What determines quality within an organisation? Describe and comment on the usefulness of the 7 quality tools available to management - What is quality?
What determines quality within an organisation?
Describe and comment on the usefulness
of the 7 quality tools available to management
What is quality?
A motor vehicle such as Rolls-Royce is widely acknowledged by consumers as being a product of pure quality, therefore people are prepared to pay the high asking price of such a vehicle, but luxury products does not necessarily equate to quality. Walnut dashboards and white kid leather seats are not a lot of good if the engine fails when the weather begins to get bad. Alternatively, you can get relatively cheap goods that can be of a high quality. Take machine copying paper for example. This you can purchase for very little initial outlay and yet this smooth, white paper which is less then 0.01 inches thick copies without
showing the print on the reverse.
Quality implies fitness for use, alternatively quality means conformance to requirements. So both the customer as well as the manufacturer have a say when trying to define the word quality. Most working definitions around today usually involve the concepts of consistency, reliability and lack of errors/defects worded somewhere in the definition.
The principle of the quality professional has changed considerably in recent years. From its modest beginnings in the manufacturing department, it is now expected along with other infrastructure professions such as IT, HR and Finance, to contribute at the level of the organisation in question.
David Straker, the author of the article What is quality? That first appeared in Quality World, the Journal of the Institute for Quality Assurance which is found in the Harvard Business Review, 2000 considers both existing definitions of the word quality and tries to come up with a few new ideas of his own.
At its simplest level quality can be said to answer these two questions - 'What is wanted?' and 'How do we do it?'. Alternatively, the area that has always been associated with the word quality is the area of processes. From the years of the ISO 9000, to the modern day techniques such as total quality management or (TQM) as it is more commonly known, quality professionals specify, measure, improve and re-engineer processes to ensure that people get what they want.
Where are we now?
There are many variations for the definition quality, but the most widely used definition in the field of operations are as follows: -
* 'Conformance to requirements' - Crosby
* 'Fitness for use' - Juran
* 'The totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and
implied needs' - ISO 8402:1994
* Quality models for business, including the Deming Prize, the EFQM excellence model
and the Balrige award
Criticisms
Many spectators in the field of operations management believe that Crosby's definition can easily be discarded. In their views, if the requirements are wrong, then failure is almost certainly guaranteed. His focus is in the area of quality assurance. Crosby believed that
'without a specification, quality can not be measured, therefore can not be controlled' he went on 'You can not have zero defects if you do not have a standard against which to measure the defectiveness'.
This seemed to reflect the early days of operations management where quality was just purely all about the product without any consideration of other variables and processes.
However, Juran seemed to take a step a bit further down the value chain, to the use of the product or service (at which point customers had forced their way into the picture), he still presupposes that outsiders can fully understand how the product will be used, which is a great challenge, and not always possible! (Staker, Harvard Business Review:2000) As Deming himself said 'Some things are unknown and ...
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This seemed to reflect the early days of operations management where quality was just purely all about the product without any consideration of other variables and processes.
However, Juran seemed to take a step a bit further down the value chain, to the use of the product or service (at which point customers had forced their way into the picture), he still presupposes that outsiders can fully understand how the product will be used, which is a great challenge, and not always possible! (Staker, Harvard Business Review:2000) As Deming himself said 'Some things are unknown and unknowable'.
On the other hand the definition given by ISO 8402 recognises this uncertainty with its 'implied need'. It uses the word 'entity' as opposed to the 'product or service'. Never the less, this definition again suffers from a simplistic, single minded focus - all we need to do is to figure out what is wanted and then deliver it is what the definition seems to be implying.
Lets face it, at the end of the day the concept and the definition of the word quality is extremely difficult to define in any one singular sentence. The Institute of Quality Assurance more commonly known as (IQA) deals with all the terms in this area on its website (www.iqa.org) demonstrating the difficulty of pin pointing the word quality.
In the same way that we know a good room when we use one is of quality, but can not define exactly what makes it good, we can in fact name the attributes of quality, but can not define quality itself.
Effectiveness and efficiency are also words that we hear people use when talking about quality. Effectiveness is all about meeting requirements usually of the customers, whilst efficiency is doing this at a minimal cost, which meets the needs of people such as the stakeholders and shareholders in particular of the organisation.
