to society 10

Unique and creative leadership technique 10

15%

Information and analysis 75

Utilization of analysis technique or system 15

utilization of information about product quality and servicing quality 10

Customer data and analysis 20

Analysis of quality and data of subcontractor 10

Analysis of quality and data of distributor or sales agent 10

Employee-related data and analysis 5

Unique and innovative analysis of information 5

7.5%

Quality of strategy planning 75

Operation target and strategy target 20

Function of planning 20

Quality improvement plan 30

Unique and innovative planning for strategy 5

7.5%

Utilization of human resources 150

Control and operation 30

Quality-consciousness and participation of employees 50

Training and education concerning quality 30

Personnel assessment, motivation, award system 30

Unique and innovative strategy concerning utilization of human resource 10

15%

Quality assurance of product and servicing 150

Reflection of customer’s opinion on product and servicing 20

Development of new product and new servicing 20

Design of new product and new servicing 30

measurement, standardization, data system 10

Engineering 10

Audit 15

Recording 10

Safety, health and sanitation, environment 10

Assurance/effectiveness 15

Unique and innovative approach to quality assurance of product and servicing 10

15%

Result of quality assurance of product and servicing 100

Reliability and achievement of product and servicing 25

Reduction of scrap, rework, rejection concerning product and servicing 20

Reduction of complaint and claim suit concerning quality 25

Reduction of assurance- or site-related assistance operation 20

Innovative index and economic gain for quality improvement 10

10%

Customer satisfaction 300

Quality of product and servicing from customer’s viewpoint 100

Comparison of competitiveness of product and servicing 50

Customer servicing and countermeasure for complaint 75

Assurance from customer’s viewpoint 50

Unique (or innovative) technique to grasp customer satisfaction 25

30%

Total 1000

100%

Joseph Moses Juran:

Joseph Moses Juran was born in December 24, 1904 , he was a 20th century management consultant who is principally considered as an evangelist for quality and quality management. Juran writing a number of influential books on quality. [3] 

Jurn 1.pngJuran.png

Quality Trilogy: [4] 

Quality Planning

Identify who are the customers.

Determine the needs of those customers.

Translate those needs into our language.

Develop a product that can respond to those needs.

Optimise the product features so as to meet our needs and customer needs.

Quality Improvement

Develop a process which is able to produce the product.

Optimise the process.

Quality Control

Prove that the process can produce the product under operating conditions with minimal inspection.

Transfer the process to Operations.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE THREE MODELS

Deming’s model

As per the definitions defined by all the three models of the total quality management, Deming’s model states that the quality management is the process of continuing to improve the quality after meeting and exceeding the customer’s need and the expectations. Deming’s model further describes the high degree of the senior management involvement for the quality improvement purposes in which the decisions are made in the board room. Deming’s model provides a new and the comprehensive approach to handle the organization or the human enterprises with the systematic view of it. It provides a wide range of advices on the quality planning, quality control and the quality improvement. Deming’s model is more theoretical minded which suggests the theoretical solutions to the problems. The Deming’s approach is to focus on the working of everyone in the organization to accomplish the improvement with the repeated use of the PDSA cycle. (Compare)

Juran’s Model

While on the other hand Juran’s model just takes the “fitness for use” as the basic criteria of the quality improvement and the individual units should perform in such a way in accordance with the specification and the direction so as to achieve that fitness for the use (Compare) The Joran’s model accepts the majority of the quality management problems are due to the poor management rather than the poor work of its lower or middle level management. Juran’s model provides an analytical approach to manage for the quality and focuses on how to handle the quality functions on the basis of that. The production process is defined as a relationship between the customer research, suppliers, design, materials, production, assembly, and the inspection according to the Joran’s model. The Juran’s model is more practical minded suggesting the highly practical and the feasible answers. Juran made the focus on the product improvement and the conformances in the service by reducing the uncertainty and the manufacturing process variations.

Baldrige’s Model

The Baldrige’s model which is the most popular model for the total quality improvement takes the overall improvements in all the aspects whether it is the leadership, strategies, planning, etc as the criteria for the quality improvement. The Baldrige’s model desires the visionary leadership, customer driven excellence, personal along with the organizational learning, valuing the employees and the stakeholders, with the prime focus on the future. The Baldrige’s model manages the quality with the focus on the future, managing for the innovation, with the social responsibility towards its customers as well as the employees with the system perspective. The other side the Baldrige’s model combines both of the theoretical as well as the practical mindedness. At the same time, the Baldrige’s approach is to manage the quality through the management by the fact with the help of the combined process of the process management, workforce focus and the business results.

