Quality Management Management Essay
Project Quality Management is a crucial element in 9 knowledge areas as the victory of any project is dependent on its quality and it is equally essential for Project Manager. In Project Management Domain, every person demands quality.Quality Management Management Essay
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The endeavor of this paper is to evaluate quality in project management domain by considering quality management in terms of following the quality planning, quality assurance and quality control processes by exploring the practices to success by maintaining cost, time and scope constraints. We will survey how quality affects the system and people associated with it and how to meet targets of any organization through better quality management.Quality Management Management Essay
Keywords- Project Quality Management, Project Management Domain, Quality Planning, Quality assurance, Quality Control, Project Implementation.
Introduction To Domain
Project Quality Management is the most difficult knowledge area to define. The ISO defines quality as “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs” (ISO8402:1994) or “the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements”. Different experts have different views about quality.Quality Management Management Essay
In software project management, Research have shown that most common reasons behind projects failure are schedule overruns, over budgets and the scope creep, these triple constraints (time, cost and scope) are termed as quality angle by Microsoft and changes made to any of these three sides probably effects the quality as quality is not a side of a triangle but is a outcome of what you do with time, cost and scope therefore these angles must be met for achieving quality of any project in the project management domain.Quality Management Management Essay
The reason for failure can also be measured to be the eagerness of project managers in adopting new methodologies, tools, techniques, skills and knowledge for achieving success of any project but not focusing on the quality itself.Quality Management Management Essay
Quality has different definitions in different organizations depending upon its standards but a basic one is that whatever is delivered should be according to the customer or organization’s expectations. According to Howard Gitlow and Shelley Gitlow Quality is defined as “surpassing customer needs and expectations throughout the life of the product.”Quality Management Management Essay
The quality of any project can be judged from different viewpoints e.g. business and technical. From business viewpoint the focus is on completing the project on time, within specified budget and according to the needs. From technical viewpoint quality verifies that the project conforms to the business standards e.g. documentation, user interfaces and the naming standards and the system to be produced should be maintainable.Quality Management Management Essay
Therefore, the main principle of Project Quality Management is to guarantee customer satisfaction. To understand quality of any project, the project team must spend time and build up good relationships with stakeholders to realize what quality is according to them as only customer can decide if product quality is acceptable.
Problem Description
Many technical projects fail because the project managers mostly emphasize on written requirements rather than stakeholders expectations. For example, the project manager and his team must understand the importance of delivering 50 Intel Laptops to customer successfully.Quality Management Management Essay
Changes are unavoidable during any project implementation, which may have a major or minor impact on project’s estimated schedule, budget and defined constraints if not planned accordingly; it can lead to project failure. “A 2002 survey of IT organizations shows that about 67% of the disputes on the functionality of the systems were that they did not meet up to claims of the developer and 56% of the disputes were due to slipped delivery dates which eventually ended in litigation.”[13]
For the management of project quality, quality planning, quality assurance and quality control holds an important point in the management domain. Every project must have a quality plan as it is a basic input for quality assurance and quality control but many organizations don’t bother to produce a plan because of its complexity which often results in undesirable product outcomes.Quality Management Management Essay
Scope
There are certain tools and techniques used in the project quality management area but the main processes to be followed for the achievement of quality products are the
Quality Planning
Quality Assurance
Quality Control
A concise analysis of these processes would elaborate various inputs involved with these processes and the tools and techniques used to generate the required outputs that lead to the accomplishment of better quality products.Quality Management Management Essay
In this paper, the success of quality will be discussed in terms of meeting defined time, cost and scope and how quality management processes leads to achieve targets of an organization.
Proposed Approach
The systematic approach that would be followed to achieve quality in projects is the quality management processes and the Re planning of cost, scope and time depending upon which module is more constraint in a particular project.Quality Management Management Essay
Process
Project Phase
Key Deliverables
Plan Quality
Planning
Quality Management Plan,
Quality Metrics
Quality Assurance
Execution
Change Requests
Quality Control
Monitoring and Controlling
Quality control measurements
Quality Re-Planning
Re-Planning
Trade-off between Quality Angle
Table 1: Quality Processes [12]
These processes usually take place at least once in any project to maintain the project’s quality as mentioned in PMBOK8 but plan should not be fixed in any case, it changes as the project progresses and is monitored in Quality control phase by getting the customer feedback and evaluating its conformance to requirements and fitness for use, Re-planning is done if the Quality assurance is not performed as previously planned.Quality Management Management Essay
A brief elaboration of each process is given highlighting IT Project’s Quality.
Quality Planning
Planning Quality involves implementation of organization’s quality standards and policies which should be followed in that particular organization.[3]Quality Management Management Essay
A quality plan needs to cover a number of elements: [3]
What work needs to go through a quality check?
