Deming Framework for Quality Management - Assignment Example

Dеming Frаmеwоrk--Quаlity Mаnаgеmеnt Name: Tutor: Subject: Date: Introduction Quality management is process by which a company facilitates the production of consistent and high-quality products and services (Reijers et al., 2015, p 21). The concept of quality has been a subject of discussion for many philosophers; it has evolved to mean much more than the only integrity of the products and services produced. It is now used to represent a system of activities that leads to the commitment to business success that entails all practices by individuals within the organization. This essay will discuss extensively the evolution of quality management and illustrate thoughts of Deming as a philosopher who contributed to the science and practice of quality management. Coca-Cola of China is the company that the report will focus on as it is a company that has embraced the methodology of quality management I am delivering its products and services to consumers in China. Dr. W. Edward Deming is a philosopher who was in the front line in stressing the importance of individual and company level in a management role in delivering quality products and services. Deming stated that 80-90% of the problems associated with the quality of the products were within the reach of the management’s control. He went further to indicate that the quality of the products and services delivered by the company depends on the cultural change in the organization and employee/management cooperation in ensuring that high-quality products and services are provided. Deming developed various theories to address quality management, Deming’s 14 points illustrate the complete philosophy of quality management and solution to be applied in any organization, for this case it will be Coca-Cola China. The following are the 14 points and how they apply in Coca-Cola China in the food industry. 1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service This is where Deming proposed that resources to be allocated to various departments of the organization so as to provide for long-term objectives rather that short-term profitability. This will enable the group to become competitive and to stay in the business while creating job opportunities. Coca-Cola China has established a well-coordinated management system that has been able to put into practice the essence of constancy in their products and service delivery (Kotler, 2015, p 45). For the past 35 years, the company has been able to maintain its status and has improved significantly from its inception in 1979 which was a difficult era in the history of China. The company has employed many Chinese people in the industry and now it is the third leading company in the food industry. The constancy of quality through the management of various departments has enabled them to improve over the past three decades. The approach that was used by the company to provide its customers with quality products and services has enabled the company to maintain constancy (Stone & Deadrick, 2015, p 99). The implementation of new research in the mid-1980’s enable the Chinese people to accept the consumption of Coca-Cola products that they initially referred to it as being similar to Chinese medicine. 2. Adoption of new philosophy This is a process by which a company adopts new philosophy for economic stability in a particular region. New quality management philosophies are aimed at eliminating low levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials, and defective workmanship. The need for new philosophies to transform out fashioned quality management styles facilitates the reclamation of a company from continued decline. This involves the complete reversal of attitudes toward the product and service delivery in a company. The company should change the way its management and employees have been viewing and serving its consumers in the previous times (Sallis, 2014, p 71). The organization should achieve this by moving towards the right direction in terms of the quality of products that are produced. The philosophy of always improving the organizations products, activities, and processes to achieve positive goals in delivering quality services to its customers. Coca-Cola China has been able to achieve this through the cooperation it has with the government of China for the past 35 years. The company changed its view on the Chinese people when first achieved their hearts to turn them and make them use iced Coca-Cola products that the Chinese people initially were not used to. The company has been able to develop through the introduction of various philosophies; the company initially had a lot of problems with the materials used as bottle tops to tighten the Coca-Cola drinks. The company developed various means to eliminate the defects they had in the production of the bottle tops. They finally came up with metallic bottle tops hence a new philosophy came into practice to eliminate the defects associated with the initial means of tightening the bottles containing the Coca-Cola beverages (Wisner et al., 2015). 3. Cease dependence on inspection This is a way of eliminating the need for mass inspection to achieve quality in and organization. Deming insisted that the quality of the product during production was to give priority, the product quality should not be determined by its products followed by inspection of the quality. The company is supposed to obtain statistical evidence of the quality of the product in production and the purchasing functions. The products are supposed to be free of defects, errors, and high-level mistakes as per Deming. This will avoid the production of poor quality products that have been seen to be acceptable, and people are used to them. The results will be obtained if the company maintains and implement high-quality standards and, in the long run, the need for mass inspection would no longer be appropriate for the products of such company. The quality of products produced by Coca-Cola China has unarguably been the best in recent years due to the improvements that have been made on the production of its products. Initially, the Coca-Cola China was faced with many challenges since it was the first product to be reintroduced into the Chinese market after the Second World War. It was used to production of poor quality beverages in the mid 1980’s when they were faced with challenges of unstable supply of power to their new plant in China, this led to lower quality products and also the use of bottles with stains in packaging their products have long been left behind due to the improvement done yearly in the company. Through the production of high-quality products, the company has been able to gain a positive reputation and eradication of expensive inspections. 