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6. Total Quality Management

Total quality management : Total quality management is a systematic

continuous management approach based on the participation of all its
members to best satisfy customer’s needs in the most economical manner.

Aims of Total quality management :

1. Conformance to customer requirements

2. Prevention of producing bad quality
3. Measurement of cost of quality
4. Provide products and services of high quality and reliability consistently
5. To keep up with pace of change, technology as well as political and social
6. To predict what the customer will want one year or five year from now

Dimensions of total quality management : Total quality management has

three dimensions:

1. Excellence : The objective should be near to perfection i.e. zero

variability.
2. Universality :In total quality management the entire factors such as
products, processes, customers and employees play very important role
to achieve, maintain and improve quality.
3. Perpetuality : It has steadiness of progressive steps which direct all to
attain perfect quality through continuous and innovative approach for
improvement of process, using structural, systematic and analytical
approach to problem solving.

Operations of total quality management :

1. People involvement
2. Process/ product innovation
3. Problem investigation
4. Perpetual improvement
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Principles of total quality management

1. Customer centric approach : Customers are the ultimate judge to

determine whether products or services are of superior quality or not.
No matter how many resources are pooled in training employees,
upgrading machines and computers, incorporating quality design
process and standards, bringing new technology etc. at the end of the
day, it is the customers who have final say in judging your company. The
companies must remember to implement TQM across all fronts keeping
in mind the customers.
2. Employee involvement : Ensuring total employee involvement in
achieving goals and business objectives will lead to employee
empowerment and achieve participation from the employees in decision
making and addressing quality related problems. Employee
empowerment and involvement can be increased by making the
workspace more open and devoid of fear.
3. Continual Improvement : A major component of TQM is continual
improvement. Continual improvement will lead to improved and higher
quality process. Continual improvement will ensure companies will find
new ways and techniques in producing better quality products,
production, be more competitive, as well as exceed customer
expectations.
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4. Strategic Approach to improvement : Business must adopt a strategic

approach towards quality improvement to achieve their goals, vision and
mission. A strategic plan is very necessary to ensure quality becomes the
core aspect of all business processes.
5. Integrated system : Business companies comprise of various
departments with different functionality purposes. These functionalities
are interconnected with various horizontal processes TQM focuses on.
Everyone in the company should have thorough understanding of the
quality policies, standards , objectives and important processes. It is very
important to promote a quality work culture as it helps to achieve
excellence and surpass customer expectations. An integrated system
ensures continual improvement and helps companies achieve a
competitive edge.
6. Decision Making : Data from the performance measurement of
processes indicates the current health of the company. For efficient
TQM , companies must collect and analyse data to improve quality,
decision making accuracy and forecasts. The decision making must be
statistically and situational based in order to avoid any room for
emotional based decisions.
7. Communications : Communication plays a crucial role in TQM as it helps
to motivate employees and improve their morale during routine daily
operations. Employees need to be involved as much as possible in the
day to day operations and decision making process to really give them a
sense of empowerment. This creates the environment of success and
unity and helps drive the results the TQM process can achieve.

It requires immense efforts, time, courage and patience to successfully

implement TQM. Businesses successfully implementing TQM can witness
improved quality across all major processes and departments, higher customer
retention, higher revenue due to improved sales and global brand recognition.

Focus on customers in Total Quality Management:

Total quality management works on a very simple principle that the

responsibility of delivering quality products and services to customers lies on
the shoulders of every single individual who is even remotely associated with
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organisation. Customers play an important role in total quality management. A

business is successful only when its products and services have enough buyers
in the market. Yes there are several other parameters also but customers play
crucial role in deciding the success and failure of an organisation. Business
marketers need to Focus on their end- users and what exactly they expect
from the organisation. Customer‘s feedback should be regularly and carefully
monitored before formulating any major business strategy. How can you
ignore your customers who pay for your products which eventually bring
revenues to your organisation and yield higher profits ?

The companies must remember to implement TQM across all fronts keeping in
mind the customers.

