Foundation of Total Quality Management

The Quality Gurus

Edward Deming (The Father of the quality evolution)

The TQM approach began as a means of repairing the

damage Japan suffered post-World War II. W. Edwards

Deming wrked with Japanese automobile manufacturers to

improve the quality of their products in an effort to gain a

competitive foot in the industry and his philosophy resulted

to 14 points

Deming's work and writing constitute not so much a technique, as a philosophy of

management, Total Quality Management, that focuses on quality and continuous

improvement but which has had - justifiably - a much wider influence.

Deming is interested in his variation and his approach to systematic problem

solving which led on to his development of the 14 points which have gained widespread

recognition and which are central to the quality movement and his philosophy of

transformational management.

Variation and problem solving

The key to Deming's ideas on quality lies in his recognition of the importance of

variation. In Out of the crisis he states:

'The central problem in management and in leadership...is failure to understand the

information in variation'.

Deming was preoccupied with why things do not behave as predicted. All systems (be

they the equipment, the process or the people) have variation, but he argued that it is

essential for managers to be able to distinguish between special and common causes of

variation. He developed a theory of variation - that special causes of variation are usually

easily attributable to quickly recognisable factors such as changes of procedure, change of

shift or operator etc, but that common causes will remain when special causes have been

eliminated (normally due to design, process or system).

These common causes are often recognized by workers, but only managers have the

authority to change them to avoid repeated occurrence of the problem. Deming estimated

that management was responsible for more than 85% of the causes of variation. This

formed his central message to the Japanese.

Deming's 14 points

Deming's 14 points is a provide framework to develop knowledge in the workplace and

can be used to guide long term business plans and aims.

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the

aim of becoming competitive, staying in business and providing jobs.

2. Adopt the new philosophy. Western management must awaken to the challenge,

must learn their responsibilities and take on leadership for change.

3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Build quality into the product from the start.

4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone. Instead,

minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any item, based on a long-

term relationship of loyalty and trust.

5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service to improve

quality and reduce waste.

6. Institute training and retraining.

7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to lead and help people to do

a better job.

8. Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales and

production must work as a team, to foresee and solve problems of production.

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce as they do not

necessarily achieve their aims.

11. Eliminate numerical quotas in order to take account of quality and methods, rather

than just numbers.

12. Remove barriers to pride of workmanship.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and re-training for both the management

and the workforce.

14. Take action to accomplish the transformation. Management and workforce must

work together.

Deming's seven deadly diseases of management

Deming describes the main barriers faced by management to improving effectiveness and continual improvement. He was referring here to US industry and their management practices.

1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan products and services that will have a market

and keep the company afloat.

2. An emphasis on short term profits and short term thinking (just the opposite from

constancy of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by

demand from bankers and owners for dividends.

3. Evaluation of performance and annual reviews.

4. Mobility of managers and job hopping.

5. Management by use only of available data.

6. High medical costs.

7. High costs of liability.

Deming said that effective management and a commitment to quality were needed to

combat these seven deadly diseases. He emphasized the importance of communicating

quality messages to all staff and building a belief in total quality management.

The relevance of these principles to a wider general management application has

contributed to Deming's status as a founder of the Quality Management movement, not just

quality and process control. This is why he interests an audience that is much wider than

the quality lobby.

PDCA Cycle (The Deming Wheel)

Walter Shewhart originated the concept of the PDCA cycle and introduced it to Deming.

Deming promoted the idea widely in the 1950s and it became known as the Deming Wheel

or the Deming cycle. 

The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle consists of four steps or stages which must be gone

through to get from `problem-faced' to `problem solved.’ Repetition of these steps forms a

cycle of continual improvement:

Plan for changes to bring about improvement.

Do changes on a small scale first to trial them.

Check to see if changes are working and to investigate selected processes.

Act to get the greatest benefit from change.

Deming has stirred up wide interest with his denial of Management by Objectives and

performance appraisals. Similarly, his attitude towards integrating the workforce has led

TQM to be perceived as a caring philosophy. Paradoxically, his focus on cost-reduction has

been pointed to as a cause of downsizing.

Deming said that effective management and a commitment to quality were needed to

combat these seven deadly diseases. He emphasised the importance of communicating

quality messages to all staff and building a belief in total quality management.

