A Total Quality Approach

Total Quality Management can be put in to practice

through a three typical steps:

Step 1: Understanding the six basic concepts

underlying all Total Quality success.

Step 2: Address the six management elements that

must be integrated into the practices and systems of
your managers.

Step 3: Review and plans the six stages of

converting from the existing situation to the launch of
these new methods.
 The Basic Concepts Of Total
Quality
1. Customers (External & Internal).
2. Never-ending improvement.
3. Control of business processes.
4. ‘Upstream’ preventive management.
5. Ongoing preventive action.
6. Leadership & teamwork.
 Concept 1- Customers
(External and Internal)
Successful organizations realize that a major factor in Total
Quality improvement is monitoring performance in meeting
or exceeding customer requirements.

Customers are not only the people whom you sell products or
services, but are also your internal staff.
(Quality Chain- Suppliers Customers relationship). You have
to ask:
How do you measure ext. cust. Satisfaction?
How do you compare yourself (benchmark) with competitors?
How do you identify and agree internal customers
requirement?
How do you display your current performance on customer
satisfaction?
Do your staff understand and accept the concept of internal
customer?
 ِConcept 2:Never-ending
Improvement
 Attainment of world class goals is only possible
by striving for never-ending improvement in all
aspects of performance.
 Improvement should never stop.
 Targets are met; new ones are set.
 Aiming for higher level of product, process, and
service efficiency.
 Japan’s industry has evolved largely because it
has been enthusiastically operating this concept
for forty years.
 Competition improved slowly. So the gap has
increased to a significant lead.
 Organization with
Never-ending
improvement

Improvement Competitive
advantage

Competition

Time
 Implementation of strategies embracing
the concept of never-ending improvement
will raise issues such as:
 How do maintain impetus to keep seeking
further improvement?
 Which measurement and review processes
should you use?
 How do you convince your staff that
business and organizational survival will
only occur if you only achieve the steady
and continuous improvement of
everything they do?
 Concept 3: Control of business
Process
 The quality of any organization’s products or services is
determined by the basic business or manufacturing
processes that create them.
 If the chain of processes is made efficient & effective, then
the resulting products or services will also be efficient &
effective, & will satisfy the external customer.
 Effort must be directed to controlling the processes, rather
than concentrating just on direct, specific controls of
products & services.
 Applying direct product & service controls such as
inspection, often only addresses symptoms of potential
problems, neglecting causes which lie within the processes
itself.
 Define processes owners. The effective use of their
knowledge & abilities is essential to effective process
control & is a cornerstone of Total Quality.
Interpreting the concept of process control into an
action plan will raise some vital questions:
 Have you identified the processes that are critical
to your business?
 Do your staff realized all work is a process,
converting a range of inputs into a number of
agreed outputs?
 Do you have staff who are clearly responsible for
each process, irrespective of departmental
allegiances?
 Who plans, controls and monitors each process?

 Do your staff feel able to criticize each process?

 Can your staff complete the headings of the Input-

transform-output model for their own.
 Concept 4: ‘Upstream’ preventive
management
 To the successful organization, improvement is
about seeking out potential problems (or
‘improvement opportunities’) & not about waiting
for a failure to identify an area for improvement.
 ‘Upstream management shifts the emphasis from
past-event inspection to pre-event planning and
prevention activities.
 Inspection only deals with history, so having the
best inspection department in the world will not
make a successful company, but managing by
planning & prevention will.
To shift your emphasis to Total Quality
Management by prevention will demand
answers to these questions:
 What information available from your
processes?
 Do your staff, especially the process
owners, understand that effective use of
all available information is the key to
control and improvement?
 How can the information be presented and
used to assist control & continuous
improvement?
 Concept 5: Ongoing preventive
action
 Successful organization constantly attack
the real cause of problems that hinder
staff in doing their jobs.
 Staff must feel able to highlight any such
hindrance.
 Your management & staff combined must
be capable to decide and implement
appropriate corrective & preventive action.
 The action must remove or minimize the
root causes of the problems & prevent
their recurrence. (draw the loop).
Incorporating this concept of ongoing preventive action will
demand positive answers to further questions:
 Is your management team ready for open discussion on
problems in a ‘no blame’ culture?
 Are you prepared to remove root causes of problems or will
you just ‘firefight’ the symptoms?
 How seriously do you listen to staff, suppliers & customers
when they identify opportunities for improvement?
 How do you manage, prioritize & co-ordinate such
improvement & problem-solving activities?
 Do you maximize the use of all staff, at all levels, to the limit
of their abilities?
 Have all your staff had the appropriate training required to
undertake the necessary level of involvement?
 Concept 6: Leadership and
Teamwork
 Total Quality requires the highest standards of leadership
and teamwork. This concept depends on participation &
teamwork throughout the organization, in all activities.
 Visible & genuine commitment from the chief executive is
essential if the organization is to embark on a ‘journey to
excellence’ trough Total Quality.
 Commitment from the management team is the only way
to implement & maintain the culture necessary for Total
Quality.
 The sustained commitment of every person in the
organization, what ever their role, is required to achieve
improvement goals for Total Quality.
 TQM will fully realized by maximizing the use of all staff, at
all levels, to the limit of their abilities.
Reviewing the application of the leadership
and teamwork concept requires
consideration of the following questions:
 How do you communicate with your staff?

 How do you obtain their commitment &

motivation?
 How good is your teamwork?

 Do you need to change your management

style?
 Could you benefit from multilevel
problem-solving/task teams?
 For full effect, the concepts must
interact and support each other; no
one concept should be applied in
isolation.
 Section 2 examines how these
concepts can be developed into
management framework appropriate.