Reflect and review
1Reflect and review
Now that you have completed your work on Providing Quality to Customers, let us review our workbook objectives.
When you have completed this workbook you will be better able to explain what quality means.
We have seen that quality can mean different things to different people. However, it is possible to define quality by referring to ISO 9000:2000:
Quality is the ‘degree to which a set of characteristics fulfils requirements’.
The requirements for a product or service may sometimes be obligatory in law, but ultimately it is always the customer whose needs and expectations define what quality means.
Try answering the following questions.
What does quality mean exactly, so far as your job and your team are concerned. Try to summarize it in a brief statement.
Looking a little wider, how important would you say that quality was to your organization?
Our second objective was as follows.
When you have completed this workbook you will be better able to recognize the benefits of quality improvement and development in your work, and appreciate methods of establishing the costs of quality.
Well, what are the benefits? Will improved quality make you richer, give you a more secure job, and improve your chances of personal development? In fact, it may do all of these things. We have seen that the organization and the customers benefit from quality improvements – and so do employees.
We looked at a method of evaluating quality costs by dividing them into prevention, appraisal and failure costs. However costs are analysed, one thing is clear: the cost of achieving competitive levels of quality is lower than the cost of not achieving them.
Write down the benefits of quality improvement in your work. Do this in some detail if you can.
The third objective was as follows.
When you have completed this workbook you will be better able to have a good understanding of total quality management.
Total quality management is not very difficult to sum up in a few sentences, but is definitely hard to implement. When we talk about ‘total commitment’, that’s exactly what we mean, as you can see in the following quote by Crosby.
‘Quality is something that always starts out to be easy. Someone decides that something should be done about it and summons someone. This is the Marshal Wyatt Earp complex … For some reason many executives think that when they decide it is time to call in the marshal, their management commitment is all over. Once they find themselves standing on the roof with a real, and loaded, rifle waiting for the real, and genuinely hostile, bad guys to ride in, the true meaning of management commitment begins to reach them. If they do not move to this level of activity, everyone from bad guys to good guys will know they are just fooling around. No one is going to put their neck out for someone who is just fooling around.’
Sadly, there are no Wyatt Earps to ride in boldly and face the bad guys or cure the bad quality: the managers of an organization have to be their own marshals, and put their own necks out first.
The other aspects of TQM: ‘focus on the customer’, ‘continuous improvement’ and teamwork, also entail lots of hard work.
Are you prepared to put your neck out and face up to the quality problems, and to keep facing up to them? (Explain.)
To what extent do you and your team aim for continuous improvement? (Explain.)
How hard do you work at getting your quality right? (Be honest.)
The next objective was as follows.
When you have completed this workbook you will be better able to identify your customers and find ways of improving the quality of the goods and services you provide for them.
Customers are the reason for quality systems and development. Without customers, the organization would not exist. Competition drives up quality, because more than one organization has to strive to gain and hold a share of the market. In countries where there is no competition, for example in the Soviet Union, before the liberalizing of its economy with the creation of the Russian state that now exists, quality levels are usually very low.
If quality goals are reached, so that customers get what they want and expect, customers are satisfied. Should you manage to exceed your goals, and give your customers more than they expect, you may delight them, and increase the chances of them coming back for more.
When you complete the Work-based assignment, if you haven’t already done so, you will be asked to define your own customers, and to devise ways of closing the gap between what you give them and what they want.
Explain how you intend to delight your customers.
The last objective was as follows:
When you have completed this workbook you will be better able to lead your team in taking practical and positive steps towards higher work quality.
Most work activities depend on teamwork, and the team leader has to find ways to motivate the team in order to meet organizational objectives. As Crosby says: ‘If it makes so much sense to get the thing done right, then how come the normal way of operating almost everything is to do the wrong thing first and the right thing second?’ The answer is that people need to be motivated to do it right first time; if they think nobody cares about quality, then they won’t bother. By cultivating a culture which says ‘We care about quality – we are proud of our quality’ the motivation is suddenly there.
Some of the practical and positive steps were discussed in Session C.
What practical and positive steps do you intend to take? List them all.
2Action plan
Use this plan to further develop for yourself a course of action you want to take. Make a note in the left-hand column of the issues or problems you want to tackle, and then decide what you intend to do, and make a note in column 2.
The resources you need might include time, materials, information or money. You may need to negotiate for some of them, but they could be something easily acquired, like half an hour of somebody’s time, or a chapter of a book. Put whatever you need in column 3. No plan means anything without a timescale, so put a realistic target completion date in column 4.
