Chapter 7

Continuous Improvement in Quality

Management
Rationale for Continuous
Improvement
 Continuous improvement is the most fundamental
element in total quality.
 It guarantees the success in the marketplace
since the organization that applies this concept
can be competitive in globally.
 Companies that are just maintaining the status
quo in such key areas as quality, new product
development, the adoption of new technologies
and process performance are like a runner who is
standing still in a race.
 It applies to processes, the people who operate
them and the product.
 Continuous improvement is also
important in order to fulfil the customers'
always changing needs.
 A special product feature that is
considered innovative today will be
considered just routine tomorrow.
 Therefore, the only way a company to be
competitive in the marketplace is to adopt
the continuous improvement concept.
Management's Role in Continuous
Improvement
 Below are the management's roles in continuous
improvement:
 Establishing an organization-wide quality council and
serving on it.
 Working with the quality council to establish specific
quality improvement goals with timetables and target
dates.
 Providing the necessary moral and physical support.
Moral support manifests itself as commitment. Physical
support comes in the form of the resources needed to
accomplish the quality improvement objectives.
 Scheduling periodic progress reviews and giving
recognition where it is deserved.
 Building continuous quality improvement into the
regular reward system, including promotions and pay
increases.
Essential Improvement Activities
 Quality expert Peter R. Scholtes
recommends the following five
activities that he sees as crucial to
continuous improvement:
 Maintain communication
 Correct obvious problems
 Look upstream
 Document problems and progress
 Monitor changes
Maintain Communication

 Communication is essential to continuous

improvement especially within
improvement teams and between teams.
 It is important to share information
before, during and after attempting to
make improvements.
 All people involved as well as any person
or unit that might be impacted by a
planned improvement should know what
is being done, why and how it might
affect them.
Correct Obvious Problems

 The obvious problem should be corrected

immediately.
 This is important to avoid wasting money
and time.
 In the case of not so obvious problems,
the organization can conduct a research
and study so that a solution can be found.
 The most helpful tool is the scientific
approach.
Look Upstream
 Look for causes, not symptoms.
 This is a difficult point to make with
people who are used to taking a
cursory glance at a situation and
putting out the fire as quickly as
possible without taking the time to
determine what caused it.


Document Problems and Progress

 It is not uncommon for an

organization to continue solving the
same problem over and over
because nobody took the time to
document the problems that have
been dealt with and how they were
solved.
Monitor Changes
 It is important to monitor the
performance of a process after changes
have been implemented.
 It is also important to ensure that pride of
ownership on the part of those who
recommended the changes do not
interfere with objective monitoring of the
changes.
 These activities are essential regardless of
how the improvement effort is structured.
Structure for Quality Improvement

 The structure for quality

improvement involves the following
steps:
 Establish a quality council
 Develop a statement of
responsibilities
 Establish the necessary
infrastructure
Establish A Quality Council
 The quality council has overall
responsibility for continuous
improvement.
 According to Juran, the basic
responsibility of this council is to launch,
coordinate, and 'institutionalize' annual
quality improvement.
 It is essential that the membership
include executive-level decision makers.
Develop A Statement of
Responsibilities
 It is essential that everybody
involved in the quality improvement
process understand the quality
council's responsibilities.
 One of the first priorities of the
council is to develop and distribute
a statement of responsibilities
bearing the signature of the
organization's CEO.
Establish The Necessary
Infrastructure

 The Quality council constitutes the foundation of

an organization's quality effort.
 However, there is more to the quality
infrastructure than just the council.
 The remainder of the Quality infrastructure
consists of subcommittees of the council that are
assigned responsibility for specific duties, project
improvement teams, quality-improvement
managers, quality training programs and a
structured improvement process.
The Scientific Approach
 The scientific approach is one of the
fundamental concepts that separate
the total-quality approach from
other ways of doing business.
 Peter Scholtes has developed the
following four strategies for putting
the scientific approach to work in a
total-quality setting
 Collect meaningful data
 Identify root causes of problems
 Develop appropriate solutions
 Plan and make changes
Collect Meaningful Data

 Meaningful data are free from errors of

measurement or procedure and they have direct
application to the issue in question.
 Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for an
organization or a unit within it to collect
meaningless data or to make a procedural error
that results in the collection of erroneous data.
 Therefore, before collecting data, decide exactly
what is needed, how it can best be collected,
where the data exists, how it will be measured
and how you will know the data are accurate.
Identify Root Causes of Problem

 The strategy of identifying root

causes should always be
emphasized.
 Too many resources are wasted by
organizations attempting to solve
symptoms rather than problems.
Develop Appropriate Solutions
 With the scientific approach, solutions are not
assumed.
 The relevant data is collected after making sure of
its accuracy, root causes are identified and an
appropriate solution is then developed.
 When the scientific approach is applied, the
problem identified is often much different from
what would have been suspected if acting on a
hunch or intuition.
 Correspondingly, the solution is also different.
Plan and Make Changes
 All the plans and changes must be done
carefully with deliberate planning.
 Planning forces you to look ahead,
anticipate needs and what resources will
be available to satisfy them, and
anticipate problems and consider how
they should be handled.
Identification of Improvement Needs

 It is important to optimize the

limited resources to bring the most
benefit.
 One way to optimize it is by
carefully selecting the areas of
improvement to which time, energy
and other resources will be devoted.
Development of Improvement Plans
 After a project has been selected, a
project improvement team is established.
 The team should consist of
representatives from the units most
closely associated with the problem in
question.
 It must include a representative from
every unit that will have to be involved in
carrying out improvement strategies.
 The project improvement team should
begin by developing an improvement
plan.