The relevance of these principles to a wider general management application has

contributed to Deming's status as a founder of the Quality Management movement, not just

quality and process control. This is why he interests an audience that is much wider than

the quality lobby.

Although in the 1980s the US paid tribute to Deming - not only for what he did in Japan,

but also for his thinking and approach to quality management - few American companies

used his methods.

The originality and freshness of Deming is that he took his philosophy, not from the

world of management, but from the world of mathematics, and wedded it with a human

relations approach which did not come from management theory but from observation,

and from seeing what people needed from their working environment in order to

contribute of their best

Walter Shewhart (Grandfather of Total Quality Management)

By 1924, Shewhart determined the problem of variability in terms of assignable cause and chance cause (Deming referred to this as common cause). On May 16, 1924, Shewhart prepared a memorandum of less than one page in length and forwarded it to his manager, George Edwards.

About 1/3 of the page was devoted to a simple diagram that we would today recognize as a control chart. This memorandum set forth the essential principles and considerations that became known as process quality control. 

Shewhart’s principle was that bringing a process into a state of statistical control would allow the distinction between assignable and chance cause variations. By keeping the process in control, it would be possible to predict future output and to economically manage processes. This was the birth of the modern scientific study of process control.

SPC Moves Mainstream

At its creation in 1925, Shewhart moved to the Bell Telephone Laboratories working to advance his theories and to bring together the disciplines of statistics, engineering and economics. 

In 1931 he published a book, “Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product.” It challenged the inspection-based approach to quality and introduced the modern era of quality management. Up until this time, statistical process control was largely a Bell Telephone quality tool. Shewhart’s book popularized statistical control and its use then spread throughout industry. 

From the 1930s forward, Shewhart’s interests expanded from industrial quality to wider concerns in science and statistical inference. In 1934, W. Edwards Deming and another physicist, Raymond T. Birge, published a paper on measurement error in science. However, after collaboration with Shewhart, they recast their approach and launched a long collaboration between Shewhart and Deming.

 Shewhart believed that statistical theory should serve the needs of industry and society as a whole. He challenged the norms of his day and showed manufacturers the better way that revolutionized industry. 

Dr Joseph M Juran (1904-2008)

Dr Joseph M Juran was a charismatic figure, acknowledged worldwide for his extensive contribution to quality management. While often referred to as one of the leading figures of total quality management, much of Juran’s work actually preceded the total quality concept. He became a legend in his own time, and has been instrumental in shaping many of our current ideas about quality. He is recognised,

along with Deming, as greatly accelerating the development of the quality movement in Japan. His influence on manufacturing throughout the world has been substantial.

Juran's Approach to Quality Planning, Control and Improvement (Juran’s Trilogy)

Joseph Juran shared a connection with Deming. Juran's approach to quality control also had Japanese roots. While Japan was price-competitive with the rest of the world, the quality of product did not measure up.

Like Deming, Juran stressed the importance of total quality management. However, he summed it up by saying total quality management begins at the top of an organization and works its way down. He developed 10 steps to quality improvement. The steps boil down to three main areas of management decision-making:

Trilogy shows how an organization can improve every aspect by better understanding of the relationship between processes that plan, control and improve quality as well as business results. In 1951, the first edition of Juran’s quality control handbook was published.

Quality planning Quality control Quality improvement

Quality planning involves building an awareness of the need to improve, setting goals and planning for ways goals can be reached. This begins with management's commitment to planned change. It also requires a highly trained and qualified staff. Juran managed Beefy's during the night shift. He set the standard for quality during his shift by training each employee on how to properly make a burger.

Quality control means to develop ways to test products and services for quality. Any deviation from the standard will require changes and improvements. On Sunday nights when business was slow, Juran invited mystery diners to come to Beefy's to rate the quality of the burgers. If he found that a diner was displeased, he retrained employees.

Quality improvement is a continuous pursuit toward perfection. Management analyzes processes and systems and reports back with praise and recognition when things are done

right. Juran allowed the staff to engage in a well-deserved burger-eating contest at the end of a profitable shift.

Juran's contribution to the revolution in Japanese quality philosophy helped to transform

that country into a market leader. Add to this his influence on Western manufacturing and

management in general, and you emerge with a guru who has been influential for more

than half a century.

