Total Quality Management Information Technology Essay

Indeed to focusing for why use six sigma. There are many great benefits of using six sigma in any business, but only we can truly determine wither it is right for our or not. The answer, it is a fact-based data driven statistical analysis of how business operates and where improvements can be made if executed properly. (Assistant, 2009)

Thomas Pyzdek in his six sigma handbook mentioned a real story that began “when Japanese firm took over a Motorola factory that manufactured Quasar television sets in USA in the 1970s, they promptly set about making drastic changes in the way the factory operated. Under Japanese management, the factory was soon producing TV sets with 1/20th as many defects as they had produced under Motorola’s management. They did this using the same workforce, technology, and designs and did it while lowering costs, making it clear that the problem was Motorola’s management. It took a while but, eventually, even Motorola’s own executives finally admitted” (Pyzdek, page 04, 2003)

For more, Six Sigma is a tool to improve the effectiveness and quality of the process outputs in order to deliver customer satisfaction by recognizing and eliminating the causes of defects and drive down the inefficiency by minimizing variability in business processes.

The six-sigma level reflects a process in which 99.99966% of the process is free of defects, in other words, no more than four dissatisfied customer experiences in every one million opportunities. Compared to a one-sigma process in which only 31% is free of defects, with the meaning of hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied customer experiences in every one million opportunities.

As an example, one misspelled word in a library is considered six sigma, where as having one misspelled words in a cyclopedia is considered a five sigma, and 2 misspelled words in each page of a book is considered a 3 sigma.

As you can see the main reason is to increase profitability with improve customer value and increase the business efficiency.

Works Cited

Assistant, b. S. (2009, 9 18). Retrieved 11 16, 2010, from Six Sigma Online: http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/six-sigma-training-certification-information/articles/six-sigma-training—why-use-it.html

Montgomery, D. C. (2005). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. Wiley.

Pearson, J. M. (2003, January 1). Manage your customers’ perception of quality.

Pyzdek, T. (2003). The Six Sigma Handbook. Mc Graw- Hill trade.

Evaluate the concept of Total Quality management from the perspective of various organizations. Discuss the tools and techniques of Total Quality Management for service organization in detail

Total Quality Management (TQM) it is the enhancement to the traditional way of doing business. It is a proven technique to guarantee survival in world class competition. Only by changing the actions of management will the culture and actions of an entire organization be transformed.

Total Made up of the whole

Quality Degree of excellence o product or service.

Management Act, art, or manner of handling, controlling, directing etc.

TMQ is the art of managing the whole to achieve excellence. It is the set of guiding principles that represent the foundation of a continuously improving organization and application of qualitative methods and human resources to improve all the processes within organization and exceeds needs now and in the future. Its integrated fundamental management techniques, existing improvement efforts, and technical tools under a disciplined approach.

Total quality management has six basic concepts:

Management must participate in the quality program. A quality council must be established to develop a clear vision, set long-term goals, and direct the program. Quality goals are included in the business plan. An annual quality improvement program is established and involves input from the entire work force. Managers

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.

All personnel must be trained in TQM, statistical process control, and other appropriate quality improvement skills, so they can effectively participate on project teams. Including internal customers and, for the matter, internal supplier on project team is an excellent approach. Those affected by the plan must be involved in its development and implementation. Changing behavior is the goal. People must come to work not only to do their jobs, but also to think about how to improve their jobs, people must be empowered at the lowest possible level to perform processes in an optimum level.

There must be a continual striving to improve all business and production process. Quality improvement projects, such as on-time delivery, order entry efficiency, billing error rate, customer satisfaction, cycle time, scrap reduction, and supplier management are good places to begin. Technical techniques such as statistical process control, benchmarking, quality function development, ISO 9000, and designed experiments are excellent for problem solving.

Works Cited

Montgomery, D. C. (2005). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. Wiley.

Pearson, J. M. (2003, January 1). Manage your customers’ perception of quality.

Pyzdek, T. (2003). The Six Sigma Handbook. Mc Graw- Hill trade.

What is ISO 9000 standers?