Here are some different between Deming and Juran

Jurn 1.png

de.png

The Best Out of the Three Model

The total quality management is the process of integrating the different systems of the principles, methods and the best practices, that provides the organizations a kind of framework for the organization to strive for anything that the organization want to achieve. The model that best suits to most of the organization in most of the organization is recommended to be the Baldrige’s model for the TQM which is the most popular model prevailing in many of the organizations that combines all the aspects like the leadership, strategies, planning, etc. It leads to the overall quality management of any organization in all the directions which is the most important criteria for the TQM in the today’s world.

Today’s Excellence Awards

The excellence awards are given to the organizations by their respective governments on the basis of its management practices, contribution to the industry and its markets, quality of the products and the beliefs at the highest level with the awareness promotion and practices through the innovative approaches. In the current date, the five most prestigious awards for the management excellence given are Japan’s Deming Prizes, the United States’ Malcom’s Baldrige National Award, the European Quality Awards, the Canada Awards for excellence and the AKAO prizes. (Management awards) In this array of the awards, the Japan’s Deming prize was the first essentially esteemed prize which remained as the most prominent one for the three decades since its establishment in the year of 1950 which aims at examining how efficiently and effectively the organization is able to implement the total quality control measures by having a deep assessment of its quality policies and the activities and measuring its consequences in the part of the improvement in the productivity, quality improvement, reductions in the costs, increased profits & the expansion in the sales. Another privileged award is the Baldrige’s award judge the organization on the basis of seven specific criteria viz. leadership, information and the analysis, strategic planning, human resource focus, process management, business results and the company’s performance, the customer focus and their satisfaction. The European Quality Awards are given on the basis of nine criteria namely the leadership, people management, policy and the strategy, the resource management, process management, customer’s satisfaction, people satisfaction, impact on the society, and most importantly the business results. The Canada Awards for the excellence has seven drivers which are the leadership, planning, customer focus, people focus, process management, supplier’s focus, and the organizational performance. After Japan, the Canada was the second major industrialized country to establish an award in order to honor the managerial practices. The AKAO prize was established by the QFD institute in order to honor the individuals who were successful in making the outstanding contribution to the advancement process of the QFD. It follows the outline of the Deming’s Award but it is different from it and also from the other awards on the basis of only focusing on the QFD and recognizing only the individuals.

Additionally, there are many Excellence award in UAE which implement EFQM models such as Ajman Excellence award, Dubai excellence award and Emirates government excellence award.

These awards have been established for the purpose of encourage the organization to adopt better managerial skills which are generally open for both the private and the public sector organizations. Moreover, the feedback is very important for all organizations, it can help them to focus on good practices to share as well as its the key fields in which the applicant can improve its performance. The purpose of the feedback is to provide organizations strengths and areas that need to improve.

Learned Lesson

Through this extensive analysis of the various models of the total quality management it was but obvious to learn its several of the basic aspects involved with it which can summarized as the whatever the model may be but it tends to take an approach that seeks to improve the quality and the performances of any organization that will cause the meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customers. It involves the integration of all the quality related functions, tools and techniques and the several of the processes throughout the company. An effective total quality management design looks forward for the overall quality measures used by that organization which includes the design and the development of the quality design, control and the maintenance of the quality, parallel quality improvement, and the quality assurance. For the total quality management to be successful it is very essential for the quality measures to be taken at all the levels including each and every employee in that organization. It is basically the management of the procedures and the initiatives which has the involvement of the principles like the actions anticipated from the top level management as the driver for the whole program of TQM and to create an environment of success, training required for the employees, customer focus, decision making process, methodology and the tools, continuous improvement, company culture, and the involvement of the employees. The three different models designed for the total quality management namely the Deming’s model, the Juran’s model and the Baldrige model were well analyzed with the several of the processes involved in it and their advantages and disadvantages over each other and their feasibility aspect in the different situation. The total cost of the TQM is generally expected to be lower than the benefits it would produce, but after its application in the real world and taking the results in the long term, it is quite beneficial for any type of organization.

Conclusion

In spite of the fact that all the three models of Deming, Juran and the Baldrige model, there is a significant contrast amongst them. While Deming is highly concentrated on leadership and continuous improvement, Juran believed in quality planning, improvement and control. Also, the seven diseases talk of the places where the companies would always make mistakes and get into trouble from the perspective of maintaining a good quality. Here short term profits and mobility of management is of greatest concerns which need to be fought in order to come out successful. One can conclude that Deming’s model is applicable to a huge enterprise where the workforce is highly diverse and also huge. The reason is that this is where formation of trade unions is possible and must be prevented as per Deming’s principles. Also leadership is more widely judged in a voluminous organization. Juran’s model can be applied from the operational and marketing perspective which requires major improvement in quality so as to take the company along. Here, the seven diseases model is applicable in every department of every organization whether big or small. It looks to prevent all problems in individual departments. (Cohen, 2010)