Answers to the Questions in Question Paper from MBA in TQM Visveswarayya Technological University 2008 1.

a What do you understand by Quality and Total Quality? Quality is defined as the extent to which the product or service satisfies the requirements of customers whereas the Total Quality is define as the integration of all factors related to improving customer satisfaction and efforts put in employee involvement and continuous improvement. 1 b Explain the concept of Jurans Trilogy of Quality management adopted by companies to achieve Quality leadership Jurans trilogy is as follows 1 . Quality Planning 2. Quality Control 3. Quality improvement Quality control means taking steps to isolate non conforming products in process of final stage before shipping. It includes inspection and audit activities aimed at ensuring that the right product is sent to customer or the right service is delivered. Juran introduced the very important additional two steps for all managers .One is Quality Planning. This means mangers need to think in advance about all production/service processes and plan to build in Quality. Planning involves validation of tools and training of people and even verifying the software which runs the machines. Many large companies have formally adopted this process as Advance product Quality Planning. Suppliers are also required to participate in the planning process and organize the processes in line with the requirements. Quality improvement is the third aspect of Jurans trilogy. No matter how good is the product/service the organization needs to keep in pace with the competition and also satisfy changing needs of customers. Companies have adopted the Quality improvement methods (like six sigma) to ensure that improvements take place. Quality circles, Kaizen and benchmarking are popular and these help companies to retain their Quality leadership. 1 c What are the factors which can be considered while benchmarking a management Institute. The factors to be considered are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. No of students per class room No of faculty who have got Ph D /No of faculty No of class room with audit and video facility No of visiting faculty (eminent persons only) No of students who got placements with Top 25 companies in India and abroad No of research papers published / No of faculty positions Average year of experience per faculty Student satisfaction Faculty satisfaction Staff satisfaction

2 a Write a brief note on QS 9000 QS 9000 is an automotive Industry standard produced by the Automotive Industry Action Group consisting of the big three automobile manufacturers GM, Ford and Chrysler in 1994. It is a Quality Management standard based on the requirements of ISO 9001 but has added certain techniques related to product and process development. The big three auto manufacturers made it mandatory for the Tier 1 suppliers to comply with this standard. It introduced the principle of Advanced Product Quality Planning or APQP whereby the supplier needs to demonstrate that he is capable of meeting all the requirements of the customer even before he commences production. Very impressive tools like FMEA and the QFD have been made a part of QS 9000. QS 9000 also requires a Cross functional Team to work on the planning process which is

different from conventional way of working in companies. After the product Quality planning, the companies are required to demonstrate the process capability by doing trial production and calculating the process capability index. Further, control charts are to be made for monitoring the production processes in the shop floor. 2 b what is strategic Planning? Strategic Planning is the process of deciding the future goals, the time intervals in which these goals are to be achieved and the mechanism of cascading the goals to all sections of the organization. It starts with the definition of vision, Mission and the purpose of the organization. The Top Management team discusses the various alternatives to realise the vision of the group. SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities and threats) is a good tool to select the most suitable growth plan among the many available. At the end of the planning workshop as the first deliverable, the goals are defined. The strategic goals and objectives should be measurable and achievable. An example is given below: Vision: to be the most favoured car manufacturer. Strategic Objectives: To reach 20% export target by 2010. To export to France and Germany by 2012. To become the no 2 in market share in Europe by 2014. Goals defined at the highest level need to be communicated to all sections of the organization and they should be asked to develop their own goals in line with the top level goals. Policy Deployment or MBO are the two techniques used in various companies for this purpose. In policy deployment or Hoshin Kanri the Japanese companies cascade the top level goals by layer by layer approach. In MBO the goal setting process is only Top down whereas in Policy Deployment opportunity is made for the lower level managers to discuss variations in the magnitude of goals and targets. Recently a tool called Balanced score card has been developed in USA which has four perspectives of communicating and cascading the objectives. The strategic goals are communicated as follows 1. Financial perspective 2. Customer perspective 3. Process perspective 4. Learning and Growth perspective In BSC, each manager is asked to develop a score card which will express the goals of that function or unit in all the four perspectives. Alignment is expected to be ensured in each of the four perspectives of a lower level card with a higher level score card. Periodic reviews by top management help the company to monitor the progress on action plans. 2 c Explain the Deming Cycle Dr Deming proposed the cycle for continuous improvement which is called in his name. These four activities constitute the continuous improvement (in the same order) 1. 2. 3. 4. Plan Do Check Act

It is drawn in the following way.

