Question a.

Discuss how the concept of Total Quality Management has evolved from inspection era to the
modern-day Total Quality Management (TQM).

Introduction

Total Quality Management companies focus on customers and satisfying their needs and are
engaged in continuous improvement of their work processes that result in the production of
higher quality service. They engage in societal learning in order to avoid improper methods and
to expedite implementation of quality practices. Orkland (1993:19) observes that quality is the
most important competitive weapon available to an organisation. Therefore, total quality
management organisations harness the total participation of all staff to make continuous
improvements and to increase customer satisfaction. The thrust of this write-up is to clarify on
how the concept of TQM evolved from inspection era to the modern day.

Definition of Key Terms and Concepts

Total Quality Management has been defined as “a comprehensive approach of improving

competitiveness, effectiveness and flexibility through planning, organising, whilst ending each
activity. Orkland (1999:40). This means continuously improving products and services, increase
customer satisfaction in rapidly changing worlds. According to Feigenbaum (1961) quality does
not mean “best” but best.

TQM evolution from inspection to modern day

In the global market-place, increased levels of competition have resulted in quality becoming of
increasing importance to organisations and consequently, TQM has become a key management
issue. TQM as a field is considered to have started in the 1900s through the ‘Father’ of scientific
management- Fredrick W Taylor. It appears that TQM evolved through time, and as it evolved,
the principles, systems, tools and techniques have changed. The evolution of quality
development and its interconnections over time are believed to be the factors that shape the ideas
of the current progress of the quality management field. Therefore, according to Powell (1995)
the origin of quality management can be traced by a time series.
Traditionally, quality is used for inspection as a method of measurement to detect the errors in
production and manufacturing. It is therefore linked to the time series, that is, from inspection era
to the statistical quality control era, quality assurance era, and the latest strategic quality era.
Through the years, the interest in quality has evolved when G.S Radford published his book
titled ‘The Control of Quality in Manufacturing’ in 1992 (Garvin, 1988:5). Quality is defined as
a distinct management responsibility and as an independent function, yet at the time, the primary
focus was inspection.

However, in the 1930s and 1940s, statistics became the main method of influence for the quality
management discipline. This was then followed by the launch of the book by Deming on
Statistical Methods. This mainly focused on problem solving in the process management and the
author proposed the Deming Cycle. The main concern was reducing the deviation in production
(ASQ,2002). The book was considered to be the landmark is still useful for quality development.
It was therefore influenced by statistical methods and their application. This was further
developed during the 1940s in the work of Bell laboratories which initiated and developed
sampling techniques namely Acceptable Quality Limit (AQL) and Average Outgoing Quality
Limit (AOQL). It is believed the focus was on the product. The process of inspection and control
was aimed at detection and reflection at the point of production.

In the year around 1950-51, the Japanese industrial standards committee was established and the
following were introduced: Statistical process control, reliability engineering, Kaizen and Genba
-Kaizen, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Just in Time (JIT). Juran divided quality into
avoidable and unavoidable causes (Cost of quality). He estimated that 15% of quality problems
in a company are due to special causes which means that they may involve the workers, 85% are
due to quality in the operation system. It was believed that problems can be solved by moulding
the process of the system.

In the late 2000, there was an increase in awareness of corporate social and environmental
responsibility that obliges the business sector to play a sensible yet solely profit-oriented role.
Businesses were expected to go beyond just making money. This led to ISO 26000 standards of
social responsibility and firms were then expected to align themselves with ISO 14000 as closely
linked to ISO 26000. That was a period of people orientation. The ISO 9000 has been revised to
the new revision, ISO 9000:2015. This was based on many management principles for example
strong. Another version of ISO quality standard evolves to the latest is the ISO 37001 standard,
published on October 15, 2016 called Anti-bribery management systems (Valerio, 2017).

The period that followed was a focus to networks focus. This is about managing networks,
people with multiple networks and networks of network. Today’s it has seen rapid advances in
connectivity, mobility analytics, scalability and data. This the digitalisation era. Jacob (2017)
says that today is the era of connectivity between people and machines. Accordingly, machines
and equipment advance high levels of self-optimisation and automation. This points out that at
the current rate, the quality focus has extended the view from networks focus to a smart focus.

In a nutshell, the above presentation aimed at describing how quality management field has
developed and evolved to date, particularly by tracking its focus overtime. In the study of
quality, it is vital to understand the fundamental points where quality management comes from,
before predicting where this field will be in the future. The evolution of quality development and
its interconnections overtime are believed to be the factors that shape the ideas of the current
progress of the quality management field, hence the historical perspective was the base for the
beginning of the evolution.