Philip B.Crosby

Croby'sIdeology of Conformance to Quality Standards

Philip B. Crosby was a contemporary leader in TQM. He didn't engineer principles or steps. He simply made TQM easier for the layman to implement by breaking it down to an understandable ideology that organizations should adopt.

Crosby re-defined quality to mean conformity to standards set by the industry or organization that must align with customer needs.

There are absolutes of TQM necessary for conformity

Quality is defined as conformance to standards The system for causing quality is prevention The performance standard is not arbitrary: it must be without defect The measurement of quality is price of non conformance

Crosby's Fourteen Steps of Quality Improvement

Step 1. Management Commitment

Step 2. Quality Improvement Teams

Step 3. Quality Measurement

Step 4. Cost of Quality Evaluation

Step 5. Quality Awareness

Step 6. Corrective Action

Step 7. Zero-Defects Planning

Step 8. Supervisory Training

Step 9. Zero Defects

Step 10. Goal Setting

Step 11. Error Cause Removal

Step 12. Recognition

Step 13. Quality Councils

Step 14. Do It All Over Again

D R . A R M A N D V . F E I G E N B A U M

Dr. Armand V. Feigenbaum,who develop “Total Quality

Control” concept while concurrently at GE. He introduced the

concept first in an article in 1946. In 1951, while a doctoral

student at MIT, Dr. Feigenbaum wrote the first edition of his

book Total Quality Control. He established the principles of

Total Quality Management (“TQM”), the approach to quality

and profitability that has profoundly influenced management

strategy and productivity in the competition for world

markets in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

He wrote, “Total quality control is an effective system for integrating the quality

development, quality maintenance, and quality improvement efforts of the various groups

in an organization so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels

which allow full customer satisfaction.”

Armand V. Feigenbaum is also known for his concept of the “hidden plant“. That is –

in every factory a certain proportion of its capacity is wasted through not getting it right

the first time. Dr. Feigenbaum quoted a figure of up to 40% of the capacity of the plant

being wasted. At that time, this was an unbelievable figure; even today some managers are

still to learn that this is a figure not too far removed from the truth.

The elements of total quality to enable a totally customer focus (internal and

external)

Quality is the customers perception of what quality is, not what a company

thinks it is.

Quality and cost are the same not different.

Quality is an individual and team commitment.

Quality and innovation are interrelated and mutually beneficial.

Managing Quality is managing the business.

Quality is a principal.

Quality is not a temporary or quick fix but a continuous process of improvement.

Productivity gained by cost effective demonstrably beneficial Quality investment.

Implement Quality by encompassing suppliers and customers in the system.

The several editions of Total Quality Control have been published in more than twenty

languages including French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Russian, and are

widely used throughout the world as a foundation for management practice.

Dr. Feigenbaum’s establishment of General Systems with his brother Donald, made it

possible for him to further refine TQM and widely bring to many companies and

organizations the benefits of the total quality and management practices he had developed.

This has brought demonstrable economic, environmental and social business benefits to

these companies and their customers, and correspondingly to America’s economy. Equally

important, far more than General Systems Company clients have benefitted from his

intellect, creativity and experience.

He co-authored The Power of Management Capital with his brother and business

partner, Donald S. Feigenbaum , a former GE engineer and manager, setting a new direction

for innovation in management in the twenty first century not only in industry but also in

health care, education, public administration and technology. The book has been translated

into Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic, in several other languages and an

edition in India.

Dr. Feigenbaum has been exceptionally generous, sharing his concepts, processes and

implementation knowledge through numerous books, articles, interviews, keynotes and

leadership as President of such groups as the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the

International Academy for Quality (IAQ). He is well known, highly visible, revered

worldwide, and his name in synonymous with “Total Quality.” He is considered one of the

World’s “Gurus of Quality.”

Kaoru Ishikawa (Father of Quality Circle Movement)

Kaoru Ishikawa is best known for the development of quality tools called cause-and-effect diagrams, also called fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams. These diagrams are used for quality problem solving, and we will look at them in detail later in the chapter. He was the first quality guru to emphasize the importance of the “internal customer,” the next person in the production process.

He was also one of the first to stress the importance of total company quality control, rather than just focusing on products and services. Dr. Ishikawa believed that everyone in the company needed to be united with a shared vision and a common goal. He stressed that quality initiatives should be pursued at every level of the organization and that all employees should be involved. Dr. Ishikawa was a proponent of implementation of quality circles, which are small teams of employees that volunteer to solve quality problems.