4. End of practice of awarding businesses in terms of price tags This is an activity that involves ending lowest tender contracts, awards based on the price tags of a company’s products. This activities have been replaced with meaningful measures of quality along with the price of the product and reduced number of contractors by canceling those who produce low quality products with the statistical evidence of poor quality in their products. This was suggested by Deming to minimize the cost of production. The coca cola China has taken several steps in ensuring that the contractors assigned to deliver different products and services are considering the quality of those products and services rather than delivering low-quality products. The number of suppliers that were initially supplying for the Coca-Cola China has reduced over time due to the measure taken by the company to ensure the suppliers deliver quality products. This has eliminated low-quality inputs resulting in high-quality outputs and hence the company has been ranked among the best companies in terms of products quality. This has enabled the company to produce a product that are defect free and hence avoiding consequences of customers realizing the defects and mistakes in the products. 5. Finding problems Continually seeking out problems to improve the system of production, services, and other activities. This will constantly reduce the cost of production. The management has to monitor closely all the input materials, maintenance, training and supervision activities. The management will be able to eliminate all the potential factors that may cost the company a lot of money in repairing them. The problems that are eliminated earlier will enable the company to achieve higher quality products and facilitate the improvement of the company’s services and products. Coca-Cola China has been in most case able to identify various problems with the input materials enabling them to eliminate threats caused by the materials if they would have breached into the system. The Coca-Cola China was able to identify the problem of stains in bottles and rectified the problem. The company has been in a position to deliver various products that are free from defects since they managed to remove all kinds of problems that were associated with the processing and the production of the Coca-Cola drinks. This has allowed the company to make improvement in every product they deal with. Deming said that if the problem did not found then the company has to be sure that the problem will find its way to them. Further improvements are achievable, but it will only be possible if further problems are identified and solved. 6. Institute modern methods of training on the job Institute training on the job achieves the better use of employees and their expertise. The employees and even the management cannot do their job in the required way if they are not well-trained for that job. Although training is regarded as unproductive by many organizations, the actual truth is that training is productive if it is seen from a rather influential perspective. Training of employees will consume a little amount of money from the total cost and will be of much profit to the company when the techniques and expertise impacted on to them are harnessed in various fields in the organization. An employee who understands his/her job will reduce the errors associated with that job since he/she is well-versed with the expectations from that particular field. This will improve the quality of the products produced by the company. Workers will be able to gain satisfaction from doing the job that they are trained to do rather that the job that they are not well-versed with. Coca-Cola China has been able to include in their program a training vacation for new employees in order to make them understand the kind of services they are required to offer to the company so as to improve the quality of the products that are produced. This has been successful for the past years in the company and hence the Coca-Cola China has developed a workforce that can deliver high-quality products. 7. Institute modern methods of supervision and production of workers Modern methods of supervision are focused on helping employees to use various machines in different activities to obtain quality products as the results. The roles of supervisors have to evolve from just ensuring that the job is done the right way to whether the job is done well, and the results are of a higher quality. When the quality of the products are improved, it will indicate that the supervision of employees is of the required intensity. The management of the company should always ensure that the defects, maintenance, and poor tools are addressed by modern supervision to rectify the errors once and for all. When there is poor coordination between the workers and the supervisor, this will indicate that there is poor quality of production process hence lower quality of the end products (Reijers et al., 2015, p 173). Employees have to be directed to various processes then if they are not up to the required level they should be shown how to perform the operation by the supervisors. This will increase the interest of the employees and eventually they will be producing high-quality products. In Coca-Cola China the employee supervision is done to the modest way in the recent past it has seen its employees gaining interest in their areas of specialization and have eventually produced quality products. Employees of Coca-Cola China have managed to be ranked among the best service delivering workers in China due to their devotion to various activities in the industry. 