Finally, describe the outcome you want to achieve as a result of this plan, whether it is for your own benefit or advancement, or a more efficient way of doing things at work.
| Desired outcomes | |||
| 1 Issues | 2 Action | 3 Resources | 4 Target completion |
| Actual outcomes | |||
3Extensions
| Extension 1 | Book | Total Quality Management |
| Author | John S. Oakland | |
| Publisher | Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003 | |
| ISBN | 0 750 65740 5 |
This has more or less become the standard UK work on quality management, and is now available in an updated edition to take account of many of the developments that have taken place in quality improvement practice in recent years.
| Extension 2 | Book | Quality is Still Free |
| Author | Philip B. Crosby | |
| Publisher | McGraw-Hill, 1996 | |
| ISBN | 0 07 014532 6 |
A ‘bed-time reading’ book on quality that is very thought-provoking. Philip Crosby’s earlier book Quality is Free ‘was the shot heard around the business world. It heralded the Quality Revolution, made “Zero Defects” a household phrase, and launched a movement that gains power to this day.’
| Extension 3 | Book | Juran on Leadership for Quality |
| Author | Joseph M. Juran | |
| Publisher | Free Press, 1989 | |
| ISBN | 0 02 916682 9 |
This is a step-by-step guide to applying Juran’s planning, controlling and improving ‘Trilogy’ to quality leadership. Juran was, with Deming, one of the two great gurus of quality, and Juran’s practical and well-structured approach offers a coherent model for managers and organizations to follow.
| Extension 4 | A DTI resource explaining various tools and techniques for quality improvement is available from: www.businessballs.com/dtiresources/TQM_process_improvement_tools.pdf | |
The American Society for Quality has some useful guides to using tools and techniques for quality improvement, at: http://www.asq.org/learn-about-quality/quality-tools.html | ||
| Extension 5 | Book | How to Empower People at Work |
| Author | Roy Bailey | |
| Publisher | Management Books 2000, 1995 | |
| ISBN | 1 85252 235 6 |
Effective managers must learn to create the conditions whereby others can be empowered. This book shows how managers can empower, grow and develop people at work to release ideas, enthusiasm and commitment to work, a key element of the improvement process.
These extensions can be taken up via your ILM Centre. They will either have them or will arrange that you have access to them. However, it may be more convenient to check out the materials with your personnel or training people at work – they may well give you access. There are other good reasons for approaching your own people; for example, they will become aware of your interest and you can involve them in your development.
| Extension 6 | List of quality system elements referred to in ISO 9000:2000 | |
4. Quality management system
4.1. General requirements
4.2. Documentation requirements
4.2.1. General
4.2.2. Quality manual
4.2.3. Control of documents
4.2.4. Control of records
5. Management responsibility
5.1. Management commitment
5.2. Customer focus
5.3. Quality policy
5.4. Planning
5.4.1. Quality objectives
5.4.2. Quality management system planning
5.5. Responsibility, authority and communication
5.5.1. Responsibility and authority
5.5.2. Management representative
5.5.3. Ensure promotion of awareness of customer requirements throughout the organization
5.6. Management review
5.6.1. General
5.6.2. Review input
5.6.3. Review output
6. Resource management
6.1. Quality resources
6.2. Human resources
6.2.1. General
6.2.2. Competence, awareness and training
6.3. Infrastructure
6.4. Work environment
7. Product realization [Product realization refers to the interconnected processes that are used to bring products into being. A product starts out as an idea which is then realized by following a set of product realization processes.]
7.1. Planning of product realization
7.2. Customer-related processes
7.2.1. Determination of requirements related to the product
7.2.2. Review of requirements related to the product
7.2.3. Customer communication
7.3. Design and development
7.3.1. Design and development planning
7.3.2. Design and development inputs
7.3.3. Design and development outputs
7.3.4. Design and development review
7.3.5. Design and development verification
7.3.6. Design and development validation
7.3.7. Control of development changes
7.4. Purchasing
7.4.1. Purchasing process
7.4.2. Purchasing information
7.4.3. Verification of purchased product
7.5. Production and service provision
7.5.1. Control of production and service provision
7.5.2. Validation of processes for production and service provision
7.5.3. Identification and traceability
7.5.4. Customer property
7.5.5. Preservation of product
7.6. Control of monitoring and measuring devices
8. Measurement, analysis and improvement
8.1. General
8.2. Monitoring and measurement
8.2.1. Customer satisfaction
8.2.2. Internal audit
8.2.3. Monitoring and measurement of processes
8.2.4. Monitoring and measurement of product
8.3. Control of nonconforming products
8.4. Analysis of data
8.5. Improvement
8.5.1. Continual improvement
8.5.2. Corrective action
8.5.3. Preventive action
4Answers to self-assessment questions
| 1 | Your definition of quality could have been the ‘official’ one: ‘The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.’ Alternatively, you might have said that ‘achieving quality means meeting the customer’s wants or expectations’. | |||||||||||||
2 |
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3 The three regions are shown in the diagram.