Commitment by Top management :

Total quality management ensures that employees understand their target

customers well before making any change in the processes and systems to
deliver superior quality products for better customer satisfaction. Infact,
organisations introduce total quality management or any other quality
management process to increase their customer base and levels of customer
satisfaction. Total quality management increases an organisation’s database of
loyal customers who would not go anywhere, no matter what. Believe it,
without customers a business can’t even exist. Quality of a product is not
defined only in terms of its durability, packaging, reliability, timely delivery and
so on but also a customer’s overall experience with the organisation. It should
be remembered that customer’s dissatisfaction leads to loss of business. In
service industry, employees need to interact with the customers sensibly and
with utmost care and professionalism to expect happy and loyal customers.
Design various feedback forms for the customers for them to share what they
feel about their products and services. The feedback may be in favour of your
organisation, may not be in favour of your business. Negative comments of
feedbacks of the customers should not be ignored by the management . As a
part of total quality management, top management should sit on common
platform, brainstorm ideas and come to concrete solutions which would
improve the systems and processes to eventually delivery what the customer
expects. No amount of total quality management would help if the
management ignore their customers.
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Continuous Improvement by Total Quality Management :

Total quality management is mainly concerned with continuous improvement

in products, services or processes. Continuous improvement must deal not
only with improving results, but more importantly with improving capabilities
to produce better results in future. Continuous improvement sometimes
called continual improvement. Continuous improvement is based on Japanese
concept called Kaizen, is the philosophy of continually seeking ways to improve
operations. It involves identifying benchmarks of excellent practices and
instilling a sense of employee ownership of the process. The focus can be on :

 Reducing the length of time required to process the requests.

 The amount of scrap generated a machine.
 Continuous improvement can also focus on problems with the
customers or suppliers

Instilling a philosophy of continuous improvement in an organisation may be a

lengthy process and several steps are essential to its eventual success.

1. Train the employees in the methods of statistical process control and

other tools for improvement in quality.
2. Make statistical process control methods a normal aspect of daily
operations.
3. Build work teams and employee involvement
4. Utilize problem solving techniques within work teams

The employee involvement is central to the philosophy of continuous

improvement. A sense of operator ownership emerges when employees feel as
if they own the process and methods they use and take pride in the quality of
product or service they produce. It comes from participation on work teams
and problem solving activities, which instill in employees a feeling that they
have some control over their workplace.

Quality circles

Quality circle is a small group of volunteers (usually 3 to 12 employees ) doing

similar work. They meet regularly under the leadership of their supervisor or
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someone chosen among the circle to identify problems, set priorities, discover
causes and propose solutions. Quality circle is a participative management
system in which workers make suggestions and improvements for the
betterment of organisation.

Concept of Quality Circle :

The quality circle concept has three major attributes as :

1. It is a participative management
2. It is a human resource development technique
3. It is a problem solving technique

Objectives of Quality Circle :

1. To improve quality and productivity

2. To reduce the cost of the product or services
3. To identify and solve with related problems
4. To tap the creative intelligence of the employee
5. To improve communication
6. To motivate the employees
7. To increase employee’s loyalty and commitment towards organisation
8. To build a happy bright work environment
9. To build confidence and high moral
10. To satisfy human needs of recognition and self development

Employees Empowerment

Employee empowerment is giving employee a certain degree of autonomy and

responsibility for decision making regarding their specific organisation and
tasks. Empowerment encourages and allows employee to take responsibility
and decisions for improving the way they do their jobs and contribute to the
achievement of organisation’s goals. The basic philosophy of total quality
management is to involve every employee in the organisation along with its
suppliers and distributers to improve quality and thus enhance customer
satisfaction. Employee involvement is very important in any TQM initiative.
Many companies have ventured into a participation style of management by
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involving employees in problem solving and decision making processes. While

the actual practice of employee empowerment varies across organisations.

Empowerment is based on the following concepts :

1. Job enlargement: Changing the scope of the job to include a greater

portion of the horizontal process.
Example: A bank teller not only handles deposits and disbursement, but
also distributes traveller’s cheques and certificates of deposits.
2. Job enrichment : Increasing the depth of job to include responsibilities
that have traditionally been carried out at higher levels of the
organisation.
Example : The teller also has the authority to help a client fill out a loan
application, and to determine whether or not to approve the loan.

Employee requires the following to take greater responsibility:

1. Training to carry out the additional responsibilities.

2. Access to information on which decisions can be made
3. Initiative and confidence on the part of employee to take greater
responsibilities.

Principles of employee empowerment :

1. Demonstrate that you value

2. Share leadership vision
3. Share goals and direction
4. Trust people
5. Provide information for decision making
6. Delegate authority and impact opportunity, not just more work

Benefits of employee empowerment :

1. Improved morale
2. Increased productivity
3. Team cohesion
4. Innovation
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Principle of JIDOKA
JIDOKA is a system used in automation, which is the complementation of the
automation process with human touch. This ensures that the goods produced
do not have defects as when any defect is detected during process, the
production process is corrected at the earliest stage possible even if it means
stopping the production process so that the defect can be corrected hence
reducing the costs of repair or recall.

