Total Quality Management - Essay Example

?Kaizen and T.Q.M Ever since the organizational frame work is in place, the need has been felt for implementing such a system that covers all the essentials of a system and paves way for success. T.Q.M is a solution to all those worries and provides with all the necessary methods, tools and techniques that ensure company prosperity. Brief History and contribution of Dr Deming: After the Second World War, Dr. Deming who was the expert on statistical procedures and quality management started spreading his expertise in Japan and this gave rise as the foundation brick gave risk to a complete profession in the name of Total Quality Management. Japanese started implementing these principles in the industrial arena and found out its fruits in form of increased yield and customer satisfaction. Deming was assisted in his efforts by Juran and Ishikawa. T.Q.M is acronym for “Total Quality Management”, as the name implies it takes into account all the factors of organization that can have an impact on the life of organization, its working and its output. T.Q.M is a concept and at the same time a philosophy and hence has a very vast scope. Since, its rules and working mechanism are so flexible which enables this philosophy to be implemented in both the service industry and the manufacturing industry. It is based on the principles of Continuous Quality Improvement (C.Q.I) initiatives which makes improvement and quality maintenance as part of the organizational activities (Roy, 2007). This philosophy is termed as the bench mark towards achieving excellence in the corporate environment since it provides sufficient guidance for all the necessary aspects. T.Q.M can be split into three major parts, totality, quality, and management. Its scope covers all three important areas of an organization and management field. The term totality refers to the coverage scope for all the essential aspects of organization. The totality factor demands participation, commitment from every personnel who is part of the organization. Ranging from top management individuals to supervisors and shop floor workers, each is expected to provide input and contribute in any way possible. Apart from individuals, the totality factor is fully applicable to the teams and departments and divisions within the organizations. The totality factor addresses the human resource management department, marketing, finance, and all other important departments of the network that have can any positive or negative impact on the organization. The totality factor takes into account all the processes that are involved during the manufacturing stages as well the service delivery stages (kawatra, 2000). Role of Inspectors: Prior to the implementation of T.Q.M, the inspectors were integral part of organizational framework. Their role was to monitor the performance of various departments and individuals associated. This consumed a lot of resources and department had to bear the burden of a special extra department in the name of inspection department. With the advent of Total Quality Management, the inspectors are no more needed, since the system is devised in such a manner which holds each department and individual responsible for their own role and performance. The large amount of resources and time that used to be consumed and wasted by inspection processes is controlled through the implementation of T.Q.M system. The second part of the acronym is “Q” which stands for quality. Quality is a subjective definition and can be defined in number of ways. However it can have a pretty simple definition which makes work easy both for the organization and the customers. Quality service or product can be defined as that particular service or product which is in accordance with the demand of customer and fulfils the conformance level. In past a small “q” was used in the field of marketing and organizations. This did not cover all the aspects of organizational structure. With small “q” in practice, the onus of productivity and responsibility was largely emphasized on the few individuals and exempted the rest of the team from delivery and accountability. This always resulted in low productivity and less fulfillment of customer demands. The capital Q has been derived in a manner which fulfils all the requirements and takes in to account all the parameters involved. Before the introduction of the capital “Q”, segmentation existed in the organizational hierarchy which put more stress on few of the departments and exempted others from contribution and effort. Only producers and inspectors were considered as responsible for delivery of goods and services while others were little concerned with the output. The totality factor insured every individual provides some input towards the benefit of organization. This factor reduced the role of inspectors to a great extent and obliged each individual and organization to reporting their performance and efficiency. According to the concept of Capital “Q”, every individual, every process, every department plays a role towards the benefit of organization and each of them must contribute towards the goals decided. The third part of the definition is the Management. It pertains to both the personnel management as well as the management of work and activities within the organization. The management part of the definition ensures all actions and activities are in line with the mission, objectives and responsibilities specified. Management in general is important part of any organizational entity. Without the principle of management goals achievement cannot be possible. The discipline of management specifies the roles as well as the tasks in a calculated manner. In support of T.Q.M philosophy, various quality proponents have contributed in their own way towards this philosophy. Few of the notables who have presented their concept and worked in this field are Dr William Edwards Deming Joseph M. Juran Phillips B. Crosby A.V FeigenBaum Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa Contribution of Edwards Deming: Dr Edwards Deming stressing on the importance of T.Q.M concepts, presented his 14 points on quality and got recognition for it worldwide. Few of the salient points that he highlighted include the following: 1-Establishment of communication between different entities of organization and conveying a clear objective and scheme of action. 