Act

Plan

Check

Do

Plan: Identify the Goals Set the Quality targets Define the Quality requirements for the product or service to be delivered to customer Identify resources Do: implement process approach Train People Communicate the requirements Check Monitor the characteristics of product and process Identify non conformances Act Take improvement actions to prevent recurrence of problems noticed leading to non conformances 3 a What is Zaire Model in TQM?

Zaire model expresses the TQM in three dimensions namely Customer satisfaction with people, product and internal satisfaction with processes. The improvement in all the three dimensions results in overall improvement to the organization. . 3 b Describe Poka Yoke . Poka Yoke means Error Proofing in Japanese language and it is adopted to eliminate defects on line due to carelessness of employees. For example, a worker may forget to put on the safety guard or tighten the screws of a lid thus causing major problem. This is due to error and not due to any other problem. Since it is not possible to avoid this possibility of error and mistakes Japanese companies started error proofing the operation or activity. Toyota practiced it in large scale and became known for its defect free products. To do Poka Yoke, the operation is observed and with the involvement of the operator and others, various possibilities are examined in order to eliminate the possibility of mistake occurring. For example, in an operation if it is observed that operator may forget to fill up the right quantity of brake fluid then, it is discussed how the operation can be made error free. The alternatives to make the operation error free are 1. Can the process be eliminated? 2. Can it be automated? 3. Can there be a guide or a tool which will make the operator to know that he has filled the correct amount? 4. Can the warning go on in case the quantity is short of the requirements? 5. Can the product stop if the quantity is not Ok at that spot and not e released till the quantity is right? Through these discussions and brain storming, suitable devices are incorporated in the process to make it error proof. 3c Describe the benefits and limitations of process Reengineering. Benefits of Reengineering are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. Non vale added activities are eliminated Through put of the line is increased by a significant measure. Efficiency of the company improves. Overhead expenses will come down for the company.

Limitations are as follows: 1. the reengineering exercise ignores motivational aspects 2. Sometimes, the improvements are temporary as there is no attempt to change the mind set. 3. If technology becomes obsolete, the reengineered process becomes useless. 4. It is considered not friendly to people by many in industry. 4 a What do you understand by Quality is free? Quality is free means that it is not needed to spend huge sums of money to improve quality of product but the improvement efforts actually save money for the company. Phil Crosby popularized this slogan to propagate the quality thinking among people. Phil Crosby said that because the process produces poor Quality products and they are reworked before dispatch, cost is incurred. If the products are produced right first time the rework cost is saved and so the effort pays for itself. We should focus on making the process more capable and monitor it well so that the output is acceptable without any rework or change. This is the concept of Quality is free. 4 b Briefly explain the different Quality awards for TQM?

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: This is the most well known award for TQM. This award has been instituted in 1988 by the President of USA. It has been declared as the highest level of recognition for a company in USA for its pioneering role in quality. The award has the following categories and a company has to make an application addressing the requirements under the following categories. 1. leadership 2. Strategic Planning 3. Customer focus 4. measurement and analysis 5. HR Focus 6. Process management 7. Business Results The application is examined by eminent assessors who are independent people and they visit the company to assure themselves of the claims made by the applicant before deciding the winner. Now separate awards are given for small scale enterprises, educational institutes and healthcare companies. European Quality Award European Quality award was instituted in 1990 by the European Foundation for Quality Management. It had taken some guidance from Baldrige award criteria but is slightly different in its architecture. The criteria are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Leadership 2. Strategy 3. People Resources Processes Cust satisfaction result People satisfaction Results Community results Business results