There are four principles of JIDOKA :

1. The first principle is to detect abnormality or defect. This means that the
defects should be detected at the earliest possible stage of development
and the production stopped until the root cause of the defects has been
addressed.
2. The second principle is to stop in case the defects are detected. This
means that the products produced by automated machines should be
continuously monitored by human beings so that any defects are
spotted earlier.
3. The third principle is to fix or correct any defects as soon as they are
detected. This means that the goods that are manufactured are free
from any defects, hence reducing the cost of repair or goods recall.
4. The fourth principle is to investigate the root cause of the problem
which causes the defects to occur and address the issue before
production is resumed. This means that it is not enough to rectify the
defect without addressing the root cause of the problem.

Quality Audit : Quality audit or survey is one of the key management

tools for achieving the objectives set out in the organisation’s policy.
Quality Audit is an appraisal of the quality system of an entire plant.
It is defined as a systematic and independent examination to determine
whether quality activities and related results comply with planned
arrangements and whether these arrangements are implemented
effectively and are suitable to achieve the objective.
Quality audit provides an independent unbiased assessment of the
actual state of company with reference to the laid down quality
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standards used in several formal national and international standards

such as the ISO- 900x. Every organisation should define comprehensive
procedures by which their products or services can be delivered
consistently to the desired level of quality. The quality audit therefore
only needs to ensure that procedures have been defined, controlled,
communicated and used.

Scope of Quality Audit

Quality Audit covers various aspects as:*

1. Policies and procedures regarding:

a. Operators
b. Quality control
c. Administration
2. Operating Effectiveness involving :
a. Records, interpretations, corrective action
b. Equipment control
c. Inter departmental coordination
d. Assessment of product quality
3. System Effectiveness covering:
a. Storage and handling practices
b. Field complaints and corrective action
c. Tool and Gauge control
d. Product design changes
4. Engineering specifications:

Types of Quality audit

1. The Adequacy Audit : It determines the extent to which the
documented system, represented in the quality manual and the
associated procedures, work instructions and forms, adequately meets
the requirements of the standards and also to ensure that it provides
objective evidence that the system has been designed to do so.
2. A Compliance Audit : It is carried out to establish to which the
documented system is implemented and observed by the workforce.
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3. An External Audit : It is carried out by one organisation or another with

which they have either entered into contract to purchase goods or
provide services or intend to do so. It may be an adequacy and/or a
compliance audit.
4. An Extrinsic Audit : It is an external audit carried out by an independent
third party that may be accredited, using a national or international
standard, such as ISO 900x series to provide assurance on the
effectiveness of the quality systems.
5. Internal Audit : It is carried out y the company on its own quality
systems. Its purpose is to give assurance to the management that its
quality systems are quality are effectively achieving the planned quality
objectives.

The audit may be conducted on a scheduled periodic basis or only when

needed by the existence of symptoms of quality problems. Some other factors
to be considered for deciding the audit frequency are :

i. Significant changes in management, organisation, policy, techniques

or technologies that could effect system
ii. Changes to the system itself
iii. Results of recent previous audit
iv. Implementation phase of a quality system

Lead Assessor
Lead Assessor position is primary responsibility for companywide quality
assurance through audits.

The essential functions of a lead assessor are :

1. Responsible for all aspects of company quality audit program.

2. Define the audit programs for internal company operations and its
suppliers in accordance with internal and customer imposed
requirements
3. Conduct or coordinate all quality related audits of company and its
suppliers
4. Document and maintain all records related to audits
5. Assist in support of external customer and agency audits of company
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6. Analyse, summarize and report audit results and trends to company

management
7. Refine and adjust the audit program in response to observed results and
trends, changing customer requirements and quality related goals and
directions as necessary.

8. Assist in the support of external customer and agency audits of company

and its suppliers
9. Expected to attain and maintain a third party qualification as a certified
auditor, preferably as a certified quality auditor with the American
society for Quality.

Competencies of a Lead Assessor :

1. Customer/ Client focus

2. Problem solving/ Analysis
3. Technical Capacity
4. Ethical Conduct
5. Communication Proficiency

Six Sigma ( 6σ )

Sigma i.e., standard deviation is used to designate the distribution or spread of

any process about the mean ( average). The sigma value indicates how well
that process is performing. The higher the sigma value( 2σ, 3σ,4σ etc.), the
better process. Sigma measures the capability of the process to perform defect
free work. A defect is anything that results in customer dis-satisfaction. With
Six Sigma, the common measurement index is defects per unit, where unit can
be virtually anything- a component, apiece of material, a time frame etc. The
sigma value indicates how often defects are likely to occur. As sigma value
increases, costs go down, cycle time go down and customer satisfaction goes
up. Six Sigma is a quality improvement programme with a goal to reduce the
number of defects to as low as 3.4 parts per million or 99.99966 % good.
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Six Sigma is a measure of the spread of the process, which is also known as
natural tolerance.

