I.

INTRODUCTION TO TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

A. Definition & Importance of TQM

WHAT IS TQM?

 Total Quality Management is a management system that is based on the concept

that every person who is working in the organization should be committed to
achieve organizational goals and meet the company’s high standards.

 The main aim of the organization is customer satisfaction.

 Quality management is the basic tool that leads to quality assurance and will
ultimately result in customer satisfaction.

 Total Quality Management is a management approach centered on quality, based

on the participation of an organization’s people and aiming at long term success.

 This is achieved through customer satisfaction and benefits all members of the
organization and society.

“A cooperative form of doing business that relies on both talents and

capabilities of both labor and management to continually improve quality
and productivity using teams.”

JOSEPH R. JABLONSKI
Author, Implementing TQM
TQM – Word-for-Word

TOTAL - The responsibility for achieving Quality rests with everyone a business
no matter what their function. It recognizes the necessity to develop processes
across the business, that together lead to the reliable delivery of exact, agreed
customer requirements. This will achieve the most competitive cost position and a
higher return on investment.

QUALITY - The prime task of any business is to understand the needs of the
customer, then deliver the product or service at the agreed time, place and price,
on every occasion. This will retain current customers, assist in acquiring new ones
and lead to a subsequent increase in market share.

MANAGEMENT - Top management lead the drive to achieve quality for

customers, by communicating the business vision and values to all employees;
ensuring the right business processes are in place; introducing and maintaining a
continuous improvement culture.

OBJECTIVES OF TQM
 Meeting the customer’s requirement is the primary objective and the key to
organizational survival and growth.
 The 2nd objective of TQM is continuous improvement of quality. The management
should stimulate the employees in becoming increasingly competent and creative.
 3rd, TQM aims at developing the relationship of openness and trust among the
employees at all levels in the organization.

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 OTHER OBJECTIVES OF TQM

 Decrease of mistakes in all operating areas,

 Early mistake recognition,
 Mistake prevention as a preventive step,
 Avoidance of wastes,
 Reduction of the lead times,
 Increase of the flexibility and profitability,
 Better capture and conversion of the customer's needs,
 Contented position of the customers.

SIGNIFICANCE OF TQM

 The importance of TQM lies in the fact that it encourages innovation, makes the
organization acceptable to change and motivates people for better quality.
 TQM focuses strongly on the importance of the relationship between customer and
the supplier.
 Quality management ensures product quality. Some primary aspect of product
quality includes: performance, reliability and durability.
 Quality management ensures customer satisfaction. Conduct customer
satisfaction surveys to understand the qualities of the product important to the
customer.
 Increased revenues
Quality products and services gives the company reputation in the
industry. This reputation allows the company to gain new customers and sell
additional products and service to existing customers.

B. History / Evolution of TQM

HISTORICAL TIMELINE

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 TRADITIONAL THINKING vs. TQM

The concept was developed in 1940’s led by Americans such as Edward Deming, Joseph
Juran, Philip B. Crosby.

EVOLUTION OF TQM - NEW FOCUS

The Beginning of the ‘Quality-Era’ in Japan

After the war, other American quality theorists, including Deming, who would
achieve hero status in Japan, advised Japanese industry on how to improve processes and
output to rebuild their war-shattered economy. At the time, the term made in Japan was
synonymous with shoddy craftsmanship. As early as 1945, such visionaries as electrical
engineer Homer Sarasohn spoke about controlling variation and monitoring process to
produce better deliverables.

As a result, in the 1950s, quality became the byword for Japanese manufacturing.
Quality concerned not just management, but all levels of a company. In the 1960s, quality
circles began appearing in Japanese workplaces to allow employees the opportunity to
discuss problems and consider solutions, which they then presented to management.
Starting on the factory floor, quality circles spread to other functional departments. The
company-wide focus on quality may also provide a clue to the origin of the phrase total
quality.

