Quality Management Systems - Example

Total Quality Management 1. Introduction Total Quality Management is all about continuous improvement and customer satisfaction and adoption of such system can help organization effectively manage their quality improvement objectives. However, adoption of such useful quality oriented system does not necessarily mean instant improvement to the organization. This is because there are several considerations to be made and a number of influencing factors that should be taken into account before any quality initiative could start. An organization in general must understand their customers’ needs and expectations along with different perception of quality. Moreover, maintaining customer satisfaction entails continuous monitoring and improvement thus an organization must be ready and committed before they completely adopt a TQM. The following sections discusses several important issues about Total Quality Management and these include understanding customer needs and expectations, perception of quality, implementing and achieving improvement, creation of quality team/circle, and the difference between BS EN ISO 9000 and Total Quality Management. 2. Total Quality Management 2.1 Customer needs and expectations Customers are the lifeline of any business and they expect a certain degree of quality whenever purchase a product or service (Schiller et al. 1994, p.29). For this reason, a certain product or service must satisfy these expectations and ensure a high degree of satisfaction. For instance, when a certain customer purchased an HD television set, he or she expects to see highly defined images. Similarly, when a certain customer asked a maintenance company to fix a leaking faucet, he or she expects an expert plumber who can do a quality job in no time. However, delivering what the customer wants is only possible if the needs and expectations of the customer are clear and well-defined. According to Yoji Akao in (Kumar 2006, p.41), basic needs of customers fall into three categories that include specific requirements they individually express, the quality they will normally expect, and improvements they don’t expect but they can easily recognize. Since most customer demands are translated to manufacturing specifications, it is very important to accurately identity customer needs and expectations particularly the product functionality and quality. Along with the recognition that the needs and expectations of customers must be fully satisfied, it is also advantageous for the supplier to produce products with some unexpected improvements. For instance, an ordinary car improved with a touch screen audio head unit will be highly appreciated by the new owner of the vehicle. Similarly, responding to a service call in a matter of minutes is a large improvement that can boost company image. These are the same principles Total Quality Management gurus like Noriaki Kano wanted to emphasize. Basic quality according to Kano (Lecture note, p.3) is a primary expectation thus absence of such quality dissatisfies customers. In contrast, providing better performing products satisfies most customers since it’s what they expect from the product. Additional features on the other hand add excitement to customers particularly those that are way beyond their expectations. For instance, GPS and other navigational gadgets are innovative features most customers do not expect on a standard vehicle thus creating excitement and positive perception about the product. A survey conducted by the American Society for Quality, reveals several important factors about customers’ perception of quality. These are performance, features, service, warranty, price, and reputation (Rajendra 2006, p.43). It is important to note that with all these factors affecting customers’ perception of quality, the level of acceptable quality varies with the changing needs and expectations of customers. For instance, performance of a product is based on its fitness for use thus the performance of a car manufactured 10 years ago for example is not acceptable today in terms of speed and fuel consumption. Similarly, technological features that was well-accepted before such as CD players are no longer acceptable today since customers expect more technically advanced features such as DVD or Blue-ray. Ways of serving modern day customers is also changing as it is being affected by the changing way of life and economic factors. The price of a product is another very important factor affecting customer satisfaction as most customers seek the best value for their money. In sum, to avoid exhaustive evaluation of products to buy, customers are more often relying on reputation based on their own overall experience with the products and its maker (Rajendra 2006, p.43). Based on the above factors, satisfying the needs and expectations of customers requires continuous improvement. In Total Quality Management, incremental improvement is necessary (Radhakrishan 2008, p.91). However, although it is the simplest to understand, continuous improvement is the most complex part of Total Quality Improvement. For example, it is easy to say that manufacturer can make a product better but determining ways to improve the product is a complicated process (Halachmi 1995, p.107). According to Burns & Mercier (2001, p.41), continuous improvement is one of the guiding principles of Total Quality Management where an organization goes through an infinite process of search for improvement possibilities. More importantly, it is often focus on several things such as processes, people, and the organization itself looking for a way to create valuable but affordable products (Marsh 1998, p.8). 