ISO 9000 standards are principles that the International Organization for Standardization or ISO, maintains. According to ISO9000Council, businesses that follow the standards successfully have an ISO 9000 QMT (quality management system).

Function: The article “We Need More Standards Like ISO 9000” describes ISO 9000 as a group of standards that companies implement to enhance performance in real life scenarios. Although many industries use ISO 9000 now, the standards were originally created for businesses that manufacture or design products.

Features: ISO states the individual ISO 9000 standards outline practices needed to establish and maintain quality management. Covered issues include continual improvement, costs and benefits, leadership, quality assurance, quality system principles and risks.

History: “We Need More Standards like ISO 9000” reports that ISO 9000 originated from the British Standards Institute Technical Committee’s attempts to produce generic guidelines for quality manufacturing in 1979. ISO formalized the principles in 1987 by publishing ISO 9000, which is currently the organization’s most implemented standard.

Benefits: ISO 9000 helps companies determine exactly how to achieve quality in various areas, and enhance sales and relationships with consumers when they obtain ISO certification.

Considerations: ISO 9000 Council states participating companies must create detailed ISO 9000 documentation explaining how the company applies the standards within the organization.

Works Cited

American Society for Quality: ISO 9000 and Other Standards

Association for Computing Machinery: We Need More Standards Like ISO 9000

International Organization for Standardization: ISO 9000 Essentials

ISO9000Council

What are the seven basic quality tools?

Stem-and-leaf plot or histogram: is the most commonly used graph to show frequency distributions. It looks very much like a bar chart, but there are important differences between them.

Check sheet: is a structured, prepared from for collecting and analyzing data, so it will be used when data can be observed and collected repeatedly by the same person or at the same location. In this method decision should be taken what event or problem should be observed then operational definitions should be developed, and at what time data should be collected and for how long should be decided. Finally designing the form will be done. Set it up so that data can be recorded simply by making check marks.

Pareto chart: is a bar graph. The lengths for the bars represent frequency or cost (time or money), and arranged with longest bars on the left and the shortest to the right.

Cause-and-effect diagram: is a formal tool frequently useful in unlayering potential problem cases. It can be used to structure a brainstorming session. It immediately sorts ideas into useful categories. It can be used when identifying possible causes for a problem and also when a team’s thinking tends to fall into ruts.

Defect concentration diagram: is a picture of the unit, showing all relevant views. Then the various types of defects are down on the picture, and the diagram is analyzed to determine whether the location of the defects on the unit conveys any useful information about the potential causes of the defects.

Scatter diagram: is a useful plot for identifying a potential relationship between two variables. If the variables are controlled, the points will fall along a line or curve. The better the correlation, the tighter the points will hug the line.

Control chart: is a graph used to study how a process changes over time. Data are plotted in time order. A control chart always has a central line for the average, an upper line for the upper control limit and a lower line for the lower control limit. These lines are determined from historical data. By comparing current data to these lines, you can draw conclusions about whether the process variation is consistent (in control) or is unpredictable (out of control, affected by special causes of variation).

Works Cited

Montgomery, D. C. (2005). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. Wiley.

Pyzdek, T. (2003). The Six Sigma Handbook. Mc Graw- Hill trade.

Explain the position of leadership in Total Quality Management. Discuss the characteristics of an effective leader regarding ensuring the quality of daily-use products in the current economic circumstances.

The definition of the Leadership that who instills purposes, not one who controls by brute force. A leader strengthens and inspires the followers to accomplish shared goals. Leaders shape the organization’s values, promote the organizations vales.

An organization’s senior leaders should set directions and create a customer focus, clear and visible values, and high expectations. The directions, values, and expectations should balance the needs of all your stakeholders. Leaders should ensure the creations of strategies, systems and methods for achieving excellence, stimulating innovation and building knowledge and capabilities. The values and strategies should help guide all activities and knowledge and capabilities. The values and strategies should help guide all activities and decisions of your organization. Senior leaders should inspire and motivate your entire workforce and should encourage all employees to contribute, to develop and learn to be innovative and to be creative.