Question 1b.

Discuss the extent to which the Deming Cycle can be used as a quality improvement tool in the
context of the organisation of your choice.

It is a continuous quality improvement model which consist of a logical sequence of four key
stages, plan, do, study and act. He established it from his training experience as an engineer and
had an insight into industrial processes and the material reality of trying to standardize operations
to transaction at scale. One of the great successes of Deming’s work could arguably be seen as
his influence on the Japanese post-war economic miracle where Japan’s economy recovered
from wartime damage to assert itself as the second biggest economy in the world. Reference is
given to Bakers Inn Bread company and the limitations of the Deming cycle will be illustrated
and applications.
The Deming Cycle Plan ahead for change analyse

ACT

PLAN

CHECK DO Execute the plan taking small steps in controlled

circumstances

Bakers Inn Limited can use the Deming Cycle as it benefits the firm in terms of the following:

 Process trials
 New Product development
 Continuous development
 The problem-solving process
 Daily routine management for the individual or team.

The use of the Deming Cycle as a tool for quality improvement at Bakers Inn

It is a continuous tool of planning, doing, checking or studying and acting. At Bakers Inn
Company, it provides a simple and effective approach for solving problems and managing
change. The model is useful for testing improvement measures on a small scale before updating
procedures and working practices just as a circle has no end, the PDCA cycle should be repeated
again and again for continuous improvement. The management at Bakers Inn see it as a planning
tool in the manufacture of bread and other related products. The Plan-do-check-act cycle helps
break companies out of stagnancy and transition to a system of continuous improvement.

The production department used it when exploring and testing multiple solutions in a small,
controlled trial. Waste can be avoided by catching and adapting ineffective solutions before
rolling them out on a large scale. In addition to the above, it is useful when implementing change
and TQM or when the Bakers Inn company wants to improve a process.

It is versatile as it applies in project management, resource management and change management

as stated above. It is simple and easy to understand while minimizing wastage and increasing
efficiency. However, though the model is simple, the work is not easy as it breaks improvements
into smaller steps. This can be slow and not ideal for urgent projects. It calls for commitment as
it not a one-time event and requires commitment and buy-in form the top down. This means
without committed leadership, the PDCA cycle cannot work effectively for the long term.

How the Deming Cycle works at Bakers Inn

Plan

This is for mapping out what one will be doing to try and solve a problem or otherwise change a
process. Bakers’ Inn management analyses the problem or opportunity for change, develop
hypotheses for the underlying issues or causes are and decide on one hypothesis to test first. As
the plan is put in place, questions such as core problem, where it is the problem to work on,
information needed and the root cause are asked. It means solutions and measures are suggested
and a plan to implement suggested. When the planning stage is complete, the company goes to
the next stage.

Do

The hypothesis will be tested with a proposed solution. The PDCA cycle focuses on smaller,
incremental changes that help improve processes with minimum disruption. In the production of
bread at Bakers Inn, the hypothesis is tested with a small-scale project in a controlled
environment. Results are then evaluated without interrupting the rest of the production process or
operation. This stage will then demand checking the results to see if the outcome is what is
expected.

Check

At Bakers Inn, the study stage is the key point of differentiation from the PDCA cycle. For
Deming, the outcomes of planning and implementation will be shown at this stage. This means
whether or not the process improved the reasons thought of and whether it was possible to
predict the outcomes in advance.

Act

The act stage is both the final stage and the first stage of the next cycle. Bakers Inn company on
a practical level, the act stage may result in the practices of one of the controlled studies being
implemented across the entire company’s operations. It is both the implementation of new
knowledge into the theory of the Bakers Inn company. Therefore, this stage attempt to synthesize
the new information gleaned in the study stage with a broader understanding of how the
company operates.

Question: Discuss the 7 quality tools propounded by Ishikawa. Give more emphasis on the fish
born diagram (cause and effect diagram), control chart and the Pareto Chart.

The first guru who proposed seven basic tools was Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa who happen to be the
first total quality management Guru. The seven quality tools were used in the organisation for
problem solving and process improvements. They are seven basic quality tools which can assist
an organisation. The intention was to be applied for self-study, training of employees by
foremen. The seven basic quality control tools are check sheets, graphs (trend analysis),
histograms, pareto charts, cause and effect diagrams, scatter diagrams and control charts. In this
write-up, more emphasis will be given to the cause and effect, control chart and pareto chart.