Tools and Techniques for quality planning?
When should it be carried out and what resources are allocated?
Who is responsible for the required quality?
What should be the output?
What work needs to go through quality check?
The Quality of deliverables of project are checked for example a requirements document is checked if it is according to the customer demands similarly the quality check is carried our for other deliverables. For the milestones or checkpoints, a standard is followed to check their functionality.
For the project itself, it may be appropriate to have the project management practices reviewed for quality once the project is initially established. This may be useful to give the Sponsor and top management a level of confidence in the team.Quality Management Management Essay
Tools and Techniques for quality planning?
Cost gain study- This study assures that gain should overweigh the cost. The productivity should be high with lower cost which satisfies customer requirements.Quality Management Management Essay
Benchmarking- The performance of the project is measured in terms of planned performance or by comparing its performance with other projects in same application areas [4][5].
Quality Diagrams- Different charts and diagrams help in predicting quality problems and build up methods to deal with them. [7]
When should it be carried out and what resources are allocated?
Quality measurements are held prior to the delivery of product when there are long development times for a deliverable and the resources required for the development of project are allocated such as human resources, financial and material resources.Quality Management Management Essay
For example, if four milestones of the project are estimated to be completed in 8 weeks but after the completion of 2 milestones the time left is only 3 weeks, it may be worth holding the inspection after each milestone to identify any problems early and reduce rework by reshuffling of resources and optimization of plan.Quality Management Management Essay
Who is responsible for the required quality?
The developers of the product as well as the customer both are responsible for the quality. In fact customer requirements define quality, not processes. For example a customer goes to a garments shop for purchasing a jersey, he would typically check its fabric, color, size and price if it’s according to his requirements than he would say it’s of good quality. He will not consider what processes are used to make it and how much time it took. In other words, it is not what you do or how you do it but who uses it that counts. Using the quality example again you can make the best clothing that was ever made, using the optimum materials and applying efficient processes but if no body needs it than it is just a waste. Hence, it is not only the project manager but the one essential to project success. [6]Quality Management Management Essay
What should be the outputs of quality planning?
The output includes the understanding of implementing quality policy by project management team. The quality plan should focus on Quality assurance (Execution), Quality Control (monitoring) and Quality improvement (Re-planning) of the project. Metrics and the checklists are most common outputs. Metrics describes what something is and how it is measured by quality control process for example the project management team makes a detailed schedule of start and end of every activity in the form of metrics. Many organizations use standard checklists to measure quality of activities performed.
Quality Assurance (QA)
In Quality Assurance (QA), the quality of a project is guaranteed by performing all the activities that are being planned from design to servicing and documentation that satisfies customer demands. It is a process of ensuring that the project meets quality standards which is also defined as quality measurements. [6][7]Quality Management Management Essay
Quality Audit- is an important tool for quality assurance. These audits help to improve performance of future projects by learning lessons from previous projects. Quality audits are performed by many engineering industries by first designing a quality metrics for a project and then analyzing the metrics throughout the project development. Quality Audits are usually performed by internal (in-house) auditors or external (third parties) customer involved in the project. Audits can be conducted on schedule basis for example, after each milestone or they can be performed on random whenever there is a need or as ordered by top management.Quality Management Management Essay
The main goal of Quality Audits is to identify ineffective standards and policies used and replace them with best practices.
Quality audit verify the execution of approved change requests, corrective and preventive action and defect repairs. [6]
Quality Assurance Plan- Large projects usually involve thousands of activities which becomes complex for quality assurance to track them. So they should be collected in quality assurance plan for their efficient management. A standard for Quality assurance plan is developed for an organization and it is the responsibility of project team members to develop one which should include the following elements [6]Quality Management Management Essay
WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
User Requirements and Specification
Activity to be performed
When to perform the activity
Who will perform the activity
Quality Assurance Output- Quality Improvement improves the value and usefulness of a project and provides benefits to the project stakeholders [6]. Quality improvement not only improves the quality of project management but also it improves the quality of a product by following a continuous cycle known as The “Plan-Do-Check-Act” cycle [1] which is the source of Quality Improvement. As customer needs changes with time so this process helps to meet their new requirements by getting their feedback on regular basis, it may also help to reduce costs by providing long-term benefits for customer satisfaction.Quality Management Management Essay
Plan a change in the right process for getting for improving it and getting beneficial results.
Do apply the change as a test case to test if it gives the desired results.
Check the effect of the applied changes in the entire system by analyzing it thoroughly.
Act to apply the change to the entire system based on the result of test cases if it provides the desired result. [6]
Follow the cycle for other processes for an improved change.
