Quality Management Issues - Term Paper Example

Quality Progress Journal: ‘Get Staff Involved in Quality Initiatives’-Mike Bolton submitted Introduction Quality has become central focus for most companies; this is the reason why quality initiatives continue to become dynamic. Organizations are implementing such initiatives of quality as ISO Certification, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and Quality Awards among others. Quality Progress has featured several issues on quality as far as companies, firms or manufacturing industries are concerned. These include ‘How Six Sigma metrics can reliably track an organization’s financial results’, ‘Unsung Heroes of Quality’, ‘The Essential Six Sigma’ and ‘Get Staff Involved in Quality Initiatives’. This review focuses on Mike Bolton’s published issue- ‘Get Staff Involved in Quality Initiatives.’ ‘Get Staff Involved in Quality Initiatives’-Mike Bolton Mike Bolton, the Vice President of ATC, a public transportation company, explored an entirely new quality initiative. He went out of the ordinary Six Sigma to the risk of involving employees-whose loyalty was not guaranteed-in quality initiatives. This was a daunting task that many critics doubted its feasibility. Bolton’s motivation for a new quality initiative was the economic downturn in 2000 when it merged with a global transportation service. He thought that adopting the Six Sigma would be costly in terms of time and finances considering their budget at the time. Together with ATC’s CEO, Jim Long, Bolton adopted the Action Workout initiative. This incorporated leaders and employees alike in quality improvement. Teams were deployed to each of ATC’s branches; this consisted of leaders and employees. Each team had one leader and six employees, their focus was improving one of the laid down key profitability driver at its location. Each location was put on a 60-day clock on the start and finish and assumed ownership of the results. The teams were encouraged to localize best practices, this enhanced member enthusiasm and creativity. Among the ideas put into action were trained teams comprising of defenders of safety whose main concern was to reduce accidents. They established the root cause of accidents to be failure to perform vehicle inspection. They established the ‘red dot’ inspection initiative to counter this. The other team was the ‘budgeteers’ team. Their focus was overtime expense reduction. This was achieved by routine vehicle fueling, maintenance timing and reporting accuracy among others. Every vehicle and every driver were tracked every day. Teams that produced the best results were awarded. The company also learnt a number of insights: the need to think carefully about team member selection and accountability. Accountability and follow-through proved to be tough values to introduce into a pre-existing culture. It was also an insightful establishment that it is better to have financial staff in the game rather than on the sidelines. In the second wave launched, the initiative made use of new team leaders but with the same coaching and leadership structure. This was advantageous because it explored new talent. As a result, the outcome was exemplary which posed greater challenge, that of maintaining the same results henceforth. Another challenge was the overload of improvements to be implemented by the managers. In the third wave, ATC focused on locations with the biggest opportunity for profit increment. The list of team assignments was also reduced to a minimum. This enabled ATC to sustain results by getting its slower improving locations up to standard and allowing its higher performing locations time to clear their plates of improvements in action and prepare for future similar campaigns. The initiative bore fruit for ATC, it completed three parts of its quality improvement initiative by simply involving its staff directly. The goal realization time span was notably short, as would not have been the case with Six Sigma. The failure rate was minimal, out of the 72 teams launched; an insignificant two did not accomplish their tasks. Other benefits were huge costs saved, boosting of employee morale and ultimately, quality improvement. ATC remains focused on the future. In their quality improvement toolkit, it has added a novel capability known as rapid process breakthrough. This involves lean design from the manufacturing world to complex business processes such as demand forecasting, route scheduling and man power planning. ATC in all its initiatives involves its employees, challenging them to take action. Suggestions for improvement/extension ATC adopted a self-owned approach and involved its staff directly. Bolton’s argument was that this particular approach was cost-effective and saved time thus quick results. It would have been much more insightful to contrast it with the expert-owned approach, which similarly, is cost-effective and could be invaluable for other companies to consider as a quality improvement initiative. The expert-owned approach also allows room for involvement of staff in its implementation. According to Beckford, expert-owned programs begin with the appointment of a project