2.2 Perception of Quality As globalization increased competition among suppliers of similar products, perception of quality emerged as the determining factor for success. This is because people nowadays can purchase products they need from different manufacturers at a lower price than those being offered by local companies. However, since quality is often being given the highest priority in customers’ buying decision, perception of quality is thus an important factor that can alter customers’ choices made based on cost (Dabade & Wankhade 2009, p.5). In a UK based study for instance, the origin, price, brand name, method of production, and other quality marks are often used by UK consumers to define quality and buy a certain product (Kanji 1995, p.173). Manufacturers therefore should take into account the dimensions of quality that include performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, safety, and other subjective perceptions (David Garvin, Lecture notes, p.8). “Quality means different things to different people” (Spenley 1995, p.19) thus understanding the term quality is very important. For example, it is common for advertisement to imply excellence, comfortable, and classy as quality. In contrast, quality in most business is implementing quality control or following the organization’s standard. Quality therefore involves meeting several requirements that involves individuals and all sections, departments, and divisions of an organization (Spenley 1995, p.19). Failure to recognize the nature of quality required can lead to shortfalls in delivering customer expectations and performance standard that may lead to customer dissatisfaction and damaged to reputation (Dale & Bunney 1999, p.14). According to Seaver (2003, p.463), it is essential for the management of a certain company to recognize the type of quality expected by customer in a particular time since failure to do so can lead to dissatisfaction. It is therefore necessary to accept the fact that quality change in tandem with customer perception. Customers’ perception of quality as the above suggest is a significant factor affecting customers’ choices thus monitoring the changes in customer perception is part of the organizations Total Quality Management effort. In view of the fact that the level and character of quality changed with time and real-life circumstances, the organization must monitor perceptions and continually improve their products. 2.3 Achieving Improvement Considering that being aware of its customers’ perception of quality is big advantage to the organization, achieving the improvement required is another matter. To ensure that the organization can cope with these improvements, it must adapt a quality management system designed for improving quality in an organization such as Total Quality Management. Improvement may be achieved through value creation within the organization and listening closely with customers (Smith & Flarey 1999, p.95). More importantly, organizations must understand that low quality products have a root cause either coming from the process or the system itself. The organization therefore must examine their existing system and processes and those that do not add value must be eliminated (Davis 1994, p.27). Product assessment should become a normal function within the organization and customer feedback must be obtained in a regular basis to ensure that necessary details required for product improvement are collected and incorporated in the next release of the product (Madura 2006, p.334). In other words, there should be mindset within the organization on as to the level of quality and how to achieve this quality (Sreenivasan 2008, p.3). Several suggestions have been made in order to achieve improvement and these include linking the organizations business objective to customers’ expectations and needs. Organizations must investment on research about customer needs and expectations in order for the organization to be always current in their operational objectives. Monitor customer feedback on every product sold and use it as an input for the next process. The management must try its best to harmonize every activity in the organization such as design, marketing, transport, security, maintenance, finance, customer services, and manufacturing activities. Every member of the organization must be aware of customer needs and expectations and act accordingly. Finally, the organization must be systematic and aim to improve customer relationship (Sreenivasan 2008, p.4). The idea behind the involvement of employees or every member of the organization is that reality that employees will perform well if they encouraged to be responsible over their work. Therefore, the more members participate, the higher the commitment to customer satisfaction. According to Ahmad (2005, p.84), improving quality is not just a matter of enhancing the system, implementing standards, or using advanced technology but also include performance of individual employees participating in the organization’s continuous improvement. Employees are internal customers and for any improvement initiative or efforts to satisfy external customers to succeed, successful working relations must be achieved beforehand within the organization. This is because the satisfaction of internal customers is a as real as satisfaction required by external customers and once the organization fails to satisfy the needs of employees, the result is dissatisfaction of external customers (Ahmad 2005, p.84). 2.4 Continuous Improvement Initiatives Continuous improvement is the heart of Total Quality Management and as mentioned earlier, the success of any organization in meeting the changing customer expectations and needs depends on continuous improvement being made within the organization. Continuous improvements in general are initiatives emphasizing incremental improvement in the organizations processes and products (Radhakrishnan 2008, p.91) and in order to succeed these initiatives must be designed based on the organization’s specific needs and implemented in line with the organization’s operational strategy. In other words, initiatives for improvement must fit the organization’s needs and circumstances. For example an initiative designed for a medium sized food company cannot be use for a construction company for the simple reason that their organizational structures are not the same. Moreover, their product varies considerably as well customer needs and expectations (Revelle et al. 1998, p.214). However, despite exhaustive efforts of an organization, continuous improvement initiatives