Barriers to Quality Improvement- Quality improvement bring changes in a product to improve its quality but because of its complexity it is not always considered significant to be followed in every project. It is the responsibility of top management and due to the risk that an improvement change would not produce the desired results prevents the management from applying this policy. On the other hand, long-term benefits produce by the improvement would overcome the short-term risk.Quality Management Management Essay
Quality control
Quality Control is the process for “monitoring specific project results to determine whether the comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance” (comp. PMBOK3) [8]
The Project results are usually monitored throughout this phase and if an inconsistency is observed in the planned specification and the actual results, the project team takes corrective actions to repair that variation and take precautionary steps to avoid this variation from reoccurring. These results are generally examined by Quality Audits and the Quality Assurance Plan and Activities are improved according to the requirement. [11]
The Quality Control, therefore strives on the Project Results, checklists and the quality management plan for monitoring actual results.Quality Management Management Essay
Various Tools are being used for the measurement of Quality control. Through the use of Inspection and Statistical Sampling, data about the performance of actual system is compared with the quality standards. Cause and Effect Diagrams provides knowledge about the reasons of any deficiencies. Many other tools are used to display performance data such as Control Charts, Flowcharts, Histograms, Pareto Charts, Run Charts, and Scatter Diagrams,[10] the data is not simply displayed but gives an insight of useful information about the product’s conformance to requirements and illustrates whether the quality standards are met. If the quality is not acceptable, a Change Request will be made. If the deliverables are acceptable, the output of Validated Deliverables goes to the Verify Scope process for final approval. [7]Quality Management Management Essay
Quality Re-Planning
The nature of Project Quality management must focus on the product of project as well as the management of project because severe consequences can result for project stakeholders from failure to meet quality requirements in any of these dimensions. [7]
Re-Planning is done when the actual target about project management that is defined in the Quality Planning phase seems to fluctuate concerning scope, time and cost of the project which can be measured at anytime at the completion of any deliverables and milestones during the product development.Quality Management Management Essay
It is the responsibility of Project Manager that he should balance both dimensions, the product goals and the management goals. The project team should not overwork to achieve product quality as it reduces the management quality by resulting in Employee turnover [7]. Similarly, the three elements of management dimension must be balanced by project manager throughout the development activity. For example, the information technology teamwork project has a preliminary scope of generating a sixty to seventy pages report and one and a half hour presentation on any twenty five prospective IT projects. The preliminary time and cost of this project is set as two months and $65,000.Quality Management Management Essay This estimation provides the targets to be achieved for scope, time and cost at the start of Project. Balancing them through the end of the project is fairly an ideal situation which is not always possible as a result trade-offs are made between these triple elements depending upon the importance of that particular element in the given situation and the experienced project manager. For example, to collect at least twenty five good ideas about the IT teamwork project, a survey is planned online to be done within a week with a cost of approximately $4,000 and suppose the survey produced only few good ideas in the given time and cost. In this situation, the collection of ideas is most essential as it is the key input so the time and cost are adjusted for the achieving the desired scope [2]. Re-planning is therefore, changing the initial plans if it is desirable for the accomplishment of Project’s Management.Quality Management Management Essay
Fig 4. Managing Quality
APPLICATION AREAS
Enterprise wide Quality Management Systems
Due to the latest developments in information technologies and system design, advance quality management software has been established with the ability to incorporate quality software applications with business processing systems. The open architecture and object-oriented technology is the source of these new systems, incorporated quality management can be attained by connecting system components to the enterprise management system.Quality Management Management Essay The modules are associated through a standard interface structure that enables different applications to exchange information. Integrating the quality management system with business automation systems can considerably affect profitability. Such integration reduces the time and effort related with data entry. An incorporated quality management system offers online access of data stored within each system component. Through associating this data into automated reporting systems, management can carry out assessments on serious processes that states a company’s victory. [14]Quality Management Management Essay
Automotive Industry
Automotive sector has been active in inventing new manufacturing strategies having to current high level of competition. With this scenario the challenges faced by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) have also increased over the years.
