INTRODUCTION TO QUALITY MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONAL MANAGERIAL ERA (1950)

In our present age of market driven capitalism and futuristic knowledge driven economic markets, the

decision are made and the trends are set by the professional managers. Unlike their predecessors, the

captains of today’s business do not own their own companies. They must know the whole business but have control over only one small part. They must be product oriented, process conscious, financially responsible, and public spirited. They must be all things to all people, yet still function as only one cog in the wheel.

If the history of management tells us anything, it is that, no matter what happens; peace or war, prosperity or famine, this world will always be in need of good managers the kind who can get society from “where it is” to “where it wants to be.” Can you be one?

What is an Organization?

“An organization is an entity where two or more persons work together to achieve a goal or a common purpose.”

There are so many organizations around us. Daily we visit and see many organizations, Hospitals,

Colleges, Factories, Farms and Government offices. Mosque/Church     is also an example of an organization. People go there and say prayers. Activities of praying are to achieve a certain goal. Similarly, any unit in which two or more persons are working together for some purpose is called an organization.

Unit of Organization:

•     People

•     Purpose

•     Process

•     POLCA

If there is an organization, then there must be some people. They work as whole for a common purpose, so there must be a defined purpose. If an organization doesn’t have any purpose, it will not survive for long run. To achieve the purposes by using people, the processes are needed. Without any process, you cannot achieve any type of purpose or goal. If we see in our daily life, we have some goals. For

achieving these goals, we use some processes. So that process is also obvious and important for an organization. The last important thing for any organization is that it requires main pillars of management i.e. POLCA:

•     Planning

•     Organizing

•     Leading

•     Controlling

A manager must perform all theses management functions with Assurance! Quality Assurance

Quality assurance refers to any planned and systematic activity directed toward providing consumers

with products (goods and services) of appropriate, along with the confidence that products meet consumers’ requirements. Quality assurance usually associated with some form of measurement and

inspection activity has been an important aspect of production operations throughout history. Egyptian wall paintings circa 1450 B.C. show evidence of measurement and inspection. Stones for the pyramids were cut so precisely that even today it is impossible to put a knife blade between the blocks. The Egyptians’ success was due to the consistent use of well-developed methods and procedures and precise measuring devices.

Quality is, in fact, not just functional excellence of products or services, but it is about whole aspects of product characteristics. Take a high quality watch produced by Company A for example. No matter if the craftsmanship is exceptionally high, if the production cost and sales price are so high that nobody can afford to buy such watches, no one can claim that the watch quality is truly high. In other words, quality assurance is not just about functional excellence, but includes all aspects of production.

When a company produces a product, its major tasks are to assure that its quality is beyond customers’ needs and that no defective units are delivered to customers. This, however, does not mean that it is acceptable for a company to produce defective units, as long as they are not delivered to customers. Why? Because producing non-conforming articles will bring financial loss to the company. In other

words, if a company’s products cannot be sold in the market, it will have to bear the entire cost of production. Therefore, the fewer the non-conforming articles produced, the lower the production cost,

thus the lower their price.

In this respect, it is important that not only does the company not circulate defective products in the market, but also it does not manufacture such products in the first place. Quality assurance is to bridge gaps in the dispersion of quality, aiming to attain the expected value.

What is Quality Assurance?

 Disparity is caused by defective units, to reduce the number of defective articles means to manage the disparity (Karatsu 1995, 38). The causes of disparity can be found in various factors, such as raw materials, machinery conditions, and the weather. Quality assurance does not necessarily mean the achievement of the highest quality, but neither does it mean achieving the minimum quality that one can expect. It has to be value for money for both consumers and producers, where disparity suggests the ranges within the possible frequencies.

Source:

‘Handbook for TQM and QCC’ Volume I What are TQM and QCC? A Guide for Managers

Quality Focus Approach to Management

“There are really only three types of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who say, ‘What happened?”

The total quality concept as an approach to doing business began to gain wide acceptance in the west in

the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, individual elements of the concept – such as the use of

statistical data, teamwork, continual improvement, customer satisfaction, and employee involvement – have been used by visionary organizations for years. It is the pulling together and coordinated use of these and other previously disparate elements that gave birth to the comprehensive concept known as total quality.

Why Focus on Quality?

To understand total quality, one must first understand quality. Customers of businesses will define

quality very clearly using specifications, standards, and other measures. This makes the point that

quality can be defined and measured. Although few consumers could define quality if asked, all know it when they see it. This makes the critical point that quality is in the eye of the beholder. With the total quality approach, customers ultimately define quality.

People deal with the issue of quality continually in their daily lives. We concern ourselves with quality when grocery shopping, eating in a restaurant, and making a major purchase such as an automobile, a home, a television, or a personal computer. Perceived quality is a major factor by which people make distinctions in the market place. Whether we articulate them openly or keep them in the back of our minds. We all apply a number of criteria when making a purchase. The extent to which a purchase meets these criteria determines its quality in our eyes.

One way to understand quality as a consumer-driven concept is to consider the example of eating at a restaurant. How will you judge the quality of the restaurant? Most people apply such criteria as the following:

♦    Service

♦    Response time

♦    Food preparation

♦    Environment/atmosphere

♦    Price

♦    Selection

The example gets at one aspect of quality the results aspect. Does the product or service meet or exceed customer expectations? This is a critical aspect of quality, but it is not the only one. Total quality is a much broader concept that encompasses not just the results aspect but also the quality f people and the quality of processes.

How is Total Quality Different?

What distinguishes the total quality approach from traditional ways of doing business can be found in how it is achieved. The distinctive characteristics of total quality are these: customer focus (internal and external), obsession with quality, use of the scientific approach in decision making and problem solving, long-term commitment, teamwork, employee involvement and empowerment, continual process improvement, bottom-up education and training, freedom through control, and unity of purpose, all deliberately aimed at supporting the organizational strategy. Each of these characteristics is explained later in this chapter.

The Historic Development of Total Quality

The total quality movement had its roots in the time and motion studies conducted by Frederick Taylor in the 1920s. Taylor is now known as “the father of scientific management.”

The most fundamental aspect of scientific management was the separation of planning and execution. Although the division of labor spawned tremendous leaps forward in productivity, it virtually eliminated the old concept of craftsmanship in which one highly skilled individual performed all the tasks required to produce a quality product. In a sense, a craftsman was CEO, production worker, and quality

controller all rolled into one person. Taylor’s scientific management did away with this by making planning the job of management and production the job f labor. To keep quality from falling through the cracks, it was necessary to create a separate quality department. Such departments had shaky

beginnings, and just who was responsible for quality became a clouded issue.

As the volume and complexity of manufacturing grew, quality became an increasingly difficult issue. Volume and complexity together gave birth to quality engineering in the 1920s and reliability engineering in the 1950s. Quality engineering, in turn, resulted in the use of statistical methods in the control of quality, which eventually led to the concepts of control charts and statistical process control, which are now fundamental aspects of the total quality approach.