Area of a normal curve

Statistical meaning of Six Sigma : Six Sigma relies on the Normal Distribution
to predict defective rates. Most of the output of the process will meet the
specifications (call it x)̅ . But some will deviate, to varying extent, measured by
the standard deviation (σ). So, some units will have a specification of X̅ ± 1σ,
some, X̅ ± 2σ and some X̅ ± 3σ . The Six Sigma methodology tackles this
problem in two ways as shown in Fig. 1. First, It widens width, stretching the
upper and lower specification limits so that, even if the product ranges
between X̅ - 3σ and X + 3σ it will function properly. The second step consists
of analysing and re-engineering the process so that the value of sigma drops,
thus if the upper and lower specification limits originally stood at ±3σ .They will
automatically stand at ±6σ now as sown in Fig. 2.
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Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Thus, the manufacturing process may be at 2σ or 3σ, etc., the journey start
towards 6σ. In other words, we have to shrink the variability of the process to
such an extent that the value of sigma of the process reduces to a new low
value, which can be fitted between ±6σ times even with the same specification
limits. This is the quality improvement such an improved process hardly
produces any defect. A six sigma process should actually generate no flaws at
all. Six sigma is an overall strategy to accelerate improvements in its processes,
products and services. It is also a measurement of total quality to let the
company know how effective it is in eliminating defects and variations from its
processes. The methodology of six sigma consists of five steps namely, Define
(D), Measure (M), Analyse (A), Improve (I) and Control.

DMAIC Cycle : DAMAIC is a data driven quality strategy used to improve

processes. It is an internal part of Six Sigma initiative, but in general can be
implemented as a standalone quality improvement procedure or as part of
other process improvement initiative such as lean .DMAIC is an acronym for
the five phases that make up the process.

Define the problem, improvement activity, opportunity for improvement, the

project goals, and customer (internal and external) requirements.

Measure process performance

Analyse the process to determine root cause of variation, poor performance

(defects).
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IMPROVE process performance by addressing and eliminating the root causes.

Control the improved process and future process performance

The DMAIC process easily lends itself to the project approach to quality
improvement encouraged and promoted by Juran.

Define

Measure

Analyse
Redesign

Modify
Yes
Design?

No

Improve

Control

DMAIC Cycle

Lean Six Sigma certifications

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Six Sigma professionals exist at every level- each with a different role to play.
These people conduct projects and implement improvement. Based on today’s
need for independent globally recognised certification, The International

Association for Sigma Certification (IASSC) has developed three exams. These
exams are designed to measure a person’s knowledge of the lean six sigma
methodology. Each individual certification shall be valid for a period of two
years from the date the candidate successfully appeared for the exams. These
certificates are:

1. Yellow BELT : The IASSC Certified Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt is a
professional who gains an understanding of the basics of six sigma and
how it can immediately impact his organisation. The professional
supports improvement projects as a part of a team. The one day course
is designed to give the trainee an overview of the basic philosophy,
structure, organisation and methodology for six sigma quality. A lean six
sigma yellow belt possesses an understanding of the aspects within the
phases of DMAIC. Their daily work reflects their excellent understanding
of a quality v/s profit relationship.
2. Green Belt : The IASSC certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt is a
professional who is versed in the basics of six sigma methodology. They
are the ‘worker bees’ of the six sigma projects. A lean six sigma green
belt possesses a thorough understanding of all the aspects within the
phases of DMAIC. They understand to support improvement projects,
typically as a part time role. The two weeks course is designed for the
trainees. They understand how to perform and interpret six sigma tools
and how to use standard principles of lean. They can do much of legwork
; from gathering data to executing experiments in support of the black
belt projects., Green Belts typically have two primary responsibilities:
i. Help ensure the success of six sigma techniques
ii. Lead important projects of a similar scale within their respective
areas.

3. Black Belt : The IASSC Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is a professional
who is well versed in the lean six sigma methodology and leads
improvement projects, typically in a full time role. The four weeks course
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is designed for the trainees. A lean six sigma black belt possesses a
thorough understanding of all the aspects within the phases of DMAIC.
The understand how to develop, coach, lead and advise the
management and employees to achieve their goals.