Other ideas to consider
Young people are one of the biggest assets to any organisation. Employees however have needs that need to be satisfied in order to continue to produce high quality work. Employees also have legs and if the former are not met then the latter get into action when you ask to much of people, they will tend to get up and go, leave the organisation and work for the competitors. Organisations however, can be both effective and efficient and yet still go out of business as their best employees tend to leave due to their needs and requirements not being met, and the rest of the workforce will repay the lack of care for their welfare needs etc by responding by giving little care for the organisation which shows in their poor/shoddy quality of work, which will cost the organisation financially and economically as more time will have to be spent in re-work.
Even the leaders in the field such as Juran, Deming and Ishikawa have found it difficult to define the word quality, however people such as Ishikawa went a bit further when researching this area and consequently developed quality tools. Ishikawa, head of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers developed the Cause and Effect diagram back in 1943. The thinking was instigated by Shewhart and Deming but was developed by the Japanese in the 1950's and 1960's as a result of the Japanese progress in Continuous Improvement.
The 7 tools of quality
The 7 tools of quality included the following: -
* Cause and Effect Diagram
* Check Sheet
* Pareto Diagram
* Histogram
* Scatter Diagram
* Run Chart
* Control Charts
The starting point for quality improvements is always facts and figures, and not opinions. To improve quality at this moment in time, organisations can use a number of quality tools. All of these tools are based on collecting and analysing data.
In industry, many things can be measured so a lot of objective information is available. For services, customer satisfaction is of interest but customer satisfactions is to some extent always based on biased information.
The 7 tools of quality are methods of analysing numeric data. They are very useful to separate opinions from facts and analyse the facts.
These tools of quality are extremely useful to the management inside these manufacturing organisations especially because one can interpret the results of the analysis ie what these results mean for the organisation. Having performed these actions, management can eliminate the cause of the problem.
Cause and Effect Diagram
This is a method to explore and display all possible causes related to a problem/effect to help discover its root cause(s).
Cause and Effect Diagram is also know as Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram.
The major cause or 'bone' categories often used are
* Man (people)
* Machinery (equipment)
* Materials
* Methods
* Milieu (Environment)
* Measurement method
The idea behind the diagram is to find out the cause of the problem by brainstorming each of the bone categories.
Benefits of the diagram include:
* Organise and relate factors
* Provide a structure for brainstorming
* Involve everyone
Drawbacks include:
* May become very complex
* Require dedication and patience
* May become difficult to facilitate
Check Sheet
A check sheet is used to record and compile collected observations or historical raw data. It shows patterns or trends that can be detected.
The main characteristics of a check sheet include:
* It defines a problem that the organisation needs to know more about
* It defines the types of events to be investigated
* Check sheet is complete, clear to understand and easy to use
Project:Surface R
Location: Plant A
Date(s): 3/6 to 7/6
Department: Small R
Name:
Shift: Day
Event / Defect:
Date / Time
Total
3/6
4/6
5/6
6/6
7/6
Voids
3
9
0
3
6
Colour light
8
9
0
7
8
42
Colour dark
0
0
0
2
Wrong colour
0
0
3
0
4
Total
3
8
24
7
2
74
Pareto Analysis
Pareto analysis is sometimes known as the 80/20 rule. This model was developed by Juran. But is closely associated to Vilfredo Pareto who was a 19th century economist who observed that 80% of the wealth in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.
It is a method of classifying items, events, or activities according to their importance.
It is frequently used today in inventory management where it is used to group stock items into categories based on the total annual expenditure for, or total stockholding cost of each item.
Organisations tend to concentrate more on the high valued items, or the items of the most importance.
Pareto analysis is probably one of the most useful tools for management and it is still around today. The concept of the 80/20 rule can be applied to most things in the modern day.
Taking inventory as an example. The first step in performing Pareto analysis is to identify the criteria which make a significant level of control important for any item. Two possible factors more commonly used are usage rate for an item and its unit value. These two items can then be multiplied to give the annual requirement value (ARV) minus the total value of the annual usage.
The stock items will then be listed in descending order of ARV, the most important items will appear at the top of the list. If the cumulative ARV is then plotted against the number of items then a graph that is known as the Pareto curve is obtained.