Increased importance is given to Resources management and environment protection in the European Quality award. Secondly, in the results category perception of the stakeholders (customers and employees) carry more weightage than the data collected by the companies internally. This makes the award more oriented to the actual outcomes faced by the stakeholders. Deming prize: Deming prize is the oldest award for TQM instituted in 1950 by Japan Union of Scientists and Engineers. Deming Prize was created to recognize companies which follow the Deming cycle or the Plan-Do Check-Act philosophy in their internal operations. The criteria for Deming prize is focused on Leadership, processes and measures. Statistical tools and techniques are given greater importance in Deming Prize. The assessment method is not as clearly documented as in the other two. There are some Deming prize winning companies in India. They are Mahindra& Mahindra Tractor Division, SRF Limited, TVS Motors limited. 4 c Explain the 5 levels of CMM model. The 5 levels of Capability maturity Measurement Model are as follows; 1. Intital - Chaotic, and this is the starting point of a new process. 2. Repeatable- The process is able to be used repeatedly with approximately the same outcomes.

3. Defined- The process is defined as a standard business process and decomposed to level 1 and 2. 4. Managed The process is managed according to the metrics both for product and for the process. 5. Optimized- process management includes deliberate process optimization/improvement. Within each of these maturity levels, maturity levels are defined as KPAs Key process areas which characterize that level and for each KPA there are five definitions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Goals Achievement Ability measurement Verification

Depending on the satisfactory demonstration of these five dimensions, a specific KPA is supposed to have reached and depending on the KPAs successfully completed, maturity level is declared for the company. There are many level 5 companies in India TCS, Infosys and Wipro are some of them. Skipping a level in CMM is not feasible. 5 a What is the need for ISO certification? Need for ISO certification is as follows: 1. the world economy needs companies to supply defect free products on time to each other from one country to another without the inspection at every point. ISO standards are defining the Quality management systems for all companies and it is transparent to all. 2. Every organization needs to have consistency in its approach and implement certain minimum requirements for ensuring product quality. ISO defines these minimum requirements. 3. Every organization needs to create the confidence in the minds of customers about how they follow the quality system and enable independent auditors to check the system and confirm that it is being followed. ISO has led the way for independent audits and certifications. 5 b Explain the concept of six sigma Sigma is the Greek letter for indicating variation. Six sigma is defining the spread of the distribution of data that 99.7 % of the point s falls within the 3 times the sigma on both the sides. If the 3 times the sigma is less than what the customer can allow, the process is said to be capable. Six sigma is the methodology which has been inspired by the process capability of reaching the lowest level of variation possible. Six sigma methodology gets implemented in five phases. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Define measure Analyse improve Control

Projects are identified to improve the critical requirements of customers and the teams work through these 5 phases to make sustained improvements 5 c Explain Reengineering process and its relevance to TQM One of the main pillars of TQM is the process approach and process improvement. TQM view all activities in the organization as processes which are interconnected. Each process may have its own inputs, outputs and measures and the more we understand about them the better we are able to improve the process. Reengineering emphasizes on improving the process through drastic changes. The word reengineering itself indicates that the fundamentals of the process design like the scope or the sequence may have to be changed. The process elements and the people who carry out the

activities and the equipment they use need to be reevaluated from the point of the need of the customer. The non-value added activities need to be eliminated. Due to the changes the process throughput improves after reengineering. The response to customer becomes better and the customer is benefited to a great extent. Its relevance to TQM is very high as the goals of process reengineering are consistent with the goals of TQM. However, TQM is more holistic. While process reengineering aims at drastic changes, TQM emphasizes on continuous improvement. TQM has other important elements like People involvement, motivation and training which Reengineering does not have. On the whole, process reengineering is a good tool and a beneficial tool provided it is used with other soft tools like Quality circles and Kaizen teams which involve employees. 6 a what are the Crosbys absolutes of Quality? The four absolutes of Quality are as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. Definition of Quality is conformance. System of Quality is prevention Performance standard is zero defect. Measurement of Quality is the price of non conformance.

