Introduction
The aim of this report is to look at how total Quality Management (TQM) works within a business, looking at how TQM techniques are applied and to explain the principals of an effective TQM system that is currently being used. This report will look at any changes that could be made to improve the efficiency of quality systems within the business.
Findings
Analyse how TQM techniques are applied within an organisation of your choice.
1.3 Analyse (looks at similarities strengths and weaknesses) the application of TQM techniques in an organisation (not structure) training, budgets, little on qc. tqm in general terms. Generically, planning, resources recruitment
TQM techniques
: use of tools eg process flow charts, tally charts, Pareto analysis, cause and
effect analysis, hazard analysis-critical control points, statistical process control SPC, benchmarking methods eg brainstorming, team building, appraisal, training and
development, mentoring; compliance to standards; procedures and manuals; impact of
organisational factors eg leadership, communications, performance indicators and objectives
TQM techniques include the use of tools to aid and monitor quality, TQM is customer focused and uses a systematic approach to continuous improvement. Some techniques of TQM are
1. Joint problem solving
2. Brain storming
3. Analysis methods
4. Planning for just in time
Joint problem solving
Oakland (p289, 1994) says ‘there is no way that one person or one department can manage quality, but one person- the Chief Executive – must take on the responsibility’
For joint problem solving to work well quality objectives need to become part of the organisations objectives and the CEO has the authority to enable this. Joint problem solving integrates company objectives with the people who work there and aims to eliminate emotional resolution of conflicts in the business by using a systematic approach. Quality circles are useful for joint problem solving.
Quality Circles
Quality circles originated in japan in the 1960’s Kaoru Ishikawa is credited with developing quality circles and expanding on the ideas that were described by W. Edward Deming. Ishikawa’s QC circles consisted of small groups of people from the same company whose targets are to identify and develop members potential capabilities whilst utilizing quality control methods and tools to aid in the management of the workplace. Unlike most organisations at the time who used a top down approach Ishikawa’s QC circles consisted of staff who were at the front line of the business.
Quality circles are now widely used and typically consist of workers who are trying to solve problems related to their own jobs. Its good practise for members of quality circles to receive training in problems solving methods such as pareto analysis (80 20 rule), cause and affect analysis and brainstorming. Oakland (p311, 1996) says ‘the quality circle may be defined as a group of workers doing similar work who meet:
• Voluntarily
• Regularly
• In normal time
• Under the leadership of the ‘supervisor’
• To identify, analyse, and solve work related problems
• To recommend solutions to management
Pros of Quality Circles
Team work, integrates staff from different departments, solutions being created at the front end of the business where problems often seen differently to management who may not fully understand the issues.
Improved communication with management being made aware of staff concerns and ideas.
Staff skill level increase leads to potential increase in motivation, productivity and quality.
Cons of Quality Circles
Quality circles do not have the power to make a decision and if the manager they report to is part of the problem or rejecting their suggestions there is no means to bypass them.
If staff are not trained in problem solving, brainstorming and analysis tools then the Quality Circle will most likely not be as affective and could end up having a negative impact on Quality.
Training staff will cost time and money even though Crosby says ‘Quality is free’ by which he means the money saved through Zero defects covers the costs of implementing Quality improvement programs, business still have to find the cash to invest and for some it maybe they feel their money could be better invested elsewhere
Kaizen Teams
Brain storming
This is a technique used to generate a large amount of ideas quickly, it gives everyone in the Quality Circle the opportunity to give their ideas in an open discussion with no criticism allowed. The basic way brainstorming works is by looking at a particular problem then coming up with multiple solutions and examining them in detail, it works well as group members can bounce ideas off one another and this helps to refine the ideas and come up with new alternatives. Having staff from different departments helps as they may see problems/solutions differently to their peers. All ideas should be recorded, once the brainstorming session has concluded the results can then be analysed (often using cause and effect diagrams or Pareto analysis) to determine the best solution to the problem that can then be passed on to management for review.