manager and an implementation team. Normally, such a team will take full responsibility for the project, identifying and making appropriate changes and handing over the new system or approach to the subject staff 0n a ‘turnkey’ basis. This team will deal with training, debugging new systems and procedures and ironing out any difficulties before handing over the project. Such an approach has significant advantages in certain circumstances, such as in ‘greenfield’ situations where there are no established methods or pre-conceived ideas. It can be very rapid and cost-effective in the short term. The approach can take advantage of functional specialism that would perhaps otherwise be unobtainable or very expensive (Beckford, 326). Nonetheless, ATC’s self-owned approach was exemplary in as far as staff involvement is concerned. The expert-owned approach places ownership of the new methods in the hands of the project team rather than the affected staff. Success or failure is allocated to the project team by both the management and staff, and it is usually the case that barriers or objections to change are not eradicated but by-passed. Those affected are overruled. This in turn may slow or inhibit the process of change and generates the possibility of reversion to previous approaches, in effect negating the work done (Beckford, 326). The sharp contrast in the two approaches above further justifies ATC’s approach as comparatively effective. Other companies seeking to involve staff in their quality improvement strategies may thus emulate ATC’s approach. ATC is a public transportation company. It remains questionable whether staff involvement in quality initiatives would be effective in other sectors other than the transport sector. This case is true. In a study by Allison, a healthcare institution, Veterans Health Administration (VHA), successfully implemented a quality initiative with the incorporation of its staff in the program. VHA had been reputed for the poorest quality patient care service in the USA. VHA’s quality initiatives included Internal Peer Review Program and External Peer Review Program. The Internal Peer Review program was designed for quality management and was intended to be a learning process. An individual professional peer from the staff within the facility would review cases and conclude whether in his own opinion, most experienced experts would have managed the case in a similar fashion or differently. The Internal Peer Reviews were completed in a very short time (Allison, 15). Bolton in his quality initiative should have highlighted ‘on the job techniques’ employed. It is commendable that ATC made use of staff in fields relevant to their skills and professional expertise. For instance, making use of employees with accounting skills in the ‘budgeteers’ team. This was resourceful although it was adopted at later stages where the staff had a lot of catching up to do. On the job techniques that could have been considered include job rotation. This refers to the rotation of the staff from one job to another on a systematic and regular basis so as to broaden his knowledge and understanding. It widens the staff’s experience beyond the limited confines of his specialization. It also enables the staff to learn to work with other departmental staff and executives. The end result will be quality initiative implemented through the staff while at the same time exposing the staff to a wider scope of knowledge. This, however, has to be administered skillfully to avoid problems of barriers to internal communication, employee morale and indiscipline (Murugan, 264). Another vital on the job technique is employee temporary promotions. The employee may be delegated a temporary position to assume the position of a manager of the team. The acting manager gains invaluable job experience provided he is not a mere figure head (Murugan, 264). Understudy is another technique where the employee is made an assistant to a manager for instance. He learns by observing and assisting the manager. As the learning takes place in the actual job setting, there is no problem of adjustment after the quality initiative implementation period. ATC’ staff involvement in quality initiative was a bold move and risk considering the fact that it was a totally new idea. Employee loyalty was not assured; furthermore, ATC is a relatively large company with scattered locations. This initiative is worth emulating apart from the ordinary Sigma Six, Quality Awards or ISO Certification. It is high time companies realized the importance and potential of their employees. ATC is a testimony. ReferencesTop of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Beckford, John. Quality: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 1998. Internet resource. Mike Bolton. Get Staff Involved in Quality Initiatives Retrieved from http://www.asq.org/pub/qualityprogress/past/0204/qp0204bolton.pdf Murugan M.S. Management: Principles and Practices. New York: Macmillan, 1974. Print. Percy, Allison. Quality Initiatives Undertaken by the Veterans Health Administration. Washington, DC: Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, 2009. Print. Read More