4 The completed table is:
5 a The main driving force behind quality is COMPETITION.
b The CUSTOMER is the focus of all discussions about quality.
c DESIGN quality can be defined as the degree to which the SPECIFICATION of the product or service satisfies customers’ wants and expectations.
d PROCESS quality is the DEGREE to which the product or service, when it is transferred to the customer, conforms to specifications.
e A quality SYSTEM can be defined as the organizational STRUCTURE, responsibilities, PROCEDURES, processes and resources for implementing quality management.
f Quality is measured by the price of NONCONFORMANCE.
g Availability is the DEGREE to which a product or service can be OBTAINED when needed.
Self-assessment 2 on page 53 | 1 | The characteristics of continuous improvement are: |
a large number of detailed improvements;
over a long period of time;
involving teams throughout the organization.
2 Total quality management can be defined in terms of the three words in the name:
total, because it requires complete and unqualified commitment on the part of everybody in the organization;
quality, which, as we agreed in our definition, means meeting the wants and expectations of customers;
management, led from the top.
Key concepts, central to TQM are:
continuous improvement;
teamwork, involving trust and empowerment;
focusing on the customer’s wants and expectations.
3 You might say something like: ‘The simple truth is that everyone has customers. You could even consider your boss as your customer, because he or she is the one you aim to please. Who is the next person or group who use your goods or services? They’re your customer. If you don’t give them what they want and expect, will you keep your job?’
4 This is the completed diagram.
1 |
The correct matches are as follows. | |||||||||||||||||||
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2 Ishikawa’s seven tools and techniques of quality improvement are:
Ishikawa, Cause and Effect or ‘Fishbone’ Diagram
Process Flow Charting
Check or Tally Charts
Histograms
Pareto Charts
Scatter diagrams
Control (Run) Charts
3 You might want to look back to page 74 for a full answer to this question. In summary, we can say that quality improvement groups will face difficulties without the full support of management. Other difficulties may arise through: lack of training; poor communications; over-ambition; personality clashes; lack of time, a poor team leader; problems that are too big; nowhere suitable to meet.
4 a Quality development and IMPROVEMENT entails:
SYSTEMS: The organizational STRUCTURE, responsibilities, procedures, processes and RESOURCES for implementing quality management;
TECHNIQUES, such as data collection and analysis, and statistical process control;
people.
b It is difficult to produce high QUALITY in POOR work conditions.
c Teams are much more likely to EXCEL at what they do if they can be:
given the OPPORTUNITY to make many of their own DECISIONS and set their own STANDARDS;
persuaded to take a PRIDE in their work because it is in their own INTERESTS to do so;
shown ways to manage THEMSELVES as a team.
5 Put simply, the answer is: ‘the prevention of errors’.
5Answers to the quick quiz
Answer 1 |
There’s only one answer: the customers! |
Answer 2 |
We defined utility or performance as the main characteristics of a product or service. It determines what a product does and how well it does it, and what a service provides, and how well it provides it. |
Answer 3 |
Typically, quality control specialists will be involved in: |
| |
Answer 4 |
Effective quality must be based on prevention, not detection. |
Answer 5 |
A suitable one-word answer is: competition. |
Answer 6 |
Prevention costs are the costs of setting up a quality management system. |
Answer 7 |
Internal failure costs are those associated with defects detected before the product or service is delivered to the customer; external failure costs occur later. |
Answer 8 |
The ‘official’ definition is: ‘The ability of an item to perform a required function under stated conditions for a stated period of time.’ |
Answer 9 |
You might have mentioned: increased levels of business; usually no need for an organization’s quality system to undergo investigation by any customer, to any other standard; buying from accredited suppliers gives the customer an assurance that the required level of quality of product or service will be reached; ISO 9001 provides a foundation upon which to build future quality improvements; many larger customers demand ISO 9001/BS 5750 accreditation of suppliers before they will award contracts. |
Answer 10 |
None! |
Answer 11 |
The main concepts of TQM are: total commitment; continuous improvement; teamwork and trust; a focus on the customer’s wants and expectations. |
Answer 12 |
Continuous improvement is often referred to by its Japanese name kaizen. It is characterized by: |
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Customers can be external or internal. Your customer is the person or group you provide a product or service to. | |
Answer 14 |
As we discussed, there are several possible reasons. An organization might not: |
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Answer 15 |
The simple answer to this question is: ‘support and training’. |
6Certificate
Completion of this certificate by an authorized person shows that you have worked through all the parts of this workbook and satisfactorily completed the assessments. The certificate provides a record of what you have done that may be used for exemptions or as evidence of prior learning against other nationally certificated qualifications.