Ishikawa explored the concepts of quality circles- a Japanese philosophy which he drew obscurity into a world wide acceptance which is a group comprising of 6 to 12 employees doing similar work meet together voluntarily on a regular basis for identifying improvements in their respective work areas. Their aim is to achieve and so also to sustain excellence towards mutual upliftment of employees as well as organization.

He continually urged top level executives to take quality control courses, knowing that without the support of the management, these programs would ultimately fail.

With the use of this new diagram, the user can see all possible causes of result, and hopefully find the root of process imperfections.

Both Ishikawa and Deming use this diagram as one of the first tools in the quality management process

Genichi Taguchi Dr.

Genichi Taguchi is a Japanese quality expert known for his work in the area of product design. He estimates that as much as 80 percent of all defective items are caused by poor product design. Taguchi stresses that companies should focus their quality efforts on the design stage, as it is much cheaper and easier to make changes during the product design stage than later during the production process. Taguchi is known for applying a concept called design of experiment to product

design.

This method is an engineering approach that is based on developing robust design, a design that results in products that can perform over a wide range of conditions. Taguchi’s philosophy is based on the idea that it is easier to design a product that can perform over a wide range of environmental conditions than it is to control the environmental conditions. Taguchi has also had a large impact on today’s view of the costs of quality. He pointed out that the traditional view of costs of conformance to specifications is incorrect, and proposed a different way to look at these costs.

Quality through Robust design Methodology

System Design- involves creating a working design first. Parameter design-involves experimenting to find which factors influence

product performance most. Tolerance- involves setting tight tolerance limits for the critical factors and

looser tolerance limits for less important factors.

Taguchi’s Robust design methodologies allow the designer through experiments to determine which factors most affect product performance and which factors are important.

Taiichi Ohno

In the 1940’s and early 1950’s, Ohno was the assembly manager for Toyota and developed many improvements that eventually became the Toyota Production System. Toyota was verging on bankruptcy during much of this period and could not afford major investments in new equipment or massive inventories.

The 1950’s also saw the beginning of a long collaboration with Shigeo Shingo and the refinement of their earlier efforts into an integrated Manufacturing Strategy.Ohno’s career accelerated as a result of his success as Assembly Shop Manager and he became an executive Vice President in 1975.In the early 1980’s, Ohno retired from Toyota and was president of Toyota Gosei, a Toyota subsidiary and supplier.The Toyota Production System (TPS) was developed between 1945 and 1970 and it is still evolving today. The 1973 oil crisis hit Japan at least as hard as it hit America and Europe. By 1974, Japan’s economy had collapsed to a state of zero growth. At Toyota Motor Company, although profits suffered, greater earnings were sustained in 1975, 1976 and 1977 than at other Japanese companies. The widening gap between Toyota and other Japanese companies opened the eyes of others in Japan to this thing called the Toyota Production System and it began spreading rapidly in Japan. Taiicho Ohno died in Toyota City in 1990.

He identified what are called the seven wastes or seven mudas.

1. Defects

The simplest form of waste is components or products that do not meet the specification. At first, the Japanese didn’t scare us with their target of single-figure reject rates but when we realised that they measured in parts per million and that 1% defects gave a figure of 10,000 we changed our tune. Of course, the key point of Japanese quality achievement came with the switch from Quality Control to Quality Assurance – efforts devoted to getting the process right, rather than inspecting the results.

2. Over-Production

A key element of JIT was making only the quantity required of any component or product. This challenged the Western premise of the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) which was built on acceptance of fixed ordering costs, built around set-up times, and thus the need to spread these fixed costs over large batches. Another Japanese guru who contributed to this change is Shigeo Shingo who led Toyota’s move from long set-ups to Single Minute Exchange of Die (or SMED).

3. Waiting

Time not being used effectively is a waste – we are incurring the cost of wages and all the fixed costs of rent, rates, lighting and heating so we should use every minute of every day productively. Ohno looked at the reasons for machines or operators being under-utilised and set about addressing them all. Thus we have learnt about preventive maintenance and the creation of flow through our factories with the emphasis on takt time, the rate at which a component or product moves to the next stage. (Although sometimes described as yet another Japanese word finding its way into English, this is actually derived from the German taktzeit – which means ‘clock cycle’.)