are not always successful. This is because aside from limitations inherent to a particular organization, there are barriers that can affect the outcome of the improvement initiatives. For instance, an organization may be affected by cultural change and resistance from various individuals or departments within the organization. According to Pike & Barnes (p.193), despite the training and several programmes for improvement, there is a tendency for an organization to return to its original state. This is because most of the training given to their employees is inadequate while management failed to measure the outcome appropriately. Consequently, absorption of change is gradual while the existing culture rapidly re-imposes itself to every employee of the organization. There are also instances that quality problems still occur due to insufficient control of the processes as a result of management failure to clearly define the requirements to employees. The variations in the work being done within the organization are the outcome of initiatives encouraging employees work in isolation and make their own decision regarding their work rather than following a certain path adapted by the company for all. Without appropriate monitoring for instance, an inadequately trained employee working in isolation is more vulnerable to the temptation of long time traditional practices and may return to it unexpectedly. 2.5 Quality Team/Circles Using a suitable Total Quality Management method for a particular organization is very important thus senior management must be familiar with these methods. For instance, education and training are important factors in improvement efforts thus without it, a quality team created to support total quality management initiatives will be discourage and lose their team spirit subsequently. Kanji & Asher (1996, p.8), argues that inaccurate identification of quality problems and application of quality management method based only on data analysis will not succeed. This is because the success of Total Quality Management depends on clearly identified quality problems and any diversion from the process will result to failure. Moreover, the success of the quality team depends on the proper application of a certain Total Quality Management method and they will have a greater chance of success if the processes are executed in their proper time and sequence. Most organizations would have people in quality circle such as the senior and middle managers, supervisors, and other employees. Unfortunately, these groups often have different attitude towards Total Quality Management. For instance, senior management are likely to see such initiative as an opportunity for both the organisation and themselves. In contrast, middle managers may see it as an additional load that is not beneficial to their position in the organization. Similarly, supervisors and other junior managers may see it as another organizational programme that would die down in a matter of months like those initiatives before it. Much worse is the strong possibility that regular employees will not take it seriously despite the fact that they primarily own the responsibility as they are mostly interested with their job and salaries. For this reason, the organization must ensure that each of these groups understand the benefits of Total Quality Management to every individual working in the organization particularly lower rank employees directly involved with customers (Oakland 2003, p.318). In addition, each team must have clear responsibilities, defined deliverables, and adequate resources to complete the tasks (Subburaj 2005, p.9). Along with quality teams are cross-function teams assigned to research and develop new policies in line Total Quality Management culture. This may involve determining and hiring the right people for the job particularly those that are well-rounded in new culture (Sashkin & Kiser 1993, p.160). The cross-function team is a member of the quality circle which is responsible for problem solving. The idea behind the quality circle is to have different members with different views working together to solve a particular quality issue (Bagad 2008, p.18). Success of a quality circle within the organization may be determined by the following several requirements that include effective dissemination of information to everyone before undertaking any programme of initiative. Beforehand, the organization must be prepared to take full responsibility and ready to trust and encourage their employees, and be directly involved in process improvement. Moreover, there should be open communication between the management and employees and common acceptance of the changes in leadership and organizational culture. When all are ready and every consideration is taken, the programme must be designed specifically for the organization taking into account its structure and existing practices. Appoint and train a Quality Circle leader and adapt a problem solving and action approach to ensure quality decisions (Pike & Barnes 1996, p.62). 2.6 Quality Management Systems Since most organisations worldwide are adapting total quality management principles, a unified quality management standard was developed. ISO 9000 is the first organizational standard implemented internationally and adopted by more or less 118 countries worldwide (Mukherjee 2006, p. 203). In UK, The British Standards or BS EN ISO 9001:2008 has been adopted to guide UK organizations on the requirements of Quality Managements Systems. In general, this particular specification requires organization to establish, document, implement, and maintain a quality management system. These include determining the processes required for the implementation of QMS and the sequence and relationship between these processes. Moreover, the organization must come up with a relevant method, provide the resources, measure and properly analyse processes, and act to ensure a favourable outcome (BSI 2008, p.2). BS EN ISO 9000 and TQM are not the same and they differ in many aspects. For instance, TQM is generally focused on customer satisfaction and integrated with the organizations