Due to this high level of competition, companies have indeed emphasized to increase the quality in all aspects of products and services within their management system. Therefore quality management (QM) has become increasingly popular as one of the managerial devices in ensuring continuous improvement as to improve customer satisfaction and to ensure its product or service quality. Another dare tackled by automotive industry is the stress to reduce delivery period and cost. Quality Management element with support for advanced features like TQM will help to uphold quality from basis. This receives importance owing to the continuous pressure exerted to cut cost and improve quality. [15]Quality Management Management Essay
Airline Business
The safety of airplanes in service is critical in the aviation business, both in terms of accident avoidance and economic performance. The recent valuation of consequences to the airlines by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has highlighted the challenges faced by the airlines.Quality Management Management Essay Lack of compliance tools and insufficient quality management is bullying an unparalleled crisis in the airline business. An operational program to handle FAA ordinance to be used by airlines business requires an incorporated, enterprise-wide quality management solution that includes a dominant acquiescence platform which provides strong domain expertise in airline and aerospace equipment. The best examples counted in providing world-class acquiescence and quality solutions is the Tata Consultancy Services and MetricStream which includes a best solution for airline business in the form of global corroboration and support services [16].Quality Management Management Essay
E-Service Quality Management
Today’s Society emphasizes more on the use of modern communication and information technologies. E-services is an example of modern computer application that provides access to online services. Quality Management Systems are required to offer a reliable way to select, analyze, rank and design the right eservices. The growing consumption of e-services has elevated the requirement to state principles and means to evaluate and assure quality. Investment in e-services is a significant step towards improving the quality of life in our vigorous society.Quality Management Management Essay
A Quality Management Framework in the context of e-services has the following components: e-service as object (entity), e-service development and delivery process as process, business and consumer as users, specific service request as request as requirements, evaluation and measurement of the e-service to determine its quality. E-Service Quality Management Framework provides benchmarking capabilities and comparative assessment of e-services. It also supports making decisions in improving the quality of service and overall customer satisfaction. [17]
POTENTIAL RESEARCH AREAS
Improve Quality Management for modern development methodologies: RAD, Agile and Extreme Programming
“Rapid Application Development (RAD) refers to a type of software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The planning of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself.”[18]
However, there can be real difficulties with this approach. Frequent change tends to corrupt software structure making it more expensive to change and evolve to meet new requirements. Progress can be hard to evaluate and problems can be hard to find because there is no documentation to reveal what has been done. Therefore quality of the software may suffer. Without a specification it may be difficult to validate the system. [19]
Improve Quality through Customer Involvement
Quality is not determined or defined by the producing company. Quality is determined by the customer. Thus quality of a product or a service is the customer’s perception of the degree to which the product or service meets his or her expectations. [20]
New Techniques for developing a strategic quality plan
Organizations face a continuous barrage of requests to improve quality. Every quality management plan can, and must be tied to key business process performance indicators in order to have any real impact on productivity and the bottom-line. However, strategic plans are rarely translated into the quality strategies needed to ensure overall performance improvement gains. [21]
CONCLUSION
Project Quality management is becoming a part of every project from information technology to enterprise and different industries for the achievement of high quality products and services. By following the quality processes in systems, the quality can be greatly improved and in order to attain efficient Project Quality Management, the concepts of Project Quality management are also incorporated with the quality processes. The project manager and team should have the clear conception about management for managing quality processes.Quality Management Management Essay
The Proposed Quality Processes cover both aspects of Quality, the product of the project as well as the management of project in the light of scope, time and cost. Project Quality Management is suitable for applications related to IT and Management systems.Quality Management Management Essay
Total Quality Management is an essential tool that makes an improvement reaction to firms and companies. It is a technique of managing the future outcomes, and it does consist more features than just ensuring product and service quality, as it is a technique of running people and business processes in order to guarantee customer satisfaction in every phase. With TQM, it helps organizations to do the right thing at the right time from its first attempt. Therefore, we will be introducing the principle of TQM and how it reacts with organizations along with different pros and cons that could affect using of this vital technique.Quality Management Management Essay
Definition of Quality
Quality in manufacturing is defined as a measure of excellence or defects free that is taken by the adherence to measurable and provable standards to reach consistency of a specific output that will satisfy a certain customer. Total Quality Management is one of the techniques used to achieve a specific standard to serve customer requirements. A frequent quality description is delighting the customer by fully achieving their desire and expectations; this could include performance, delivery of item, reliability, cost effectiveness, and appearance. Therefore, it is essential for the company to know what are these desire and expectations, as well as identify them, understand, and measure their ability to meet them.Quality Management Management Essay
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/quality.html
Quality commences with a detailed market investigation to determine the actual requirements of a certain product and the customer’s need. The main role of quality in organizations is cooperation of everyone, as it is compulsory to achieve a total quality organization.Quality Management Management Essay
www.bexcellence.org/Total-quality-management.html
What is Total Quality Management (TQM)?
TQM is a customer focused approach program that focuses on customer satisfaction by delivering the best quality product at lowest possible price. It is an organization strategy that involves everybody for contribution. The main aspect is prevention of defects, by working on a target of zero defects. Moreover, TQM is methodical as it depends on the information gained and it is a continuous improvement process.