4. Transporting

Items being moved incur a cost, if it is only the energy needed to initiate the movement such as the electricity consumed by a fork lift truck. Then there is the inventory held within the process of moving from one area to another and the increased lead time that the movement introduces. Of course, movement brings another cost, which is less visible but of far greater impact. Managing a factory with operations carried out great distances apart is much more difficult than when the subsequent stages are adjacent to one another. This can be seen as the primary driver behind cellular manufacturing (though some would point out that Group Technology is very similar and came from Sweden, rather than from the Orient). 

5. Movement

On a related note, people spending time moving around the plant is equally wasteful. The time a machine operator or fitter wastes walking to the toolroom or the stores for a fixture or a component could be far better utilised if our plant layout and housekeeping were geared around having everything that is required close to hand. 

6. Inappropriate Processing

Working harder than we need may be the most obvious form of waste. The most obvious example of this within the MLG history relates to a business seeking surface finishes that required components to be moved to grinders for completion, when in fact such finishes on the surfaces in question served no purpose. A basic principle of the TPS is doing only what is appropriate.

7. Inventory

The element that Western industry immediately focused upon when confronted with JIT was the cost reduction available from holding less

inventory. The fact that the initial fact-finding trips to Japan took place when interest rates were at breathtakingly high levels perhaps contributed to our failing to see the other costs that Ohno had considered in his own interpretation. We now know that stock hides problems. “A problem is a pearl” in that finding a problem is a good thing – we can now solve it, which we couldn’t until it came to light!

Shigeo Shingo

Shigeo Shingo was born in 1909 at Saga City, Japan where he attended the Saga Technical High School. After graduation from Yamanashi Technical College in 1930 he went to work for the Taipei Railway Company.In 1943 Shingo was transferred to the Amano Manufacturing Plant in Yokohama. As Manufacturing Section Chief, he raised productivity 100%. Shingo worked for several manufacturers in 1945 and 1946 and also began a long association with the Japanese Management Association (JMA). From 1946-1954 Shingo had many assignments, delivered several important papers and crystallized his ideas on process and plant layout. He also applied Statistical Process Control.

In 1955, Dr. Shingo began another long association, this time with Toyota. In addition to his many consulting assignments in other industries. It is during this period that he first started work on setups by doubling the output of an engine bed planer at Mitsubishi’s shipyard.In 1959, Dr. Shingo left JMA to start his own consulting company.

During the early 1960’s, as an outgrowth of work with Matsushita, he developed his concepts of “ Mistake-Proofing.”In 1969, SMED was originated when he cut the setup time on a 1000 ton press at Toyota from 4.0 hours to 3.0 minutes. During the 1970’s, Shingo traveled in Europe and North America on many lectures, visits and assignments. He began to see Toyota’s efforts as an integrated system and began to assist several U.S. and European firms in implementation.

Mistake-Proofing for Operators based on Zero Quality Control

Dr. Shigeo Shingo has written 14 major books and hundreds of important papers on manufacturing. The Shingo Prize is awarded for excellence in manufacturing as a tribute to Dr. Shingo and his lifelong work. He died in 1990.

The Zero Quality Control System (ZQC) is a mistake-proofing approach that prevents defects by monitoring processing conditions at the source and correcting errors that cause defects. Since it is human nature to make mistakes, ZQC does not blame people for errors, but instead finds ways to keep errors from becoming defects. In this breakthrough approach, mistake-proofing devices called poka-yoke are used to check and give feedback about each product or operation in the process, not just a sample. This book introduces operators and assembly workers to the basic methodology of ZQC in an easy-to-read format that covers all aspects of this important manufacturing improvement strategy.Mistake-Proofing for Operators includes the instructional features that are the signature of the Shopfloor Series.

In this series Productivity Press has taken the lead in adult education by teaming with instructional designers to develop complete programs for frontline learning. The goal: to place powerful and proven improvement tools such as ZQC and mistake-proofing in the hands of your company's entire workforce.

Dr. Shigeo Shingo has written 14 major books and hundreds of important papers on manufacturing. The Shingo Prize is awarded for excellence in manufacturing as a tribute to Dr. Shingo and his lifelong work. He died in 1990.

References

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