Histogram
This is simply a bar chart showing the frequency of particular ranges of values of a characteristic.
Scatter Diagram
This is just simply a chart that identifies relationships between a given set of variables. Firstly an appropriate sample size has to be determined, then the cause is displayed on the X-axis and the result is displayed on the Y-axis.
The scatter diagram reveals the degree of relation, but has to be used with caution. Scatter diagrams examples include:
* Typing error is affected by backlog
* Accident rate is affected by overtime
* Machine breakdown is affected by frequency of maintenance X , Y
Run Chart
A run chart is a line graph that shows data points plotted in the order in which they occur. They are used to show trends and shifts in a process over time, variation over time, or to identify decline or improvement in a process over time. They can be used to examine both variables and attribute data.
Control Charts
Control charting is one of the tools of Statistical Quality Control(SQC) It is the most technically sophisticated tool of SQC. It was developed in the 1920s by Dr. Walter A. Shewhart of the Bell Telephone Labs.
Dr. Shewhart developed the control charts as an statistical approach to the study of manufacturing process variation for the purpose of improving the economic effectiveness of the process. These methods are based on continuous monitoring of process variation. (www.deming.eng.clemson.edu).
Its uses include:
* It is a proven technique for improving productivity.
* It is effective in defect prevention.
* It prevents unnecessary process adjustments.
* It provides diagnostic information.
* It provides information about process capability
So how useful are the 7 quality tools to management?
'As much as 95% of problems in the factory can be solved with seven fundamental quantitative tools' - Kaoru Ishikawa. So as the concepts of continuous improvement and employee commitment were introduced a need grew for tools to assist individuals and teams in solving complicated problems.
So in that respect the 7 tools of quality are extremely useful to management. The 7 tools mentioned in this essay should ideally be utilised in a particular manner , which typically involves either reducing the variability in the process or identifying pacific problems in the process. However, in any case the tools should be fully utilised to ensure that all attempts at process improvement include:
* Discovery
* Analysis
* Improvement
* Monitoring
* Implementation
* Verification
If management of any organisation are to fully benefit from the use of introducing the 7 tools of quality they must make sure that they attempt to improve the above six points.
The benefits of an effective quality system
There are many benefits to be arrived at if an organisation implements a good quality system. These include:
Increased customer satisfaction
Because the organisation's business is based more on meeting the customer's needs, better retention of customers will result. In fact, existing customers are likely to place increasing amounts of business with the organisation.
Reduced wastage
Effective quality systems enable an organisation to meet the needs of its customers and produce what is required, no more and no less.
Employee morale
The constant involvement of staff, and the fact that they are positively contributing to the end product is a morale booster. They know what to do and why they are doing it, and the question of who has responsibility for what is clarified.
More efficient and responsive organisation
Staff involvement leads to an organisation which is more motivated. As time goes on employees become used to their new ways of working and putting quality first. The 'right first time' philosophy becomes instinctive.
Better position in the market place
Being more efficient and cost effective leads naturally to the organisation having the edge over its competitors.
Bigger profits
This is the end of the result of all of the above.
(Mirams & McElheron, The Quality Toolkit:1999)
Summary
To summarise this assignment up I would say that the idea behind the word quality is simply 'fitness for purpose', 'value for money' and 'meeting the needs of the customer'. In order to meet the needs of the customer we need to know who they are and what their requirements are in the first place. Quality tools and systems are simply the means of providing products and services to meet the needs of customers.
Kaoru Ishikawa developed seven basic visual tools so that the average person could analyse and interpret data. This development has proved to be very successful worldwide amongst companies, managers of all levels and employees themselves. The quality of the product an organisation manufacturers is so important in today's world that it can mean the difference between success and failure, major profits and bankruptcy.
References
Mirams & McElheron, The Quality Toolkit:1999
Haigh and Morris, Total Quality Management: 2001
Straker, Harvard Business Review: 2000
www.iqa.org
www.deming.eng.clemson.edu
www.pmi.co.uk/quality
www.users.waitrose.com/quality
www.blackboard.shu.ac.uk/operationsmanagment
Lianne Robertson