Throughout the years before, TQM has reached to be an important and outstanding for firm’s process capabilities improvement to lead to a fit and maintained competitive advantages.Quality Management Management Essay
http://www.leanmanufacturingconcepts.com/DefinitionTotalQualityManagement.htm
History of TQM
In the present world we hear a lot about quality control and management, which even did not exist in eighteenth and nineteenth century. However there were some quality control actions taken by individuals at a small level. The quality control and management developed and evolved during the entire twentieth century. In early 1900s Fredrick W. Taylor presented the quality concepts, he is known as the ‘father of scientific management’. In 1913, JC Penney became one of the first person to introduce the fundamentals of total quality management by bringing up ideas like “customer satisfaction”, “quality”, “value”, “training” and “rewards for performance” to the managerial bases for the business.Quality Management Management Essay
The history of TQM starts through Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne experiments from 1927 to 1932. The Hawthorne experiments showed that the workers involvement in the decision making process actually enhanced the production. In 1930s the Western Electric Company considered lighting levels, work day lengths and rest period length in the Hawthorne plant of to maximize the productivity. And the researchers found that as the lights were brighter, worker’s productivity increased and vice versa. This change of the behavior of the employees is called the Hawthorne effect.Quality Management Management Essay
In 1940s US was in World War II. World War II pushed the standardization, quality control and manufacturing practices to a higher level. The idea of TQM grew very slowly in the USA even though many TQM aspects were developed in the USA in the 1950s. Quality was implemented in the American and European industries only in the 1980s because there was no preparedness of the business and governmental organizations to take adequate steps concerning the findings of technical and statistical work. The decision making structures at that period were not ideal to solve the quality control problems. In 1960s, the idea of “Zero-defects” gained favor.Philip Crosby, who was the founder of “Zero defects” idea concentrated on employee motivation and awareness.Quality Management Management Essay
In Japan the quality before 1940s was limited to inspection quality. The post war era saw dramatic progress in the Japanese quality and that happened over a small period of time. Actually the quality control was introduced to Japan by few American experts. In 1950s Edward Deming imparted statistical methods and Dr. Juran imparted the quality management methods to the Japanese. Edward Deming is known as the ‘father of modern quality’. It was in 1950s when Armand Feigenbaun wrote Total Quality Control. This was the first work that initiated Total Quality Management theories. The Japanese realized the need and benefits of quality management. A proper effort was initiated in 1956. In 1962 the Japanese had innovated the concept of quality control. In 1968 they had developed their own version of TQM, and presented it as Company Wide Quality Control (CWQC) and the most key features of TQM in Japan was achieved between 1950-1965.Quality Management Management Essay
“We have learned to live in a world of mistakes and defective products as if they were necessary to life. It is time to adopt a new philosophy in America.” W. Edwards Deming(1900-1993)
In the 1980s, quality management systems, as given in the ISO standards 9000 series, paved the way for a quality-related business management. Advanced companies today are in a post-ISO-era, in search of business brilliance to meet the tests of the globalization in all market sectors.Quality Management Management Essay
How to implement TQM
There are stages in order to be able to implement total quality to a firm which requires commitment and work to successfully implement total quality where the first step is to start setting goals and achieving them, also the management team should be motivate because it is important for continues improvement. By continues improvement it is important to identify the stages of improvement and create the required responsibility before implementing where it is also important pre-plan every step before the actual implementation. And therefore it would be recommended to assign every employer to be his or her own inspector while working thus increasing productivity and lowering the costs.Quality Management Management Essay
Reasons to start implementing
Managerial Reasons
Employee Reasons
a) Improves communication between different sections of the firm or company.
b) Helps in building loyalty to the company.
c) Shows the required training in each department
a) Improves teamwork
b) Allows employees to show their skills and knowledge towards improvement.
c) Helps increase innovation to solve problems by removing fear from failures.
Steps to implement TQM
One of the most crucial and important steps when implementing a TQM is getting the commitment of the CEOs and the upper-level management and maintain that education by training with any new improvements and establish a commitment to provide the required resources needed to allow the improvements. Then it is required to create a steering committee that would monitor the improvement flow, allocate improvement tasks to groups and teams and insure that the teams has got the required training for those tasks and how is the communication between the employees progress.Quality Management Management Essay
Creating and outlining the vision statement, mission statement and guiding principles such as customer satisfaction or the process on how safety is improved, making sure that everything is done the first time thus the elimination or removal of defects and keeping the reputation to be the best and not lower and the ability to achieve continues improvement to the company. An important point where a company must create to implement quality processes acting within the company is the flow diagram where it labels all the actions created during the implementation and project where it includes all the factors acting with the company.Quality Management Management Essay
Focusing on the customers concern would be required and is one of the important steps that require a lot of work to be done, by learning the customers concerns and how does the customer react to the services given to them by the company, and survey them about different categories such as the safety operation procedures, the condition of equipment or even administrative procedures, to achieve customer satisfaction. An example on what a survey would look like:Quality Management Management Essay
Also considering an employee to an internal customer where it allow to conduct an analysis of the processes made in the company, where there are some steps that should be applied to the internal processes of the company.Quality Management Management Essay
First of all it is important to list some of the internal customers/owner inside the company.