2-He further stressed on making T.Q.M philosophy learning as a pre-requisite for the workers and management team. This included the knowledge of its implementation and the tools and techniques involved in the system. 3-Deming further stressed on the reduction in variations in the processes and bringing about consistency in practices. 4- Deming stressed on the need for establishing an environment based on synergetic effect where members help each other over coming their weaknesses and at the same time help them nurturing on their strengths(Roussel, et al., 2006) . Juran’s contribution towards T.Q.M: An American expert on the subject of quality presented his ten points for quality improvement. Few of the salient points are as follows: 1-Creating awareness amongst the employees in terms of their responsibilities and opportunities. They should be aware of the improvement processes and should implement their knowledge in consideration of quality improvements and organizational productivity. 2-Need for training: According to Juran, training is an important part of organizational activities. The knowledge of right kind of tool and technique can guide the workers in direction towards success; this is possible only if the work force has enough knowledge of the field processes and equipment involved. 3-Juran further stressed on acknowledging the hard work of the workers and providing them with incentives to motivate them for further improvement and excellence(Defeo, et al., 2010). Ishikawa contribution: Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa is Japanese expert in the field of quality and management and presented his points on achieving quality organizational environment. His contributions are invaluable in the introduction of Company Wide Quality Control (CWQC) that was aimed at improving daily practices in the organizational businesses. In the field of T.Q.M he proposed various points which serve as benchmark for achieving excellence. 1-The focus of his postulates was based on the customer satisfaction. According to him the company success is largely dependent on the customer response and satisfaction level. He further stressed that any product or service must be created in alliance with the customer needs and requirements. 2-Ishikawa like other quality experts and gurus stressed the need for training and education of the members of the team starting from the top management and ending on the worker force. 3-His postulates further stressed on the need for prevention rather than correction. According to the business rule, the time spent of correction is the time wasted which would otherwise be used in creation of a new product (Rawlins,pg5, 2006). T.Q.M is a separate discipline and a philosophy in itself which guarantees organizational success and customer satisfaction. However this system comes with certain pre –requisites and large amount of literature work is available on the guidance of the experts who have worked in the field of quality and management. Few of the elements that must be taken in to account for achieving the T.Q.M system include the following: Recognition Communication Team work Trust T.Q.M tools and techniques: T.Q.M philosophy underlines large number of tools and techniques which are implemented worldwide for better practices in organizations. Few of the notable tools and techniques include bench marking, Quality Loss Function, Cost of Quality, Pareto chart (Heizer & Render, 2009) Benchmarking: As the name implies, this tool involves selecting and following a particular product or service that is being accomplished and performed under the considerations of customers’ requirements. It is the practice of following the steps of market leaders. Quality Loss function (QLF): This tool enables identification of all those costs incurred due to poor quality. Costs can be incurred due to various reasons which may include inventory, transportation costs and various other non useful activities. Cost of Quality: It is the estimation of costs incurred on various processes; it provides a litmus test for activities and processes and enables cutting on the costs and increasing profits Pareto Chart: A famous management tool that is used all over for various purposes. It helps highlighting the errors and weaknesses and based on prioritization enables mitigating them and finding alternates. Flowcharts and Graphs: Flow charts and graphs provide information in pictorial terms and gives a clear view of the company performance in terms of percentage and other co-relational factors. Graphs are helpful in communicating the view and information. Kaizen: The word Kaizen has its root in the Japanese language and its literal meaning is “Continuous improvement”. It is a management related term and is associated with the organizational working, its daily activities and performance at the end of the day. The terminology is a combination of two separate words Kai meaning change and “Zen” meaning for the purpose of improvement. Hence it is a concept that is based on principle of quality improvement in the working which is achieved through a certain guide line that is being defined by the Kaizen process (Sayer & Williams, 2012). The term Kaizen originated on the surface of managerial world in mid 20th century (1950s) when the Japanese corporate environment stakeholders felt the need for a system which addresses all the necessary components of a system which will guide to success. In other words, Kaizen is a list of certain Dos and Don’ts in the organizational environment which if followed guarantees meeting the objectives and hence success. In manufacturing industry Toyota implemented Kaizen in its organizational environment for improvements and increased productivity (Kato & Smalley, 2010). Since then it has been in practice in large number of international organizations