Quality Management Systems

Businesses compete for customers, clients, contracts, resources, position, funds, continuity (survival) and growth on the basis of:

the product/service	pre-sales service	prices and value
reputation	customer loyalty	reliability
unique-selling points	delivery	after-sales service

Quality management makes a strategic contribution to achievement of a business's competitiveness. In the two decades after 1945 companies from Eastern countries had the reputation of producing cheap, shoddy goods. Then British motorcycles and German cameras disappeared from the market. Post-war Japanese companies learned to design and produce such goods so well that their standards became a benchmark for quality. It is poor consolation that in the annuls of Japanese quality experience one or two Americans, Joseph Juran and W. Edwards Deming made key contributions.

Quality Management Web sites

Common-sense Hypotheses about Quality

• Companies that fail to focus on quality lose market share and decline in reputation.
• Good reputations are easier to lose than regain. People trust and become accustomed to favourite goods. They remember the bad and carp about it to others. "I'll never go to that hairdresser again". We flee and establish new loyalties with substitute suppliers. When was the last time you changed your hairdresser and why?
• It takes a major strategic, operational and psychological effort to regain a lost reputation.

The problem with common-sense is that it gets either gets forgotten or it is only realised after the event. Complacency breeds neglect.

What is Quality?

....... a perception of class, excellence, a type of "referential" standard or (in definition) reflecting the needs and expectations of the customer.

A range of eminent champions have contributed to definitions relating to what quality is:

• a product or service's nature or features that reflect capacity to satisfy express or implied statements of need(Deming)
• conformance to requirements (Crosby)
• fitness for purpose or use (Juran)
• product and service characteristics as offered by design, marketing, manufacture, maintenance and service that meet customer expectations (Feigenbaum)
• owner satisfaction - the perceived quality of some products or services as interpreted by owners. An expensive to maintain, unreliable car may offer a high status experience if it is, say, a '61 Thunderbird. A set of wine glasses purchased from Harrods may provide more satisfaction than similar ones from a street trader -albeit that the Knights bridge crystal was more expensive.
• Oakland (1995) suggests perceivable (and measureable) move from mere satisfaction by a customer to "delight and reputation for excellence". Customer expectations are consistently met with an after-glow of well-being.
• Reliability and quality are related.
  Why buy this dish-washer? Reasons may include design, colour, size,availability and price. Which Magazine - for example -testifies to its reliability and Lata next door has had one for eight years without problems!

Quality Chains

When booking and taking a holiday, the quality chain begins with the brochure, the ease of booking, no hassle over deposits, payment and confirmation. The holiday story illustrates how quality chain's strength can be interrupted by one failure or issue of quality. Such instances typically surface as a complaint or a return. Someone in must then deal with it(often the lead participant). It is damaging for the issue to become a long standing resentment. The lead participant may invoke contract penalties for supplier failure to deliver to the agreed quality standard.

Elements and relationships in quality chains require systematic design, planning, organisation, communication,attention, operation, monitoring, action and re-evaluation/re-design.

Exercise 1

Contributors to the quality chain must be

aware	willing	inclined to action
cautious about inferring that the products and services of "quality certified" are totally reliable and satisfactory in every way. John Falkenstine offers a warning

A Policy for Quality

In any business a clear policy framework is neededto guide the practices and behaviours essential for quality achievement throughout the system as a whole. The policy has to be properly and consistently implemented by all concerned. In a small business the traditional values of craftsmanship and personal, caring service may prevail. In larger businesses these may become confused and dispersed.

Quality to meet requirements and delight, calls for clear understanding of

1. what customers really want and like. A marketing orientation and market research is essential.
2. all players in the quality chain having the scope to contribute creatively. Continuous quality improvement (CQI)needs to be embedded into personal committments and behaviours - from top to bottom throughout an organisation. This applies to relationships along internal as well as external supply chains. The adoption of quality circles is just one element in a CQI process.

The content, scope, processes and focus of a quality management system range across:

design and conformance to design	processes and transformations
availability and reliability	response, delivery and logistics
accuracy, completeness and maintainability	cost effectiveness
consumption feelings, after-glow and after care	quality control inspections and testing
the quality manual and control documents	audit and certification expectations

Quality Control (QC) vs Quality Assurance (QA)

Inspection is a QC process. It generally involves inspectors who check for defects in products or services. A statistical sample is inspected e.g. some chocolates from a batch. An inspector may be stationed at the end of an assembly line testing for defects. In a bank an inspector may infiltrate as a customer to vet how counter staff are handling clients.