8. Drive out fear for everyone to work effectively According to Deming, every organization should ensure that there is no fear of failure or errors in the process of production by their employees. The organization should encourage efficient communication among the management and the employees so as to eliminate fear in the organization. The organization that is experiencing a smoother communication in the organization will likely have a higher quality production. When employees are in the fear of the managers and supervisors, there will be a higher chance that they might underperform in their working areas. Coca-Cola China is indeed a good example of a company where there is a higher cooperation among the employees and the management. Recently the company has deployed measures of ensuring that workers and the management meet to discuss various issues; this has enabled the organization to eliminate fear and create productive individual hence the high-quality beverages. 9. Breakdown barriers between departments When workers from different areas of research, sales, administration and production work together to solve various issues if they are no barriers among these departments. However, various sections in the organization possess different qualities among its members (Popkin & Hu, 2015). This sections will have to eliminate barriers among them and the other sections so as to eliminate any conflict of interest among them and enable them to work together for the benefit of the organization. In Coca-Cola China, there are departments of packaging, processing, security, sales and administration. For this department to be productive there has to be a bond among them. This is evident in the department of supply and sales where employees interact well while sharing records for the quality of the products and different information about production and supply. 10. Eliminate exhortations This is the elimination of slogans, posters, and other cultures. Coca-Cola China has been able to ensure successfully that there are no developed slogans among the employees or the departments since this will only create unstable relationship among employees leading to the production of low quality products. The departments will be able to produce a defect free products goods which when transfers to the next stage can be worked on without any problem. 11. Eliminating work standards and targets Targets when they are set can never be attained as accurately as they are set, it’s only accidental that the target is attained. Most case targets are either lower or higher than what was intended. Workers will always express their feelings about the targets set by the company, if the target is not attained there will be frustrations among the workers hence they lose morale to continue working thus there will be a decrease in the quality of the products. When workers attain the required target, there will certain sacrifices made on either the quality of the products, employees or the customer (Björkman & Welch, 2015). This will also significantly affect the quality of the products. In Coca-Cola China, there is no target set at employees’ level so as to avoid direct impact of the results in the workforce. This has enabled the company to avoid results of setting target within the employee level a hence its continued production of high-quality products. 12. Allow pride in workmanship Coca-Cola China has been in the frontline in ensuring that its employees are never restricted to express their opinions and pride in their working areas. The worker can express their pride since they can produce quality goods. When workers produce low-quality goods, they will not be able to have pride. If the manager knows that the impact he/she has on various departments is not felt then he/she cannot be proud. All workers in Coca-Cola China are given the right to be proud of even the smallest unquantifiable achievements so as to be able to improve the quality of products (Hollensen, 2015, p 123). . 13. Instituting a vigorous education and retraining An organization that has to continue with the quality it has developed, it has to retrain its employees to embrace the changes that the company is integrating. In the modern era new designs, materials, services and techniques are introduced into the company hence the need for the organization retrain and educate its workers on various ways of implementing the new activities (Sheth, J. N. (2015). In Coca-Cola China, there have been a lot of changes that have taken place since its beginning in 1979. The introduction of new products like the minute maid milky and other, the employees had to be briefed and retrained so as to be able to produce quality products that they initially were not dealing with. 14. Top management commitment The top management of Coca-Cola China are committed to production of quality products this is evident for the whole time the company has been running since it has never failed or dissolve even though they have passed through difficult times (Sauerbronn et al., 2014). The company has a well-established management that has been able to achieve various objectives from the time Coca-Cola drinks were introduced to China. Its continued maintenance of quality is easily seen through the success their products are accepted by the Chinese people, making it the third largest market in the Coca-Cola system. In conclusion, the Coca-Cola China Company has been able to develop itself as the leading product. The quality of their products has been increasing been improved from time to time since they are applying Deming 14 points in their production. They have been able to improve in various department in terms of the quality of services and products. 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