Check Sheet

These are simple forms with certain formats that can aid the user to record data in any firm
systematically. They collect data, tabulate on the check sheets in order to record the frequency of
certain specific events. The system is made to be consistent, effective and the approach should be
least cost effective.

Advantages of the Check Sheet

- Easy to apply and understand

- It can make a clear picture of the situation and conducting the organisation.
- They are efficient and powerful tools to identify frequent problems.

Disadvantages
- They do not have effective ability to analyse the quality problem into the workplace.

According to Kerzer (2009) the check sheets can take the form of detect -location, tally and
detect-cause.

Histograms

It is a useful tool to describe a sense of the frequency distribution of observed values of a

variable. In addition to the above, it visualizes both attribute and variable data of a product.
All the measures of central tendency are displayed (mean, median and mode). It can be used
to investigate and identify the distribution of the variable being explored (Omachanu and
Ross, 2004; Forbes and Ahmed, 2011).

Pareto Analysis

This was propounded by an Italian economist, named Vilfredo Pareto who worked with
income and other unequal distributions in the 19th Century. He noticed that 80% of the wealth
was owned by only 20% of the population. Therefore, a Pareto chart is a special type of
histogram that can easily be applied to find and prioritise quality problems, conditions or
their cause in the organisation (Juran and Godfrey, 1998). It is a type of bar chart on the other
hand showing the relative important variables. These are listed in descending order from the
left to the right side of the chart.

They can generate a mean for investigating concerning quality improvement and improving
efficiency. They mainly figure out the different kind of non-conformity from data figures,
maintenance data and other sources.

Fishbone diagram

It is called the cause-and-effect diagram and it is believed that Kaoru Ishikawa is the founder
and promoter in 1943. This is a problem-solving tool that investigates and analyses
systematically on the potential or real causes that result in a single effect. The name was
given due to its shape of the diagram that looks like the skeleton of a fish. The role was to
identify quality problems based on their degree of importance (Neyestani, 2017).

Juran and Godfrey (1998) says that it is an efficient tool that equips the organization’s
management to explore for the causes of the problem. The diagram provides the problem-
solving efforts by gathering and organising the possible causes, reaching a common
understanding of the problem, exposing gaps in existing knowledge, ranking the most
probable causes and studying each cause (Omachanu and Ross, 2004)

The cause-and-effect diagram has six elements, environment materials, machine,

measurement, man and method. This means the potential causes can be indicated by arrows
entering the main cause arrow (Neyestani, 2017)

Scatter diagram

These are very useful in regression modelling (Montgomery, 2009; Dakland 2003). The
relationship between the two variables can be positive, negative or no relation. The variables
are called dependent and independent. The relationship can be strong or weak, positive or
negative. They are a useful tool when drawing the distribution of information in two
dimensions.

Flow chart

It is a problem-solving tool that can apply methodically to detect and analyse the areas or
points of process that may have potential problems. Flowchart as a diagram indicates a series
of symbols to describe the sequence of steps that exists in an operation or process. They can
show picture activities, decision points and outputs for using and understanding. This means
quality can be improved in the process (Forbes and Ahmed, 2011).

Control Charts

Is a spread form of run chart that illustrates the amount and nature of variation in the process
overtime. These were developed by Walter A in the 1920s at the Bell Telephone laboratories
and is the most technically sophisticated for quality management (Montgomery, 2009). The
control chart can draw and describe what has been happening in the process. It can observe
and monitor process to study process that is statistical control. The control can be used to
find the causes of the quality problem. Its main aim is to prevent the defects in process. This
is because to prevent costs less than having unsatisfactory products (Juran and Godfrey,1998)

In a nutshell, the above tools have the significant roles to monitor, obtain, analyse data for
detecting and solving the problems of production process. They are vital in achieving
excellence in organisation. It has been observed that their application differ, but however,
they both have advantages and disadvantages.
Reference List

1. Abo T (1995) A Comparison of Japanese factories in US, Europe and Asia,

Management International Review.
2. Ahire S.L, Golhar D.Y and Waller M.A (1996) Development and Validation of
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4. BS 600 (1935) The application of statistical methods to industrial standardization
and quality control. British Standards institution, London.
5. Camp R (1989) Benchmarking: the search for industry best practices that lead to
superior performance, Quality Press
6. Crosby P.B (1979) Quality is free. Mc-Graw Hill, New York.
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Institute of Technology, Cambridge.
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