Then choosing one of the customer/owner to focus on the application of the technique chosen.
Conclude with the outputs that are going to be granted to the internal customer/owner.Quality Management Management Essay
Then figure out the processes needed to create those outputs
Furthermore it is crucial to learn the customers’ expectations and how can their satisfaction be measured.
Step 8 or providing quality training program is one of the most vital steps when implementing total quality to a firm, where it teaches and provides information that the employees may not acquire and understand unless the training was conducted. Previous successful TQM implementation has proven that there should be a sequence on where to start the training program where it was proven that if the upper management did not get the right training programs the implementation may not survive.Quality Management Management Essay
Also establishing Quality Improvement teams where in small companies, one team would be enough whereas in larger companies more teams are created with one team leader to guide other groups where this leader should be able to investigate improvements such as technical training and quality training, with participation from the employees and managers, also taking suggestions from employees. Team leaders should have these qualities in order to be able to complete team establishment. They should be committed to quality and customer satisfaction with one main goal which to achieve success for the organization and to have great communication skills.Quality Management Management Essay
When implementing process improvement it is important that the leaders must show the problems to the steering committee which is then examined to create the necessary recommendations for improvements, then training the team in order to meet with the requirements of the improvement made. Then a meeting is done often to analyse the solution, which are then examined and implemented to fit the company’s needs.Quality Management Management Essay
Case Study
GNY Building Materials is company with multi-location ready mix concrete and gravel supplier, employing over 350 employees at a meeting was conducted that the company requires some changes using TQM in order to increase or raise the profit margin by reducing costs and following TQM steps to do so. The company hired a consultant to begin work on implementing TQM and found out that company did not have any history of participation from the management or slow participation, there was poor internal communication between the employees and their managers also one of the major reasons why the company decided to implement TQM was to eliminate the waste in delivery and improve the its reliability.
After three months of implementation GNY Building Material was able to reduce cost initiatives that were worth £600,000 and implemented over £300,000 worth of cost savings, they found that they got a 25:1 payback on its investment in TQM. Their reputation was restored which later became one of the preferred companies to contractors.
Reason behind TQM Failures and its Prevention
TQM is basically meant to bring an overall improvement in quality of the company but sometimes due to various reasons implementing TQM fails.
The following are the few reasons behind the failure of TQM:
No proper planning: Some companies implement TQM without any proper research and planning. They get their requirements and needs wrong and eventually failing to attain proper benefits of a TQM system.Quality Management Management Essay
Short term orientation: when companies take TQM as a short term investment it usually fails to achieve the target. TQM should be always looked up as a long term investment that involves every process and everybody in the organization.
Over/under relying on Statistical Process Control (SPC): SPC plays an important role in the implementation of TQM. It is only one of the key components, so relying too much or too less can lead to the failure of achieving the TQM goals.Quality Management Management Essay
Lack of support from top management: On implementing TQM into an organization it needs full support and commitment from the top management officials to change the current system. The top management officials can help the team and the company to tackle all the problems and implement TQM successfully.Quality Management Management Essay
Lack of quality culture: TQM involves all sides of the production process and thus requires each and everyone in the organization to involve in the change. It is not an individual effort rather it’s teamwork.
One of the key ideas to prevent the failure is to assess the difference between a traditional organization and TQM organization. Following are the few differences:Quality Management Management Essay
Customer-Driven vs. Company-Driven: Traditional organizations tend to make their decisions based on what is most convenient for them, rather than what is wanted and expected by their customers. Being customer-based means gathering information from customers and other interested clients and modifying services and processes to meet those needs.Quality Management Management Essay
High Employee Participation vs. Top-Down Hierarchy: Traditional organizations tend to have very restricted communication and decision- making patterns. Employees are told what to do, rather than being included in figuring out what to do. Information tends to flow from top to bottom. In TQM organizations, employees are much more actively involved in both the decision-making and communication processes. Information flows both top to bottom and bottom to top. For that matter, information also flows sideways.
Problem-Solving vs. Blame: Traditional organizations tend to look to affix blame for things that go wrong. TQM organizations attack the problems in their organizations rather than the people. They fix things.Quality Management Management Essay
What do you believe is the future of TQM and why?