Analysis methods
Pareto analysis
This is often referred to as the 80/20 rule which suggests that 80% of the outcomes/problems are attributed to 20% of the causes for example:
1. 20% of services/products are responsible for 80% of customer complaints
2. 20% of process issues account for 80% of the process defects
3. 80% of what you get comes from 20% of what you do
4. 20% of customers account for 80% of profit
Joseph Juran in the 1940’s applied this rule in business production to Quality Control and named it ‘the vital few and the trivial many’ Juran is credited with having a major impact on Japans economy where he was a guest lecturing on quality control including the use of the 80/20 rule.
http://www.cec.health.nsw.gov.au/quality-improvement/improvement-academy/quality-improvement-tools/pareto-charts
Fig 1 pareto chart ASQ
The above Pareto Chart shows how this rule can be applied within a hospital/nursing environment. It shows the results taken from an audit of 430 medication errors. The pareto chart shows the 80% cut off line from the 80:20 rule and also highlights Jurans vital few and the trivial many.
There are 2 y axis on a pareto chart the left-hand side deals with the number or frequency of a reason why something happened, the right-hand side is the cumulative percentage of these individual reasons.
The bars on the chart can represent money, time frequency or cost. This chart helps to visually identify which issues/situations are the most significant and therefore require attention more urgently than the smaller bars that have the least consequence to the business.
To create this Pareto chart all recorded medication errors get plotted on to the bar graph with the most frequently occurring on the left going to the least frequent on the right. This is a good tool for both Audits and Quality Circles to use to help determine what requires the most urgent attention by studying the problems they can try to find the causes
In hospitals all known errors are recorded in medication administration record sheets and incident reports which include names of who has administrated medication. Audits usually occur monthly but can be increased to weekly or daily if errors have occurred to try to rectify them. Audits include medication checks and training records of staff who are administrating.
In the Health Care environment, the quality circle has the advantage of knowing who administrated the incorrect medicine as its recorded and therefore have the opportunity to find out more information as to why this has happened and how to prevent it happening again. In this situation all recorded issues will be given to the quality circle who will use Joint problem solving, Brain storming and Analysis methods to come up with solutions they can report to their supervisors.
Pros
Helps to identify the most significant problems when looking at lots of data
Enhanced problem-solving skills
Helps utilise resources available by focusing them on tasks that will maximise end results
Cons
There may be urgent issues in the trivial few that need addressing or simple fixes that can be acted on sooner rather than later.
Pareto analysis looks solely at past information and not at the current situation so decisions made may not necessarily improve the future operations for the business
Cause and effect analysis
Cause and affect analysis is used to study the inputs that affect quality It is also referred to as the fishbone diagram and was developed by Professor Kaoru Ishikawa. It looks at past areas where mistakes were made or money was lost and identifies where the issues are. It’s also good method to see where a function or process has worked well and therefore can be replicated on any similar future activities. As they determine the root causes of a problem via visual depiction it stops time being wasted focused on the symptoms and enables more efficiency focusing on the real causes of a problem.
Ref Oakland (p227, 1996)
The head of the fishbone would be the problem to be analysed, the backbone is what links the head to the causes. The causes link to the backbone and often like in the above picture Oakland (p227, 1996) have smaller branches coming out of them which contain more details on the causes.
Traditional causes would be in a manufacturing environment are:
• Machines/equipment
• Materials
• Staff
For services cause would be:
• Procedures
• Policy’s
• People
Compliance to standards, procedures and manuals.
The company is accredited to ISO 9001.
Manual is designed to follow ISO 9001
2.
Principles of TQM: continuous improvement; total company commitment; quality strategy; management of change; focus eg internal and external customers, products/services, processes and people, fit-for purpose; leadership; motivation and training; applicable supporting theories eg Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa
Continuous improvement
PDCA cycle
Quality manual
The company’s quality manual has a part on the PDCA cycle which is also known as the Deming Cycle. The quality manual recommends that the PDCA cycle is applied to all processes and to the quality management system.