These are the following Characteristics of Quality Leaders

They give priority attention to external and internal customers and their needs. Leaders place themselves in the customers’ choose and service their needs from that perspective. They continually evaluate the customers changing requirements.

Leaders empower rather than control, subordinate they have the trust and confidence in the performance of their subordinates. They provide the resources, training and work environment to help subordinates to do their jobs. However the decision to accept responsibility lies within individual.

They emphasize improvement rather than maintenance they use the phrase “If it isn’t perfect, improve it” rather than “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” There is always room for improvement, even if the improvement is small. Major breakthrough sometimes happen but it’s the little ones that keep the continuous process improvement on a positive track.

They emphasize prevention. “An ounce of prevention is a worth a pound of cure” is certainly true. It is also true that perfection can be the enemy of creativity. We can’t always wait until we have created the perfect process or product. There must be balance between preventing problems and developing better, but not perfect process.

They encourage collaboration rather than competition. When functional areas, departments, or works groups are in competition, they may find suitable ways of working against each other or withholding information. Instead, there must be collaboration among and within units.

They train and coach, rather than direct and supervise. Leaders know that the development of the human resource is a necessary. As coaches, they help their subordinates learn to do better job.

They learn from problems. When a problem exists it is treated as an opportunity rather than something to be minimized or covered up. “what caused it?” and “how can we prevent it in the future?” are the questions quality leaders ask.

They continually try to improve communication. Leaders continually disseminate information about the TQM efforts.

They continually demonstrate their commitment to quality.

They choose suppliers on the basis of quality, not price.

Works Cited

Assistant, b. S. (2009, 9 18). Retrieved 11 16, 2010, from Six Sigma Online: http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/six-sigma-training-certification-information/articles/six-sigma-training—why-use-it.html

Montgomery, D. C. (2005). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. Wiley.

Pyzdek, T. (2003). The Six Sigma Handbook. Mc Graw- Hill trade.

Explain the customers’ perception regarding quality. Discuss the measures to be taken by a manufacturing organization to handle customer complaints to provide feedback for continuous process improvement.

The basic concept of the TQM attitude is continuous process of improvement. This concept implies that there is no acceptable quality level because the customers’ needs values and expectation are constantly changing and becoming more demanding.

By the way, customers have following perception regarding quality; Performance, Features, Service, Warranty, Price, and Reputation.

The first of all is the performance, its involved fitness for use a phrase that indicates that the product and service is ready for the customer’s use at the time if sale. Other considerations are:

Availability which is the probability that a product will operate when needed.

Reliability is freedom from failure over time.

Maintainability is the ease in keeping and operating product.

The second is the features, identifiable features or attributes of a product or service are psychological time oriented contractual ethical and technological. Features are secondary characteristics of the product or service. For example the primary function of an automobile is transportation whereas a car stereo system is a feature of an automobile.

The third is the service, an emphasis on customer service is emerging as a method for organizations to give the customer added value. However, customer service is an intangible-it is made up of many small things. All geared to changing the customer’s perception. Intangible characteristics are those traits that are not quantifiable, yet contribute greatly to customer satisfaction, providing excellent customers service is different from the more difficult to achieve than excellent product quality. Organizations that emphasize service never stop looking for and finding ways to serve their customers better, even if their customers are not complaining.

The forth is the warranty, the product represents an organization’s public promise of a quality product backed up by a guarantee of customer satisfactions.

A warranty forces the organization has to focus on the characteristics of product and service quality and the importance the customer attaches to each of those characteristics.

The sixth is the price, customers are willing to pay higher price to obtain value. Costumers are constantly evaluating one organization’s products and services against those of its competitors to determine who provides the greatest value.

The seventh is the reputation, most of us find ourselves rating organizations by our overall experience with them. Total customer satisfaction is based on the entire experience with the organization not just the product. Good experiences are repeated to six people and bad experiences are repeated to 15 people therefore it is more difficult to create a favorable reputation. (Pearson, 2003)

Works Cited

Montgomery, D. C. (2005). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. Wiley.

Pearson, J. M. (2003 , January 1). Manage your customers’ perception of quality.