With the increasing demand on quality from organizations and its increased acceptance by customers, such that some customer make it a condition that a company has a quality certification to deal with it, the future will witness increased demand on TQM.Quality Management Management Essay
Organizations will tend to go for TQM as well, as it, in addition to attracting customers, reduces cost. With time competition between companies will increase, which would lead that all major and most medium organizations would have a quality system.Quality Management Management Essay
As this global economy reaches out to world businesses, it becomes clear that quality is becoming not only the international business language for worldwide trade networks but also that worldwide economic and social forces are fundamentally changing quality concepts and management. Understanding and speaking this new quality language is a principal goal of successful companies that are becoming sales growth and earnings profitability leaders in the new global economy.Quality Management Management Essay
The current economic situation with increasing costs and products being available by competitors at lower prices is pushing each and every organization to go for TQM as it is the ultimate solution for both problems.Quality Management Management Essay
TQM will have more acceptance as a management approach in the future taking a top-down approach, where every single person in the organization is involved in the decision taking, and would extend to involve customers and suppliers too, encouraging an atmosphere of intimidation with suppliers instead of partnership. “Feigenbaum, (1998)”
Advantages of TQM
It involves customer-focused organization that enforces employees to provide an improved quality
Offers high revenue on investment by improving efficiency.
Works regularly well within manufacturing sectors.
Support Organizations take advantage and benefits from the developments that assist in managing operations as cross-functional processes.Quality Management Management Essay
Allows and urges the management to create a strategic approach by including different sectors to improve the company and creating systematic innovations.
One of the main advantages that makes the management implement TQM would be that it gathers employees, flexibility, and allow them to share their ideas and experiences that would help with the gradual improvement of the company by the efforts made by the employees thus allowing them to work together. Where an employee can refer to his previous experience and share it with the team to solve problems that maybe faced.
Produces an orientation to strategic and inter-organizational associations by establishing a culture of association from different sectors in organizations.
http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/im_tqm_main.html
The disadvantages of TQM
Cost of implementation of total quality:
The implementation of total quality management is a high cost investment. These cost can be divided into four main categories: “Total Quality Management System, (2009)”
Product requirements: this could involve change of processes, materials and may also require massive changes such as change of production lines.Quality Management Management Essay
Quality planning: planning is a time consuming tool, and planning for quality requires a huge amount of time and other resources.
Quality assurance: quality is an ongoing process thus quality assurance is required to maintain the functioning of the system.
Training: introducing quality system requires extensive training from high management level down to normal employee level. Training is a time and money consuming process.Quality Management Management Essay
It is a long term investment
The results of applying total quality management take long time to be seen. Long-term investments are less preferable to higher management and investors if no enough guarantees are given. Even though in most cases implementation of quality has been proved to be more profitable to the organisation where it is implemented, at the same time due to the large investment involved the organisation might run out of cash and thus might end up bankrupting. “Total Quality Management System, (2009)”
Less flexibility
Total quality requires uniform processes which allows for less amount of flexibility. This may lead to less ability to meet customer demand. “Total Quality Management System, (2009)”
Resistance to change from employees
An employee might feel that his job at the organization is at risk due to the introduction of the new total quality management program and so oppose or resist the process of implementing the TQM program. Also more skilled workers might not like to adhere to the new processes which lead to increasing costs, or might even decide to leave the leave their jobs. “Total Quality Management System, (2009)”
Inhibits creativity
By implementing a total quality program most processes within an organization will be standardized and workers are no longer required to put any intellectual efforts into their work. This will lead to less creativity, where workers assume that those standard processes are the best way to do the job, and the organization would lose chances for more creative ideas.Quality Management Management Essay
Deming’s 14 points were first applied to Japan and United States manufacturing but the philosophy can be applied to many different industries now. The theories can be applied to healthcare, including Long Term Acute Care Hospitals (LTACH). These types of hospitals are not as common to people, but were created to deliver care based on patient’s needs. This paper will look at an LTACH located in Denver and like many healthcare facilities, employee morale is down due budget cuts and the rising cost of healthcare. A total quality management program could potentially help the facility develop new processes that allow for positive changes. Deming’s 14 Points could be applied to this hospital and help give direction to the leadership staff of…show more content…Quality Management Management Essay
Without a direction the hospital has not been able to achieve the performance results that it has been looking for. Why use Deming’s 14 points Deming’s 14 points is not just a quality management program, it is a philosophy for leadership to help make the changes necessary (Darr, 1990). The points Deming created are based on his ideas using statistical information. That actual performance and average performance can be compared to determine whether the system is in statistical control. The data gathered would be used in a trend analysis report. This allows management to identify variation, positive or negative. Common variations can be identified, along with special variations. Special variations would be three standard deviations from the mean, that would be seen only a small percentage of the time (Darr, 1990). This may sound confusing, but what are being looked at are specific trends and behaviors. The data will allow the hospital to determine if the occurrences are related to the system or the individual.Quality Management Management Essay