Total Quality Management Meets the World

Quality Management began in manufacturing, and TQM, like its subsequent

methodologies, adapted well to finance, healthcare, and other fields. Some of the landmark
companies to adopt TQM include Toyota, Ford, and Philips Semiconductors.

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 Worldwide, countries such as Germany, France, the UK, and Turkey established
TQM standards. But by the 1990s, TQM was superseded by ISO (International Standards
Organization), which became the standard for much of continental Europe, and by
another methodological response of the 1980s to quality concerns, Six Sigma.
Nevertheless, TQM principles form the basis for much of ISO and Six Sigma. For example,
PDCA appears under the Six Sigma method DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve,
control). And in the 2000s, the ISO governing body recognized TQM as a foundational
philosophy. TQM lives on in data-driven methods for a data-driven age.

MANAGEMENT

Top management leads the drive to achieve quality for customers by

communicating the business vision and values to all employees; ensuring the right business
processes are in place; introducing and maintaining a continuous improvement culture.

C. Characteristics of TQM

1. Every company member, from the CEO to the lowest level employee, is focused on
product or service quality. If management is not behind TQM, then it will fail.
2. Everyone must have the required training and be familiar with the necessary TQM
techniques.
3. Anyone can suggest areas for improvement – as general operatives will be more
familiar with their work station than anyone else is, valuable ideas for improvement at
a production line level can, in many cases, come from line workers.
4. All departments are expected to focus on quality and productivity improvement and
implement changes for their area.
5. In addition, all departments interact with each other to fix common problems in the
product or process.
6. Collaboration on external issues (end-user defects for example) is expected from all
departments.
7. Decisions made are based on the best solutions, not on hidden agendas or favoritism.
8. Quality becomes a governing part of operations, with decisions that impact on quality,
rejected immediately, despite perceived cost-savings involved.

D. What Quality Is and Its Dimensions

What is Quality?

 the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the
degree of excellence of something.
 a distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by someone or something.

Quantified Definition of Quality

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 Measuring Quality

 Quality is specification driven – does it meet the set performance requirements

 Quality is measured at start of life – percent passing specification acceptance
 Quality effectiveness is observable by number of rejects from customers

Dimensions of Quality

Dimensions of quality are the different features of product or service.

 Functionality, refers to the core features and characterisitics of a product that

satisfy the customer.
 Reliability, is measured by mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to
first failure. Reliability is an indicator of durability of products.
 Usability, refers to how the product can and will be used by the customer. It should
be ‘user-friendly’ to enable customers the use of such product without the need of
an expert.
 Maintainability, refers to the ease with which a product can be maintained in its
original condition. It is measured as mean time to repair (MTTR).
 Efficiency is how much output is taken by different products on giving the same
input.
 Aesthetics, refers to the subjective dimension indicating the kind of response a user
has to a product. It represents the individual’s personal preference.
 Serviceability, is the speed with which the product can be put into service when it
breaks down, as well as the competence and the behavior of the service person.

E. Leaders in Quality, and their Contributions

What is a Quality Guru?

 A guru, by definition, is a good person, a wise person and a teacher.

 A quality guru should be all of these, plus have a concept and approach to quality
within business, that has made a major and lasting impact.
 These gurus have done, and continue to do, that, in some cases, even after their
death.

The Era of Quality Gurus

There have been three groups of gurus since the 1940’s:

Early 1950’s: Americans who took the messages of quality to Japan

Late 1950’s: Japanese who developed new concepts in response to the Americans
1970’s-1980’s: Western gurus who followed the Japanese industrial success

The Americans who went to Japan

JOSEPH M. JURAN
 He is a founder of the Juran Institute in Wilton, Connecticut. He promoted the
concept known as Business Process Quality, which is a technique of Cross-
Functional Quality Improvement.
 He was invited to Japan in 1954 by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers
(JUSE).
 He predicted the quality of Japanese goods would overtake the quality of goods
produced in US by Mid-1970s because of Japan’s revolutionary rate of quality
improvement.