How Deming’s PDCA cycle relates to the company
PLAN: establish the objectives of the processes and its system and the resources needed to meet customer requirements and company policy’s. Identify and address risks and opportunities.
DO: implements what has been planned
Check: monitor and where possible measure processes, products and services against objectives, requirements and policy’s and report the results.
ACT: where necessary take actions to improve performance.
Strengths of using PDCA cycle
1. It helps to implement continuous improvement of processes and people
2. Good problem-solving technique
3. Good measuring/monitoring tool
Oakland (p165, 1996) says in relation to the Deming cycle (PDCA) says the following reasons for measurement is needed:
• To ensure customer requirements have been met
• To be able to set sensible objectives and comply with them
• To justify the use of resources
• To highlight quality problems and determine which areas require priority attention.
Measurement is critical in the PDCA cycle and is part of the CHECK, without it knowing where to improve would be impossible.
Weakness of PDCA cycle.
PDCA has been accused of not allowing out of the box thinking or any innovation once it has moved on from the initial planning stage, some people suggest that it’s not always best to start with the planning stage and that PDCA is too reactive with activities
Total company commitment
Deming says it needs to come from the top down, CEO or similar needs to take ownership of implementing QMS through the company and could put it into company objectives.
Oakland (
John S. Oakland. Total Quality Management the route to improving performance. Second edition P 289
Reduction/elimination of rejected parts and incorrect fabrication
Alderley Systems Ltd (ASL) has increased inspection hold points in recent years and hired an additional QA engineer to help with the additional workload.
Previously in the fabrication and welding shop work was not checked by QA inspectors until it was finished. This meant that if the pipework was dimensionally inaccurate or the wrong spec/rating fittings had been used that welds would need to be cut in order to rectify the problem.
By introducing more checkpoints, the QA inspector is able to reduce the amount of re work required to fix any mistakes by inspecting the pipe spools before they are welded saving the company both time and money.
The QA inspector checks that all parts have cast numbers stamped on them and that the number corresponds to the certs provided for the fittings. This is done to ensure that there is no chance of incorrect fittings being used that are not to the customers specification.
Any issues the QA notices where procedures or specifications have not been met get recorded as a non-conformance report (NCR).
Philip Crosby (1926-2001) saw non-conformances as issues that management have failed to control or specify and that the cost of non-conformance is the cost of not doing it right first time. He implemented the Zero Defects concept and focused on prevention rather than inspection and cure. This can be seen as proactive approach to quality when compared to the Deming cycle that reacts to issues that arise then fixes them before repeating.
If Zero defects could be achieved it would be beneficial to the ASL or any other business as it would save money on scrappage, rework and the potential financial ramifications of losing a dissatisfied customer. ASL has followed Crosbys advice to a certain extent by implementing a quality improvement plan with the aim of eliminating errors however in this type of business it would not be practical to believe that it would be possible to achieve the goal of Zero defects as in fabrication and welding most of the work is done by hand and the chances of completely eliminating human error are slim to nil. It is a good goal to aim for but to stand a chance of achieving it to much money would need to be spent inspection etc. and would result in the price of production increasing to levels where ASL won’t be competitive in a very competitive oil and gas market.
Conformance to ISO 9001
ISO 9001 is a process based standard and defines the requirements for an organisations quality management system. It’s the worlds most used international standard and is designed to help organisation with meeting the needs of customers (which demming puts forward) while fulfilling regulatory obligations. To become registered with ISO 9001 you need to be audited by a certification body every 3 years. ISO 9001 forces you to detect and implement improvements by evaluating how effective and appropriate the quality management system is.
The company is ISO 9001 accredited and process are found on the intranet.
