Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management (Work Standards and quality Manpower in Achieving Organizational Objectives)

In the 1950s, the Japanese asked W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician and management theorist, to help them improve their war torn economy. By implementing Deming's principles of total quality management (TQM), Japan experienced dramatic economic growth. In the 1980s, when the United States began to see a reduction in its own world market share in relation to Japan, American business rediscovered Deming. Quality management experts, Joseph Juran and Philip Crosby, also contributed to the development of TQM theories, models, and tools. TQM is now practiced in business as well as in government, the military, education, and in non-profit organizations including libraries (Jurow & Barnard, 1993).Total Quality is a description of the culture, attitude and organization of a company that strives to provide customers with products and services that satisfy their needs. The culture requires quality in all aspects of the company's operations, with processes being done right the first time and defects and waste eradicated from operations.

Total Quality Management, TQM, is a method by which management and employees can become involved in the continuous improvement of the production of goods and services. It is a combination of quality and management tools aimed at increasing business and reducing losses due to wasteful practices.

TQM is a management philosophy that seeks to integrate all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, and production, customer service, etc.) to focus on meeting customer needs and organizational objectives.

TQM views an organization as a collection of processes. It maintains that organizations must strive to continuously improve these processes by incorporating the knowledge and experiences of workers.

TQM is the foundation for activities, which include:

Commitment by senior management and all employees
Meeting customer requirements
Reducing development cycle times
Just In Time/Demand Flow Manufacturing
Improvement teams
Reducing product and service costs
Systems to facilitate improvement
Line Management ownership
Employee involvement and empowerment
Recognition and celebration
Challenging quantified goals and benchmarking
Focus on processes / improvement plans
Specific incorporation in strategic planning

Principles of TQM
The key principles of TQM are as following:

Management Commitment

Plan (drive, direct)
Do (deploy, support, participate)
Check (review)
Act (recognize, communicate, revise)

Employee Empowerment
1. Training
2. Suggestion scheme
3. Measurement and recognition
4. Excellence teams
Fact Based Decision Making
1. SPC (statistical process control)
2. DOE, FMEA
3. The 7 statistical tools
4. TOPS (FORD 8D - Team Oriented Problem Solving)
Continuous Improvement
1. Systematic measurement and focus on CONQ
2. Excellence teams
3. Cross-functional process management
4. Attain, maintain, improve standards

Customer Focus
1. Supplier partnership
2. Service relationship with internal customers
3. Never compromise quality
4. Customer driven standards

The simplest model of TQM is shown in this diagram. The model begins with understanding customer needs. TQM organizations have processes that continuously collect, analyze, and act on customer information. Activities are often extended to understanding competitor's customers. Developing an intimate understanding of customer needs allows TQM organizations to predict future customer behavior.

The Following 14 are the steps of which focuses on Work Standards of TQM which includes:

1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service. Constancy of purpose requires innovation, investment in research and education, continuous improvement of product and service, maintenance of equipment, furniture and fixtures, and new aids to production.

2. Adopt the new philosophy. Management must undergo a transformation and begin to believe in quality products and services.

3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Inspect products and services only enough to be able to identify ways to improve the process.

4. End the practice of awarding business on price tag alone. The lowest priced goods are not always the highest quality; choose a supplier based on its record of improvement and then make a long-term commitment to it.

5. Improve constantly and forever the system of product and service. Improvement is not a one-time effort; management is responsible for leading the organization into the practice of continual improvement in quality and productivity.

6. Institute training and retraining. Workers need to know how to do their jobs correctly even if they need to learn new skills.

7. Institute leadership. Leadership is the job of management. Managers have the responsibility to discover the barriers that prevent staff from taking pride in what they do. The staff will know what those barriers are.

8. Drive out fear. People often fear reprisal if they "make waves" at work. Managers need to create an environment where workers can express concerns with confidence.

9. Break down barriers between staff areas. Managers should promote teamwork by helping staff in different areas/departments work together. Fostering interrelationships among departments encourages higher quality decision-making.

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce. Using slogans alone, without an investigation into the processes of the workplace, can be offensive to workers because they imply that a better job could be done. Managers need to learn real ways of motivating people in their organizations.

11. Eliminate numerical quotas. Quotas impede quality more than any other working condition; they leave no room for improvement. Workers need the flexibility to give customers the level of service they need.

12. Remove barriers to pride of workmanship. Give workers respect and feedback about how they are doing their jobs.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining. With continuous improvement, job descriptions will change. As a result, employees need to be educated and retrained so they will be successful at new job responsibilities.