strategy. BS EN ISO 9000 on the other hand does not require an organization to focus on a certain goal and not necessary have to be integrated with the corporate. Moreover, TQM is more focus on philosophy, concepts, tools, and techniques while BS EN ISO 9000 is mostly technical and procedural. As mentioned earlier, TQM and its methods commonly required employee involvement but this is not necessary in BS EN ISO 9000. In other words, BS EN ISO 9000 views the organization as a technical system and discounting the reality that an organization aside from being technical is also a social system dealing with people’s behaviour and interaction (Pike & Barnes 1996, p.28). For this reason, BS EN ISO 9000 may not be an ideal solution to the organizations quest for customer satisfaction and should consider TQM instead. For instance, BS EN ISO 9000 expects employees to comply with the new procedures in order to ensure quality work. Consequently, the organization must audit these employees to find out whether they are complying or not. If the performance of a certain employee is found inadequate, corrective actions will be taken to eliminate the inadequacies (Pike & Barnes 1996, p.27). Clearly, this quality management system is more focused on technical systems and the manner in which they operate rather than social interactions and quality as it is being impacted by people’s behaviour. 3. Conclusion Total Quality Management involves several essential elements such as understanding of customer needs and expectations, customers perception of quality, work required to achieve improvement, the concept of continuous improvement, and the value of creating quality circles. A good understanding of customer needs and expectations along with familiarity with customer perception of quality can be advantageous to any organization as they are the key to continuous improvement. Total Quality Management is a never-ending process since customer needs and expectations change with time, economy, and technology. However, not all organisations adopting TQM would necessarily succeed as there are several factors that must taken into account before an organization finally benefit from their improvement initiatives. Organizations must create values and work closely with customers, find the root cause of the quality problem and eliminate it, monitor and assess customer feedback, and gradually create a mindset of quality within the organization. The organization at the minimum must link its business objectives to the customers’ needs and expectations. They must be willing to invest of research and development and harmonize every activity in the organization. More importantly, all employees must be involved in quality improvement initiatives as TQM generally require satisfying both internal and external customers to succeed. Another important requirement for TQM is the creation of quality circle that would manage problems and quality requirements of the organization. Quality Management Systems like the BS EN ISO 9000 may not be sufficient to solve the quality problems of a certain organization since it is designed for technical systems and operational procedures. Since TQM recognized that an organization is more than a technical system and involves social interaction among people, an organization needing to solve their quality problems must adopt TQM or both. 4. References Ahmad N., 2005, Encyclopedia Of Hotel Management (Set Of 7 Vols.), PVT. LTD., India Bagad V., 2008, Total Quality Management, Technical Publications, India BSI, 2010, BS EN ISO 9000 – Quality Management Systems requirements, British Standard, UK Burns D., & Mercier J., 2001, Cooperative Strategies for Forest Science Management and Leadership in an Increasingly Complex and Globalized World, DIANE Publishing, US Dabade B. & Wankhade L., 2009, Quality Uncertainty and Perception: Information Asymmetry and Management of Quality Uncertainty and Quality Perception, Springer, Germany Dale B. & Bunney H., 1999, Total quality management blueprint, Wiley-Blackwell, UK Davis E., 1994, Total quality management for home care, Jones & Bartlett Learning, US Garvin D., Dimensions of Quality, Lecture Notes, p.10 Halachmi A. & Bouckaert G., 1995, Public productivity through quality and strategic management, IOS Press, Netherlands Kanji G., 1995, Total quality management: proceedings of the first world, Springer, UK Kanji G., 1996, 100 methods for total quality management, SAGE, UK Kano N., Kano’s Perception of Quality, Lecture Notes, p.3 Kumar S., 2006, Total Quality Management, Firewall Media, India Madura J., 2006, Introduction to business, Cengage Learning, Canada Marsh J., 1998, The continuous improvement toolkit: a practical resource for achieving organizational excellence, BT Batsford, UK Mukherjee P., 2006, Total Quality Management, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., India Naidu N. & Rajendra G., 2006, Total Quality Management, New Age International, India Oakland J., 2003, Total quality management: text with cases, Butterworth-Heinemann, UK Pike J. & Barnes R., 1996, TQM in action: a practical approach to continuous performance improvement, Springer, Germany Radhakrishan R., 2008, Business Process Reengineering: Text And Cases, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., India Revelle J., Moran J., & Cox C., 1998, The QFD handbook, John Wiley and Sons, US Sashkin M. & Kiser K., 1993, Putting total quality management to work: what TQM means, how to use it, & how to sustain it over the long run, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, US Schiller M. , Miller-Kovach K., & Miller M., 1994, Total quality management for hospital nutrition services, Jones & Bartlett Learning, US Seaver M., 2003, Gower handbook of quality management, Gower Publishing, Ltd., UK Smith S. & Flarey D., 1999, Process-centered health care organizations, Jones & Bartlett Learning, US Spenley P., 1995, Step change total quality: achieving world class business performance, Springer, UK Sreenivasan S., 2007, Continual Improvement Process, Pearson Education, India Subburaj R., 2005, Total Quality Management, Tata McGraw-Hill, India Read More