Business management system (BMS)
The company use the Business management system (BMS) which is a quality manual. The BMS holds all company standard procedures, documents, letter heads, purchase order/purchase requisitions and process flow charts among other thing. The good thing about having this on the BMS is that it ensures continuity throughout the business with different departments following the same processes and using the same formats for documentation.
Once inside the BMS there is the Quality Management System (QMS) which has been audited during ISO 9001 Certification.
What is in the QMS?
Welding Quality management control of consumberbals materials, process quality requirements, training and codeings re tested must be within 6months and for different positions and welding processes. boost main production process fab and welding
How ISO 9001 affect the production team.
ISO 9001 states that all gauges must be calibrated.
BS EN ISO 9001:2015 Quality management systems Requirements 7.1.5.2 Measurement traceability. States that measuring equipment shall be calibrated regularly. Identified in order to determine their status. Safeguarded from damage or deterioration that would invalidate the calibration status.
As a company we chose to calibrate all our test gauges in 6 month intervals, the QA department have stickers that are applied to all test gauges. The stickers have the due date for the next calibration on them. It’s in company procedure that only a gauge in date is allowed to be used for pressure testing. Some clients will specify in their own procedures that the gauge must have tested within a few weeks of use.
Deming theory Crosby’s theory for good practise/ good system and how they relate to the company’s systems
The principals of the QMS system (ISO/TC 176 is an internal organisation who maintain ISO’s quality management standards) these 8 principals are what the ISO 9001 certification is built upon.
1. Customer focus
2. Leadership
3. People involvement
4. Process approach
5. Systematic approach to management
6. Continual improvement
7. Factual approach to decision making
8. Mutually beneficial supplier relations
Quality Training
In-house QMS training. This will vary in depth dependant on authority, this would be the hiring of an external QMS expert consultants who specialise in teaching staff and cam also look at the QMS to see if the quality system can be improved, as ASL would need to training for multiple members of staff money could be saved as typically there is saving on larger group training.
Training could include:
• Understanding of what a QMS does and is
• How the QMS can or does align with ISO 9001 and other ISO’s
• Guidance on how to improve quality systems and in-house processes
• ISO 9001-2015 Training, this is for different things, ISO 9001-2015 internal audit training would be good for quality manager.
There is also training on how ISO 9001-2015 has changed from 2008, this goes into varying depths. Basic, intermediate and advanced.
From speaking to the Quality manager, he has told me that in an ideal world he would like all staff to be given basic training with ISO 9001-2015. Then he would like staff with subordinates to be given intermediate training. Advanced training would be given to the Project Quality Engineer and senior management.
Staff training such as HNC degree etc.
By retraining existing staff and encouraging them to gain new skills the business can improve, with higher skill sets the quality of the service or product should improve
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/hwrp/qmf-h/documents/ext/wmo_1100_en.pdf
3.
Where appropriate, make recommendations that would improve the efficiency of the current quality management system within the organisation.
Motivation and training
chapter four of The New Economics demming
Questions for Paul
Total company commitment to quality principals is it in company strategy/ strategic objective
Customer focused same as above
KPI key performance indicators do we use and how do we use. Every department KPI for CEO earn as much money for business, pass on objectives down the chain, procurement will try save 5% project use design for manufacture right first time, have to reduce errors. Select the key functions key indicators needs to be measurable management meeting all around KPI
Leadership motivation and training
TQM principals, Processes. could it be increasing QA hold points? Increase cost for little value
Once inside the BMS there is the Quality Management System (QMS) which has been audited during ISO 9001 Certification. Present procedure To accreditation body who check procedures meet 9001 standard, QMS recertified every 3 years every 6 months they do surveillance which is mandatory
What is in the QMS?
Crosby do it right first time zero defects does this work well for fabrication and welding
Crosby Quotes
Motivation and training chapter four of The New Economics demming
Recommendations
Additional training for staff on ISO 9001, QMS and further training for their job roles (HND< DEGREE etc.) that will help to improve their knowledge and therefore increase the quality of the product and services the business offers.
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