After reading this essay you will learn about:- 1. Meaning and Definitions of Quality Control 2. Quality Control Organisation 3. Advantages of Quality Control 4. Quality Control for Export 5. Indian Standard Institution 6. Quality Assurance 7. Causes of Quality Failures 8. Economics of Quality 9. Product Quality Analysis 10. Quality Planning 11. Quality Improvement 12. Quality Management System 13. Role of Top Management.Quality Management Management Essay
Contents:
Essay on the Meaning and Definitions of Quality Control
Essay on the Quality Control Organisation
Essay on the Advantages of Quality Control
Essay on Quality Control for Export
Essay on Indian Standard Institution
Essay on Quality Assurance
Essay on the Causes of Quality Failures
Essay on the Economics of Quality
Essay on Product Quality Analysis
Essay on Quality Planning
Essay on Quality Improvement
Essay on Quality Management System
Essay on the Role of Top Management towards Quality
Essay # 1. Meaning and Definitions of Quality Control:
Quality control in its simplest term, is the control of quality during manufacturing. Both quality control and inspection are used to assure quality. Inspection is a determining function which determines raw materials, supplies, parts or finished products etc. as acceptable or unacceptable.Quality Management Management Essay
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As control becomes effective, the need for inspection decreases. Quality control determines the cause for variations in the characteristics of products and gives solutions by which these variations can be controlled. It is economic in its purpose, objective in its procedure, dynamic in its operation and helpful in its treatment.
Since variations in raw materials have large effects on the quality of in-process materials, quality control includes statistical sampling and testing before acceptance. It also includes the examination of quality characteristics in finished products so as to assure satisfactory outgoing quality.Quality Management Management Essay
Cooperation between the quality control group and other departments such as production, planning and inspection is of vital importance. With proper managerial support and co-operation the quality control programme will be more successful.
Definitions:
In current quality control theory and practice, the meaning of “Quality” is closely allied to cost and customer needs. “Quality” may simply be defined as fitness for purpose at lowest cost.Quality Management Management Essay
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“Quality” of any product is regarded as the degree to which it fulfills the requirements of the customer. “Quality” means degree of perfection. Quality is not absolute but it can only be judged or realized by comparing with standards. It can be determined by some characteristics namely, design, size, material, chemical composition, mechanical functioning, workmanship, finishing and other properties.Quality Management Management Essay
Quality of a product depends upon the application of materials, men, machines and manufacturing conditions. The systematic control of these factors is the quality control. The quality of a product differs greatly due to these factors. For example, a skilled worker will produce products of better quality and a less skilled worker will produce poor quality products.Quality Management Management Essay
Similarly better machines and better materials with satisfactory manufacturing conditions produce a better quality product. Thus, it is clear that to control the quality of product various factors which are responsible for quality are required to be controlled properly.
In the words of Alford and Beatly, “quality control” may be broadly defined as that “Industrial management technique by means of which products of uniform acceptable quality are manufactured.” Quality control is concerned with making things right rather than discovering and rejecting those made wrong.Quality Management Management Essay
Quality Management (QM) in companies ensures that every action needs planning, development and application leading to valuable services, professionalism and respect to company’s structure. QM is an organizational framework that boosts a person’s progress and a company’s competencies. QM insists on the need for a systemic loom of talent management, which embraces clear policy to empower staff and improve their creativity. The business world is linked with performance of quality structure founded on ISO 9000 international standards, which has lead to development of Quality Management.
Management Principles
Quality Management recognizes a number of administration principles. Higher-ranking management officials apply these principles to guide their institutes towards a better performance. QM covers the following principles: leadership, customer focus, continual improvement, attachment of people, procedure approach, system approach of administration, realistic approach to making judgment and mutually favorable supplier relationships.Quality Management Management Essay
Core Concepts
Quality Management presents appropriate guidance that ensures achievement of quality assurance values in an organization. This benefits all stakeholder groups and results into continual capacity development hence attainment and maintenance customer satisfaction. The fundamental concepts include continuous procedure improvement driven by superior management that focuses on vital process parts with explicit development goals. The other core concept is customer focus. Customer focus ensures identification of both internal and external customers. Additionally, it centers on satisfaction of customer’s needs by the provision of valuable services and products.Quality Management Management Essay
The third core value is defect deterrence and nonconformity. This value seeks to avoid noncompliance issues that crop up with products and services untimely in the growth cycle. It centers on prevention of adverse issues that relate to products and services. Finally, universal responsibility is the other core value. It notes that the entire organization has to ensure that desired quality is achieved. Hence, attainment of high quality products and services is not the duty of the quality assurance team only.Quality Management Management Essay