Inspection doesn't stop poor products being made. Action only after inspection is insufficient. Why?. Quality cannot be inspected in, it must be planned, designed and manufactured that way.

ISO 9000 (2000) and TQM

• More than Quality Control

  Quality assurance is more than quality control. Assurance encompasses control beyond just inspection and testing. QA requires a structured approach to prevention of quality problems through planned and systematic activities: specification,review, monitoring and documentation.QA demands a quality management system.

• ISO 9000

  ISO9000 is the internationally agreed set of standards for the design,installation and operation of quality management systems. The standards have a history dating back to 1968 (and with earlier antecedents). ISO 9001 2000 recently replaced the ISO 9001 (1994) standard and ISO 9002 and 9003 (1994 ) standards are discontinued. The 9000 QMS standards define conformance, specification and consistency in quality monitoring and action.

• Total Quality Management

  TQM is an approach to improving the competitiveness,effectiveness and flexibility of a whole organisation.....a way of planning, organising and understanding each activity and it depends on each individual at each level. TQM is a way of ...... bringing everyone into the processes of improvement

  Oakland 1995 pp 18

  A TQM approach promotes "quality" as a strategic imperative for the business. Introduction and maintenance of a comprehensive programme of TQM will require re-evaluation of the way in which organisational members address the quality of their work - their production and service processes. TQM is underpinned by a policy committment covering:

  • a change or re-emphasis in organisation culture with all staff encouraged to practice positive, initiative taking behaviours and adopt a prevention and continuous quality improvement ethic.
  • quality improvement teams/circles and use of a range of methods and techniques (tools) to structure and support a TQM programme's objectives and tasks.

Headlines! TQM Projects Disappoint Managers!

Reports have it that several businesses have been disappointed with their TQM programme. For the business person, the propagandist side of TQM principles and policy statements must be distinguished from the practical, implementation side of quality management. Some TQM programmes have reported problems because of tensions between the propaganda and the practicalities of application. What might be the reasons for disappointment?

TQM Doctrine - still a ubiquitous, powerful, driving force.

Although specific problems may have been experienced with corporate wide TQM programmes, TQM thinking and approaches remain a powerful force in business today.

• The language of TQM drives a "quality movement"as an imperative, rhetorical (persuasive) language.
• The doctrine authorises management to drive business practice as a response to the demands of competitiveness and customer-orientation.
• The vocabulary of TQM, competitiveness and customer-orientation is complementary.

Comparing TQM and ISO 9000

TQM can be compared with more narrowly focused, regulative, systematic, documented quality management systems as represented by ISO 9000.

Generally ISO standards focus on

• rules, roles, procedures i.e. regulation,
• specification of products, ingredients, processes and tests/inspections
• recording of data and analysis of problems
• operational action

Compare this to TQM's employee-oriented commitments. ISO can be implemented without the human relations toppings and humanistic gloss of culture change.

Some TQM programmes have disappointed and similarly ISO 9000 is criticised for costly documentation and paper processing. Being accredited for ISO 9000 does not necessarily mean products and services are improved. These may remain of a low to modest standard (conformance to specification) - but as specified in the ISO paperwork.

Techniques associated with TQM Programmes

Various quantitative and quantitative techniques may be adopted to support a TQM programme. They can be also be used across smaller, more specific, work-shop-focused quality projects- which tend to be successful! We need to understand:

• the application of a technique, why and how it works and when to use it.
• the skills and expertise needed for particular techniques
• the wider competencies for managers, team leaders and others in a TQM environment.

Environmental Management

There are strong relationships between TQM, ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 - the standards for environmental management.

Conclusions?

Success with any QMS goes beyond paperwork and administration of quality records. A procedural QMS (the bureaucratisation of quality processes) must be supported by the collection of values,expectations, behaviours and relationships that exist within any organisation - the "manifestations of culture."

As Oakland asserts

All members of an organisation need to work together on "company-wide quality improvement". " The co-operation of everyone at every interface is require to achieve perfection."

Oakland, 1995, pp.17

Further Reading
Quality-related Web Links

---

---

BOLA is maintained and developed by Chris Jarvis

Visitors since 1 April 2000