9.

Building Quality organizations

• Building quality organizations.

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9. Building Quality organizations
• Organization is a group of people & facilities with orderly
arrangement of responsibilities, authorities, & relationship.
• Company, corporation, firm, enterprise, etc. are examples of
organization.
• To succeed in building quality organization, it must become part of
everyone’s daily activities.
• Quality organization must built total quality system for strategic
planning, focus on customers, motivate everyone, control &
continuously improve processes, provide useful information to
maintain high performance, & provide leadership to build & sustain
organization.
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9. Building Quality organizations
Basic types of organization are:
1. Line organization
2. Line & staff organization, &
3. Matrix organization
1. Line organization with departments, are responsible for marketing,
finance, & operations.
• In traditional organization, quality departments (“Quality Control” & “Quality
Assurance”, or some similar name) is generally distinct from other
departments.
• Role of quality should be invisible in organization chart, because quality
planning & quality assurance are part of responsibility of each operating
manager & employee at every level.
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9. Building Quality organizations
2.Line & staff organization
• Line & staff organization is most predominant type of
structure for medium sized to large firms.
• Line departments carry out functions of marketing,
finance, & production.
• Staff personnel, including quality managers &
technical specialists, assist line managers in carrying
out their jobs by providing technical assistance &
advice.
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9. Building Quality organizations
2. Line & staff organization
• In traditional organization, instead of technical experts who
assist line managers & workers in attaining quality, quality
managers & inspectors may take role of guardians of quality.
• Guardian-type role happens when quality assurance
function is placed too low or when pressure from higher level
forces inspectors to ease up on quality so that more
products can be shipped.
• Major cause of this problem is too much responsibility with
insufficient authority.

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9. Building Quality organizations
2.Line & staff organization
• When project A is completed, technician might be
reassigned to project B under new project manager.
• He/she would still be reporting to “technical boss” in
quality assurance department.
• Matrix-type organization for project work has
number of advantages.
• It generally improves coordination of complex
project work as well as efficiency of personnel use.
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9. Building Quality organizations
3. Matrix organization
• Matrix-type organization was developed where large, complex projects
are designed & carried out, such as defense weapons system or large
construction projects.
• Each project has project manager & each department has technical or
administrative manager.
• Quality assurance technician might be assigned to quality assurance
department for technical or administrative activities to project A for day-
to-day job assignments.
• Technician would report to project manager of project A & to his/her
“technical boss” in quality assurance department.
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9. Building Quality organizations
3.Matrix organization
• Its major drawback is that it requires split loyalty for people who
report to two supervisors.
• This division of loyalty can be troublesome or even dangerous in
quality assurance.
• Project manager who is under pressure to complete project by
certain deadline might try to influence quality assurance personnel
to take short-cuts in completing inspection phase of project.
• Quality manager who might be hundreds of miles away from site,
would often not have influence over the inspectors that the project
manager would have.

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9. Building Quality organizations
3.Matrix organization
• “One-size-fits-all” quality organization is inappropriate.
• Quality organization must be tailored to reflect individual
company differences & provide flexibility & to change.
• It is important that senior leaders drive quality & performance
excellence concepts throughout the organization through
effective communication.
• Senior leaders as role models ensure that strategic planning
focusses all key stakeholders in achieving organization’s mission
& vision.
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9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
• Getting started often seems easy by comparison with
sustaining a quality focus.
• New efforts usually begin with much enthusiasm
because of pure innovation of effort.
• After a while, reality sets in & doubt surface.
• Real problems develop as early supporters begin to
question the process.
• At this point, organization can resign itself to inevitable
failure or persist & seek to overcome obstacles.
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9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
• To help understand these issues, it is useful to recognize
quality initiatives - as well as most any business
initiatives -follows a natural life cycle.
• As Leonard & McAdam suggest, understanding life cycle
“provides a strategic to chart & sustain quality while
proactively countering shortcomings of its
implementation, such as stagnation & limited application,
which can ultimately result in failure”.
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9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
Six stages of quality life cycle are:
1. Adoption: Implementation stage of new quality initiative.
2. Regeneration: When new quality initiative is used in conjunction with
existing one to generate new energy & impact.
3. Energizing: When existing quality initiative is refocused & given new
resources.
4. Maturation: When quality is strategically aligned & deployed across the
organization.
5. Limitation or stagnation: When quality has not been strategically driven
or aligned.
6. Decline: When quality management system (QMS) has had limited
impact, initiatives are failing, & QMS is waiting termination.
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 9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
• Two examples serve to illustrate implications of this
model.
• One company began adopting quality by introducing
team building & establishing problem solving teams.
• However, after four years quality management initiative
failed.
• Initial training had been limited, & implementation was
unfocused & not directly related to strategic objectives
of organization. 13
9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
• As a result, new teamwork approach came as a culture shock to
the company, & its quality initiative began a decline.
• Company was determined to continue with quality management
& subsequently adopted a second initiative.
• This involved companywide training & teams provided with
improvement kits based on problem solving tools & techniques.
• In addition, senior management focused on coordination of
improvement efforts with strong links to organization’s strategic
goals.