Suppose a product manager is trying to establish regulations concerning the maximum number of boxes that can occupy a forklift. It is given that the total weight of 8 boxes chosen at random follows a normal distribution with a mean of 820 kg and a standard deviation of 140 kg. What is the probability that the total weight of 8 boxes exceeds 880 kg?

Look at z score table for probability is 0.66640

The data shown here are and R values for 24 samples of size n=5 taken from a process producing bearings. The measurements are made on the inside diameter of the bearing, with only the last three decimals recorded (i.e., 34.5 should be 0.50345) (5-1. Page248)

Set up and R charts on this process seem to be in statistical control? If necessary, revise the trial control limits.

If specifications on this diameter are 0.5030 ± 0.0010, find the percentage of nonconforming bearings produced by this process. Assume that diameter is normally distributed.

From Table VI at n=5

, ,

Chart:

The process is not in statistical control; x bar chart is beyond the UCL for both No. 12 and 15. Assuming an assignable cause is found for these two out-of-control points, the two samples can be excluded from the control limit calculations.

R Chart

Works Cited

Montgomery, D. C. (2005). Introduction to Statistical Quality Control. Wiley.(pg.248)

What is Kanban system? And what are the different types of Kanban system?

The system that is used to achieve Just-in-Time (JIT) production is called Kanban system (Richards). This system is based on the part of pulling just the right amount of components or materials needed at the right time. It depends on the part of the customer demand which in turn acts as a reactive process from the supplier. As the word Kanban in Japanese means “visible record” or “visible part”, the mechanism used is a Kanban card which acts as a means of signal to replenish the materials or inventory repetitively within the organization (Bali, 2003). The Principle of the Kanban is to follow the pull system where until the customer sends the signal for the demand, the product will not be produced.

Two main types of Kanban cards widely used are:

Withdrawal (Conveyance) Kanban: This system enables to pass on the authorization to move the materials from stage to the other. It creates a cycle by moving the parts from stage to the next and keeps the remaining until the last one is consumed and this withdrawal Kanban goes back again to get the parts. The withdrawal card is specified with details such as material number, name, size, name or location of the next process and number of the materials needed.

Production-ordering Kanban The Production Kanban is used to provide an order to the previous stage indicating to produce the kind and number of parts required. The production-ordering Kanban is often called an in-process Kanban or simply a production Kanban (Richards). The following information is necessary on the production Kanban card such as what materials are required, parts required and the information on the withdrawal card. The withdrawal card does not have this information as it is used only as a mean of communication between stages (“Kanban Systems,”). Some of the other cards are:

Supplier Kanban/Subcontractor Kanban: When parts are needed by the assembly line, this Kanban is used to indicate orders given to outside suppliers (“Just-in-Time/Kanban,”). Here the parts required are in assembled form.

Emergency Kanban: If any occurrence of defective work, then this Kanban card is temporarily inserted to correct it in case of demand. It is used only for extraordinary purposes and is later collected after usage.

Through Kanban: When adjacent work centers are close to each other this Kanban is used as it combines both the withdrawal and production into one.

Works Cited

Bali, B. (2003). Kanban systems the Sterling Engine Manufacturing Cell.

Baudin, M. (2001). What’s Unique about Kanban system? .

What is the acceptance sampling problem, and what is advantages and disadvantages of sampling?

According to chapter one in textbook acceptance sampling is concerned with inspection and decision making regarding products, one of the oldest aspects of quality assurance.

Advantage of Acceptance Sampling:

Less Expensive because of less inspection.

Less handling of product hence that reduced damage.

Applicable to destructive testing.

Fewer personnel are involved in inspection activities.

Greatly reduces the amount of inspection error.

The rejection of entire lots as opposed to the simple return of defectives often provides a stronger motivation to the supplier for quality improvements.

Disadvantage of Acceptance Sampling:

Risks are there accepting bad lots and rejecting Good lots.

Less information is usually generated about the product or about the process that manufactured the product.

Requires the planning and documentation of the procedure in which 100% of inspection cannot be done.