TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
By Rob Easter
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How do you judge whether a company is successful or not? Bottom line
profit or loss? Certainly it is an important basic criteria, but is it
all that's required? Can an accountant run a company on figures alone?
W E Deming, who taught Quality as it's known today to the Japanese, said
in a lecture at Utah State University:
"Some of you are students of finance. You
learn how to figure and how to run a company on figures. If you run a company
on figures alone you will go under. How long will it take the company to
go under, drown? I don't know, but it is sure to fail. Why? Because the
most important figures are those that are unknown or unknowable.
What about the multiplying effect of a happy
customer, in either manufacturing or in service? Is he in the figures?
What about the multiplying effect of an unhappy customer? Is that in your
figures? Did you learn that in your school of finance? What about the multiplying
effect of getting better material to use in production. What about the
multiplying effect that you get all along the production line? Do you know
that figure? You don't! If you run your company without it, you won't have
a company. What about the multiplying effect of doing a better job along
the line?"
The philosophy of Total Quality Management
is based on the premise that management by financial results is wrong and
only leads people to cheating to achieve the goal. The alternative is to
focus the attention of the company on :
• Satisfaction and ever increasing value to the customer
• Continually improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation
TQM has a number of basic core values and concepts which companies need
to adopt. These values are continually being refined and improved as the
subject develops. Currently, one of the best definitions is used by the
American Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award scheme. The ten values
are:
The core values are briefly described below.
Customer-Driven Quality
Quality is judged by the customer. All the attributes that contribute value
to the customer and lead to customer satisfaction need to be addressed
by the company systems. This includes both needs and expectations and will
be influenced by many factors, including the overall purchase, ownership
and service experience, relationship between customer and company, the
responsiveness and empathy shown. It also includes the added value that
makes the product or service different from the competitors.
Leadership
The company's senior managers must create a clear vision of the quality
values and have high expectations. These values and expectations must be
reinforced by the management's commitment and personal involvement. The
involvement needs to be in the development of the strategy and improvement
of the systems. The personal involvement needs to be visible (a role model)
and needs to include recognition for quality achievement.
Continuous Improvement
Quality improvement needs to be undertaken systematically and targeted
at enhancing the value of the product/service to the customer, reducing
wastage through errors, improving response time and fully utilising all
the resources of the company.
Full Participation
The full participation of all employees of the company must be sought,
both to achieve the goal of customer satisfaction and to bring about improvement.
Factors affecting employees' job satisfaction are the working environment,
health, safety, morale and well being. Education and training needs should
be identified and actioned through courses and on the job training and
then applied by involvement and empowerment. The work force needs to become
multi-task orientated and able to undertake a more diverse range of work.
Fast Response
Success in competitive markets increasingly demands ever-shorter product
and service introduction cycles and more rapid response to customers. Response
time improvement is therefore a major issue. The objective is to shorten
all stages of the process by simplifying the methods, work path, decision
making and the removal of activities that do not add value.
Design Quality and Prevention
Building quality into the product or service at the initial design stage
can result in major savings. The earlier faults can be found, or prevented
from occurring by fault tolerant designs, the better. In addition to the
full participation of the employees, suppliers and customers need to be
involved.
Long Range Outlook
Achieving quality and market leadership requires a future orientation and
long-term commitment to customers, employees, shareholders and suppliers.
Business strategy and planning needs to reflect this outlook. An essential
feature of this long-term commitment must be continual review and assessment
of the progress made to achieving the objectives.
Management Development
Companies should seek to build internal and external partnerships, serving
mutual and larger community interests. Such partnerships might include
those that promote co-operation such as agreements with unions, linkage
with education organisations and chambers of commerce.
Public Responsibility
A company's customer requirements and quality system objectives should
address areas such as business ethics, public health and safety, environment
and sharing information with the business and geographic community.
THE WAY FORWARD
The first steps any company wishing to apply TQM techniques must take are:-
Step 1
Identify the companies' market place. Is your product up market with
resultant high selling price or low value compared with other products
on the market.
Step 2
Identify where the company is now, who are the competitors, what market
advantages do they have, what advantages/weaknesses does your company have.
Step 3
Use our free self-assessment table (see below for details) to identify
your TQM strengths and weaknesses.
The objective is then to work upon the strong points which give a market
advantage and the weak points where the greatest benefit can be gained
from improving.
SELF ASSESSMENT
Please contact us
(more details below) if you would like a copy of our free self assessment table.
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