6 b Explain the Baldrige award evolution process. Dr W E Deming visited Japan and introduced the principle of PDCA and continuous improvement to the Japanese industry which came to be known as TQM later. When Japanese companies progressed in Quality and came to occupy the positions of pride in markets, others began to take note of TQM. In 1980s, American companies started losing ground to Japanese companies like Toyota, Sony and Panasonic. Realising the need to infuse the Quality consciousness and to recognize the companies which are already implementing Quality initiatives, President of USA formed a committee consisting of academic brains and the industry leaders. The committee was headed by the then Secretary of Commerce Mr. Malcolm Baldrige The committee took a lot of help from the American Society for Quality and National Institute of Standards and Training . From 1985 to 1988, the committee members deliberated on a suitable model for giving the highest award. In 1988, when they released the model and the award criteria in 1988, Mr Baldrige has passed away and hence the award was named after him. Every year, the President of USA recognizes the companies which score high on the following seven criteria 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Leadership Strategic Planning Customer focus measurement and Analysis HR Focus Process management Business Results

The companies need to apply with details of implementation on each criterion and the assessors evaluate the winner by going through the applications and a site visit. Well known companies like Motorola and IBM have won the award. The criteria are not static and they are revised every year to reflect the current best practices. For instance, the weightages for Process management have reduced after 4/5 years and the weightages for leadership and HR were increased. Suitable changes were done to introduce a section on ethics after the scandals broke out in USA about certain business corporations indulging in malpractices. Thus, the award model has been a reference for many outside USA and many other countries have made their own national Quality awards on the basis of Baldrige. 6 c Explain Benchmarking process

Benchmarking process has been one of the mechanisms by which one organization can learn the best practices of other. The following are the steps of benchmarking: 1. Study the process you want to benchmark in detail. Make a process map. 2. Identify the key steps which are bottlenecks or error prone. 3. Identify a partner organization that is believed to be superior to you but may not be in the same industry. 4. Visit the partner and observe the process especially with respect to those steps which were critical to you. 5. Return and adopt/adapt the process to suit your company. Please note that copying some process without his permission is not benchmarking because it is illegal. Industrial espionage or spying cannot be equated with benchmarking. Benchmarking is learning and is done transparently in mutual interest and sharing of knowledge takes place. 7 a Define statistical Quality control Monitoring the quality and the extent of conformance of a manufactured product to specifications by using the principles of statistics is statistical Quality Control. This also enables us to avoid inspection to 100% but limit ourselves to certain small samples from the batch to conclude about the acceptance of the batch. We also use the principles of statistics to monitor the process performance. Then we call it statistical process control. 7 b What are Juran 10 step process 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. identify customers Discover customer needs Translate customer needs into our language Establish units of measure Establish measurement Develop product Optimize product design Develop the process Optimize the process and prove the capability of the process Transfer to operations.

7 c Explain the process of a company achieving, perpetuating and institutionalising TQM. A company starts first with a clear perception of its purpose. This is normally expressed in a vision statement. The executives express the direction of the company in brief statements called Vision or mission statements. Then the strategic objectives as to how the company will travel in the journey to excellence are drafted and communicated to all the employees and to select suppliers. TQM starts with customer and one of the first tasks in the company to make its executives listen to customers voice about the product quality. The customers expectations are to be taken as the inputs to the improvements and a company which wants to achieve TQM can not ignore it. Different companies follow different paths to internalize the requirements of customers. Some pursue the six sigma as the methodology while some others may go by the 7 QC tools. ISO 9001 has been a common way to systematically implement the processes and has been a first step for many companies. SPC and control charts have been introduced by many companies involved in mass production of auto components. In IT companies one finds proponents of the CMM model taken up as the road map for Quality journey. After internalizing the principles of TQM, companies evaluate their progress through benchmarking. Advanced companies like IBM and Xerox have always adopted benchmarking as the improvement process. Baldrige award has inspired many companies as the model is very comprehensive and the

feedback report gives a complete diagnostic report of the company and the status if its TQM journey. If the company wins such an award it becomes recognition for the efforts.