14. Take action to accomplish the transformation. Management must work as a team to carry out the previous 13 steps

TQM in an organizations integrate customer knowledge with other information and use the planning process to orchestrate action throughout the organization to manage day to day activities and achieve future goals. Plans are reviewed at periodic intervals and adjusted as necessary. The planning process is the glue that holds together all TQM activity

The TQM does not only focus on quality of out or production but should also focus on the prime factor which leads to better product. The employees are the ones who should also be included in the process of TQM. Since they are the ones who produces the desired results and meets the objectives decided by the top level management. Employees or workers are the main assets which is reflected on the various financial papers through higher profitability, Sales, increase of market capitalization and the list goes on. In this regard I will like to figure out one of the Principal of TQM which focuses on Work Standards

One of the principles is the developing work standards along with incentives and removing quotas as they have been used since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the early 1900s. During this period of great industrial prosperity and advancement, work standards played a major role in the motivation of workers. Do they have to be eliminated or do they simply need to be modified to better represent reality and the needs of today and the future?

Work standards are and have been the basis of the development of incentive pay systems. The problem of developing fair and equitable work standards is still a difficult goal to achieve in light of rapidly changing work conditions brought on by automation in the factory and the need to be ever more responsive to rapidly changing market conditions.

The philosophy underlying a typical incentive system is that a person is paid for performance as judged against a standard. If performance is superior to the standard then an incentive is paid to the worker in addition to a base salary. Many different forms of wage incentives have been developed in the past depending on the situations and needs. Individual, group and organizational incentive plans have been used with various degrees of success. This trend can be used as an indicator of the increased interdependence among employees.

Some of the advantages of group incentive systems are the following:

Motivates coordination to improve overall performance;
Easier to set up and revise;
Increases cooperation between employees and management;
Adapts greatly to indirect labor because they can be included in group; and

Creates pressure on low performers to improve their performances.

An organizational incentive system is one by which the individual's incentive depends on the overall organizational performance. Employees are encouraged to contribute ideas on how to improve operations and the company in turn rewards employees with a "bonus" based on savings in improved performance. This type of incentive system has also been called gain sharing.

One of the major drawbacks of an organizational plan is the low motivation at the individual level; an individual or group can find themselves performing very well but rewarded very little if the overall organizational plan that exists has different characteristics. The principles of TQM advocate the involvement of employees at all levels of the organization in the improvement of quality and in all aspects of process improvement. Traditionally, pay incentives have been designed by engineers and/or consultants with very little involvement from the employees at all levels of the organizational structure

The system should permit earning an incentive which is perceived to be of significant value.

The system should be simple to understand. Since incentives require the company to pay money, employees may suspect that the company manipulates the numbers. Employees should be able to calculate their own incentive; if the system needs to be more complex to include the quality issues, the company should educate the employees on how it is calculated.

Performance criteria included in the incentive should be within the control of the group

Sufficient motivation for all the involved parties is needed to properly maintain the incentive system;

The supervisor needs to be highly motivated to maintain the system. The supervisor can cause a system to fail by manipulating the reporting systems or by generating a negative environment to the proposed incentive system

The incentive system must be continuously maintained; and

The jobs employees do must be such that they can clearly tie their efforts to the reward received

The level of work standards plays a vital role in the achieving the objectives of the organization. Standards are an essential requirement for any company seeking to continuously improve. All continuous improvement methods leverage learning to get better results from their business efforts. Standards provide the baseline references that are necessary for learning. A standard operating procedure supplies a stable platform for collecting performance measurements. The standard and its profile of performance yields the information people need to uncover improvement opportunities, make and measure improvements, and extract learning.

In this high speed and the present push toward high quality is a well known and accepted element in the competitive environment. To be in this competition we are all shifting our focus from the quality of man power to technical know-how, better strategic plans, cost reduction measures etc. If wee all think for a moment regarding this that if we develop the quality of man power and constantly focus on developing such an act then the performance of objective of an organization improves with equivalent growth in quality of resources.

We should keep in our minds that the quality demanded by the customers should be equivalent with the quality standards of our manpower, since they are the first and the last to interact with them. The benefits of incentive pay systems as a method to motivate employees, to increase productivity and to reduce costs can certainly be helpful in regaining global competitiveness. However, in order to make pay incentive systems work well, special care and attention will have to be taken to install them with quality, as one of the important control elements, not just quantity output. If customers are God for an organization then I hope that GOD will not be treated by a manpower equivalent to a servant class .In other words he will handled by the HEAD of the family. Hence the quality of standard demanded by the God needs to be of that level where the GOD is pleased. The TQM is not built to improve only the resources of meeting the objective of the organization.

I am not going to make it too long as this aspect needs time to understand and develop. This is only the first part. In my next I will like to share the 2nd part of TQM which leads to quality improvement and process management.