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9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
• Structured performance assessment monitored progress.
• Quality manager cited “management commitment &
leadership from the top” as key to its successful second
quality initiative.
• Quality life cycle of this second initiative reflects its
progress from adoption to maturity.
• This approach created strong quality dynamics, which
achieved strategic alignment & companywide deployment.

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9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
From this example two things are observed:
• Awareness that separate initiative create a cumulative effect leads
to appreciation that selection of new quality initiatives must be
based on where quality organization is in quality life cycle.
• Understanding that quality life cycle elements enable organization
to apply energizing or regenerating actions proactively to
successfully sustain its quality journey.
• Awareness of such impacts on dynamics of quality, in particular on
characteristics of quality life cycle, provides capability to sustain
successful quality management by strategically adopting
responses based on energizing & regenerating elements.
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9. Building Quality organizations
Sustaining Quality organization
•Second example demonstrate that by continually combining
energizing & regenerating elements, organization can create
ongoing effort to sustain & develop quality - optimum quality life
cycle.
•This company’s adoption of QMS began with increased internal &
external customer focus emphasizing communication.
•Organization further regenerated its quality activities by developing
internal QMS to take advantage of improvements made & to create
structured system.
•

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9. Building Quality organizations
Quality as a Journey
• Successful organizations realize that achieving quality &
performance excellence is never ending journey.
• As old Chinese proverb says, journey begins with a single step.
• Many Baldrige-winning companies started from similar humble
beginnings.
• Organizations discovered benefits of Baldrige framework &
assessment process as a means for continual improvement.
• Such a journey takes determination & commitment.
• Although Baldrige Award is not principal motivator, engaging in
Award process can make a difference.
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9. Building Quality organizations
Self Assessment Process
• To build sustain quality organizations, a performance
excellence culture is to conduct self assessments of
where it relative to best practices & key requirements.
• Self assessment is the holistic evaluation of
processes & performance.
• It helps managers answer essential questions such
as “how are we doing?”, “what are our strengths?”, &
“what areas require improvements?”.

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9. Building Quality organizations
Self Assessment Process
• Self assessment should be conducted internally rather
than relying on external consultant, which promotes
greater involvement of organization’s people, yielding
higher level of understanding.
• Self assessment should address followings:
1. Management involvement & leadership: To what
extent all levels of management are involved?
2. Product & process design: Whether products meet
customer needs & products are designed for easy
maufacturability.
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9. Building Quality organizations
Self Assessment Process
Self assessment should address followings:
3. Product control: Whether product control system is
effective to prevent defects rather than defect removal
after product is made.
4. Customer & supplier communications: Does everyone
understand who customer is? To what extent
customers & suppliers communicate with each other?
5. Quality improvement: Is quality improvement plan in
place? What results have been achieved?
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9. Building Quality organizations
Self Assessment Process
Self assessment should address followings:
6. Employee participation: Are all employees actively
involved in quality improvement?
7. Education & training: What is done to ensure
everyone understands his/her job & has necessary
skills? Are employees trained in quality
improvement techniques?
8. Quality information: How is feedback on quality
results collected & used?
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9. Building Quality organizations
Self Assessment Process
• Baldridge National Quality Program provides two simple
instruments called Are we making progress? (one for employee
& one for leaders).
• They provide way of capturing voice of employee & perspective
of leadership to develop baseline measurements of
organization’s progress using Baldridge criteria.
• Most complete way to assess level of performance excellence
maturity in organization is to evaluate its practices & results
against Baldridge National Quality Award by using trained
internal or external examiners & receiving comprehensive
examiner feedback.
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End of Chapter 9

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