across the globe. Kaizen is a structured methodology that has many other improvement initiative based approaches which mainly include: Kanban: Kanban approach is devised in a manner which guarantees minimum amount of inventory possible. Based on a signaling system, usually in form of card and flag where delivery is made on demand. It has been established with aim to reduce and almost eliminate inventory and storage time during the manufacturing process. With the signaling system in place, the flow of processes remains smooth and barely any stoppage time is observed in the system. Automation: The aim of automation is to reduce the human dependency and make the machine work in a more organized and effective manner. Automation provides large number of benefits to the organization, the first and foremost is it saves man power and makes them available for other important activities where the human services can be utilized (Louis, 2005). Automation is further effective in those areas where human access is dangerous or relatively difficult. Use of automation and robotics is on the rise in various industries across the world. This is one of the prime principle body of Kaizen. Six Sigma: The six sigma concept is based on improving efficiency and reducing the error rate in manufacturing processes. It is a quality improvement initiative which is aimed at achieving high level of through put and minimized defect rates. Using six sigma approach enables reducing the defective percentage of products to a large proportion. Just In Time: Just in time concept is aimed at reducing inventory and delivering and manufacturing the services and products on demand respectively. It is a known fact that storage has large number of disadvantages, which primarily include space factor in terms of space utilization and besides this it slows down the entire process of factory. There are large number of wastes that contribute towards the failure or low productivity of any organization. Kaizen focuses on all those factors which are less productivity or resource consuming. In general, seven types of wastes are identified in organizational structure which are believed to hinder to process of improvement. The implementation of Kaizen philosophy is in alignment with the elimination of those wastes. Since Kaizen philosophy is in accordance with continuous improvement, existence of any ineffective component in the organization becomes difficult with presence of such an effective improvement based system called Kaizen. The few common types of waste that are commonly identified in the field of business, include excessive motion of the material during manufacturing processes, the waiting in form of long queues of products and services being prepared without necessary usage which also gives rise to inventory (Mital & Pennathur,pg242, 2010), and finally the transportation inside the organization and outside with the supply chain team. All these reduce the efficiency; however Kaizen takes into account all these factors and is a free of these wastes. 5s: The 5s is an important feature of Kaizen philosophy. These five factors are set of actions which increase the productivity, increases customer satisfaction, safety of the workers and improved working conditions. Sort: It is the assortment of in use material and the products to be manufactured into an arranged order. Shine: It is the cleaning and maintenance of the material in use and rest of the ambience. Standardize: It is the practice of performing all the activities in a standardized manner, and following the methods specified by quality experts. Sustain: Achieving excellence and growth is easy, sustaining is far more difficult. The 5s principle enables fulfilling the requirements of sustaining the position earned and productivity achieved. Set in order: It is the organization of all the events and entities into order to provide ease of operations and working (Sarkar, 2008). . Few other salient features of Kaizen include the following: Making the work practices in industry more secure and enjoyable Increasing productivity Highlighting improvement initiatives Highlighting and subsequently eliminating wastes Reducing time spent on processes and services Conclusion: Kaizen and T.Q.M are vast disciplines in its own and lots of literature work is available in this field that has been performed by quality gurus from the respective fields. There are many more benefits provided by both of them and for this reason it is implemented in number of international organizations and industries across the world. T.Q.M and Kaizen serve as the perfect recipe for achieving excellence and since it provides innumerable benefits , it enables living up to the expectations and making a name as the market leader. Bibliography: 1-Charantimath, P. M., 2003. Total Quality Management. New Delhi: Pearson Education. 2-Defeo, J., Juran, J. M. & De Feo, J. A., 2010. Juran's Quality Handbook: The Complete Guide to Performance Excellence. New York: McGraw-Hill Prof Med/Tech. 3-Heizer, J. H. & Render, B., 2009. Operations Management. New Delhi: Pearson Education. 4-Kato, I. & Smalley, A., 2010. Toyota Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement. s.l.:CRC Press,. 5-Kawatra, P. s., 2000. Textbook Of Information Science. New Delhi: APH Publishing. 6-Louis, R. S., 2005. Integrating Kanban with MRP II: Automating a Pull System for Enhanced Jit Inventory Management. s.l.:Taylor and Francis. 7-Mital, A. & Pennathur, A., 2010. Industrial Resource Utilization and Productivity: Understanding the Linkages. New York: Momentum Press. 8-Rawlins, R. A., 2006. The Millennium Manager. Bloomington: AuthorHouse. 9-Roussel, L., Swansburg, R. J. & Swansburg, R. C., 2006. “Management and leadership for nurse administrators”. Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Learning. 10-Roy, R. N., 2007. A Modern Approach To Operations Management. New Delhi: New Age International. 11-Sarkar, D., 2008. 5S For Service Organizations And Offices. New Delhi: Pearson Education. 12-Sayer, N. J. & Williams, B., 2012. Lean For Dummies. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Read More