Total quality management

About ten years ago, a Wall Street Journal survey confirmed the fears of U. S. managers by revealing that three-fourths of all Americans consider foreign-made products equal or superior in quality to products made in the United States. An NBC documentary titled "If Japan Can. Why Can't We?" also challenged U.S. quality stan­dards. Executives saw the task of improving service and product quality as the most critical challenge facing their companies. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, the quality revolution spread as U.S. executives saw quality improvement as the route to restoring global competitiveness, and many companies recommitted themselves to quality.

The term used to describe this approach is total quality management (TQM), which infuses quality throughout every activity in a company. This approach was successfully implemented by Japanese companies that earned an international reputation for high quality. As we saw in Chapter 2, much of the foundation for the Japanese system was laid by U.S. educators and consultants following World War II. The Japanese eagerly adopted the quality ideas of Americans such as Deming, Juran, and Feigenbaum. The sounding of the quality alarm in North America and the publication of such books as Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Cer­tain by Philip Crosby and The Deming Management Method by Mary Walton helped reawaken managers to the need for quality throughout U.S. companies.

Total quality management (TQM) ²¹ is a philosophy of organization-wide commitment to continuous im­provement, with the focus on teamwork, increasing customer satisfaction, and lowering costs. TQM works through horizontal collaboration across functions and departments and extends to include customers and suppli­ers. Teams of workers are trained and empowered to make decisions that help the organization achieve high standards of quality. This is a revolution in managerial thinking, because quality control departments and for­mal control systems no longer have primary control responsibility. Companies that really want to improve qual­ity are urged to stop inspecting every part and to get rid of their quality control departments. These companies are then told to train the workers and trust them to take care of quality.

This approach can give traditional executives several sleepless nights as their traditional means of control vanish. Total quality control means a shift from a bureaucratic to a decentralized method of control.

American Airlines is cited frequently by customers for the high quality of its service. Chairman Robert L. Crandall explains how it goes back to a policy decision to improve the traditionally adversarial relationship be­tween labor and management.

The airline business has historically had a strong military bent and developed as a rather rigid, procedures-based and confrontational workplace. On top of that, the industry became heavily unionized. Very early in the deregulation process, we made the decision to make a sustained, long-term effort to change the confrontational, non-cooperative, non-participative environment into an environment based on trust and mutual respect.

Company-wide participation in quality control requires quite a change in corporate culture values as de­scribed in Chapter 12. The mindset of both managers and employees must shift. Companies traditionally have practiced the Western notion of achieving an "acceptable quality level."

This allows a certain percentage of defects and engenders a mentality that imperfections are okay. Only de­fects caught by a quality control department need be corrected. Total quality control not only engages the par­ticipation of all employees but has a target of zero defects. Everyone strives for perfection. A rejection rate of 2 percent will lead to a new quality target of 1 percent. This approach instills a habit of continuous improvement rather than the traditional Western approach of attempting to meet the minimum acceptable standard of per­formance.

Recent books and articles advocating a systematic quality effort suggest that to be successful, company-wide quality control programs:

1. Reflect total commitment to quality by management.

2. Be devoted to prevention rather than appraisal and correction.

3. Focus on quality measurement (using feedback).

4. Reward quality (employing incentives and penalties).

5. Focus on quality training at all levels.

6. Stress problem identification and solution (using teams).

7. Promote innovation and continuous improvement.

8. Promote total participation.

9. Stress high performance standards with zero defects.

10. Provide calculations and reports of cost savings. Quality control thus becomes part of the day-to-day business of every employee. Management needs to

evaluate quality in terms of lost sales and total company performance rather than as some percentage indicator from a management control system. Each employee must internalize the value of preventing defects. When handled properly, the total quality approach really works. Standout companies using these techniques include Ford Motor Company, Motorola, Westinghouse, and Florida Power & Light.

The implementation of total quality control is similar to that of other control methods. Targets must be set for employee involvement and for new quality standards. Employees must be trained to think in terms of pre­vention, not detection, and they must be given the responsibility and power to correct their own errors and ex­pose any quality problems they discover. Top management should provide the training, information, and sup­port employees need to meet quality standards.

One impetus for total quality management in the United States is the increasing significance of the global economy. As described in the Manager's Shoptalk box, many countries have endorsed a universal framework for quality assurance, called ISO 9000.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14