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 W. EDWARDS DEMING
 William Edwards Deming, who had become frustrated with American managers
when most programs of statistical quality control were terminated once the war
and government contracts came to an end, was invited to Japan in 1954 by the
Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE).
 Deming was the main figure in popularizing quality control in Japan and regarded
as national hero in that country.
 He believes that quality must be built I into the product at all stages in order to
achieve a high level of excellence.
 His thoughts were highly influenced by Walter Shwartz who was the proponent of
Statistical Quality Control (SQC). He views statistics as a management tool and
relies on statistical process control as means in managing variations in a process.

W. Edwards Deming placed great importance and responsibility on management, at

both the individual and company level, believing management to be responsible for 94%
of quality problems. His fourteen-point plan is a complete philosophy of management, that
can be applied to small or large organizations in the public, private or service sectors:

1. Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service

2. Adopt the new philosophy: “We can no longer live with commonly accepted
levels of delay, mistakes and defective workmanship.”
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Instead, require statistical evidence that
quality is built in
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price
5. Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the system
6. Institute modern methods of training on the job
7. Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers, the responsibility
of foremen must be changed from numbers to quality
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company
9. Break down barriers between departments
10. Eliminate numerical goals, posters and slogans for the workforce asking for new
levels of productivity without providing methods
11. Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas
12. Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and their right to pride
of workmanship
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining
14. Create a structure in top management that will push on the above points every
day

ARMAND V. FEIGENBAUM, was the originator of “total quality control”, often

referred to as total quality.

He defined it as:
“An effective system for integrating quality development, quality maintenance and quality
improvement efforts of the various groups within an organization, so as to enable production and
service at the most economical levels that allow full customer satisfaction”.

He saw it as a business method and proposed three steps to quality:

 Quality leadership
 Modern quality technology
 Organizational commitment

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The Japanese who developed new concepts in response to the Americans
Dr. KAORU ISHIKAWA made many contributions to quality, the most noteworthy
being his total quality viewpoint, companywide quality control, his emphasis on the
human side of quality, the Ishikawa diagram and the assembly and use of the “seven basic
tools of quality”:

SHIGEO SHINGO
 He was a Japanese industrial engineer who was considered as the world’s leading
expert on manufacturing practices and the Toyota Production System.
 Shingo is strongly associated with Just-in-Time manufacturing, and was the
inventor of the single minute exchange of die (SMED) system, in which set up
times are reduced from hours to minutes, and the Poka-Yoke (mistake proofing)
system.
 In Poka Yoke, defects are examined, the production system stopped and
immediate feedback given so that the root causes of the problem may be identified
and prevented from occurring again.
DR. GENICHI TAGUCHI
 He was an engineer and statistician. From the 1950s onwards, Taguchi developed
a methodology for applying statistics to improve the quality of manufactured
goods.
 Taguchi believed it is preferable to design product that is robust or insensitive to
variation in the manufacturing process, rather than attempt to control all the many
variations during actual manufacture.
 “Taguchi methodology” is fundamentally a prototyping method that enables the
designer to identify the optimal settings to produce a robust product that can
survive manufacturing time after time, piece after piece, and provide what the
customer wants.

Western gurus who followed the Japanese industrial success

PHILIP B. CROSBY
Crosby is known for the concepts of “Quality is Free” and “Zero Defects”, and his
quality improvement process is based on his four absolutes of quality:
 Quality is conformance to requirements
 The system of quality is prevention
 The performance standard is zero defect
 The measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance
THOMAS J. PETERS
Tom Peters identified leadership as being central to the quality improvement process,
discarding the word “Management” for “Leadership”. The new role is of a facilitator, and
the basis is “Managing by walking about” (MBWA), enabling the leader to keep in touch
with customers, innovation and people, the three main areas in the pursuit of excellence.

 He believes that, as the effective leader walks, at least 3 major activities are
happening: 1) Listening which suggests caring, 2) Teaching where values are
transmitted, and 3) Facilitating to be able to give on-the-spot help.

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