Quality Management Overview

Quality Management

• Defining Quality:

• User-based: Focuses on better performance and more features.

• Manufacturing-based: Emphasizes conformance to standards and producing products correctly initially.

• Traditional definition: "Quality means fitness for use." Products/services must meet user requirements, considering quality of design and conformance.

• Modern definition: "Quality is inversely proportional to variability." Higher quality is linked with less variation in products/processes.

• Quality's Competitive Advantage:

• Builds reputation, increasing demand and sales.

• Reduces costs by minimizing rework, scrap, and warranty expenses.

• Total Quality Management (TQM) Activities:

• Flow: Organizational practices lead to quality principles, employee fulfillment, and finally customer satisfaction.

• Key Dimensions: Performance, reliability, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, features, perceived quality, conformance to standards, value.

• Costs of Quality:

• Prevention costs: Expenses related to defect prevention during design & manufacturing.

• Appraisal costs: Costs of measuring, evaluating, and inspecting products to ensure conformance.

• Internal failure costs: Expenses incurred when defects are detected before product shipment.

• External failure costs: Expenses arising from defects identified after product shipment.

Implementing TQM

• TQM Strategy: Organization-wide quality improvement plan. Focuses on training, quality awareness, customer focus, supplier quality, and aligning quality systems with business goals.
• Quality Teams:
• Quality council: High-level teams for strategic initiatives.
• Workforce level teams: Focus on daily production processes.
• Quality circles: Cross-functional teams managing specific quality improvements.

Seven Concepts of TQM

• Continuous Improvement: Utilizing the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model.

• Six Sigma: Methodology to reduce defects, lower costs, and improve satisfaction (DMAIC - Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control).

• Employee Empowerment: Involving employees in product and process improvement decisions.

• Benchmarking: Identifying best practices for performance comparison.

• Taguchi Concepts:

• Robustness: Producing consistent quality despite environmental variations.

• Quality Loss Function: Measures the cost associated with quality deviation from standards, highlighting the expenses from slight deviations from requirements.

• Target-Oriented Quality: Aims for precise product specifications, emphasizing continuous improvement to meet the target.

• Knowledge of TQM Tools:

• Check Sheet: Data recording tool for identifying trends in defects.

• Scatter Diagram: Visualizing relationships between two variables.

• Cause-and-Effect Diagram (Ishikawa Diagram): Illustrates various influences on a problem, addressing materials, methods, manpower, and machinery.

• Pareto Chart: Ranking problems/defects by frequency.

• Flowchart: Describing process steps.

• Histogram: Visualizing data distributions.

• Statistical Process Control (SPC) Chart: Monitoring process standards, identifying and addressing variations.

• Natural Variation: Common causes (expected variation).

• Assignable Variation: Special causes (variations with identifiable roots). Control charts signal presence of assignable variation.

• Benefits of Control Charts:

• Productivity improvement

• Effective defect prevention

• Avoidance of unnecessary adjustments

• Diagnosis and information provision

• Process capability information

TQM in Service Industries

• Service Quality Determinants:
• Reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, understanding the customer, tangibles.
• Service improvement model: Listen, empathize, apologize, react, and notify.

This quiz covers the key concepts of quality management, including definitions of quality from various perspectives and the competitive advantages of maintaining high quality standards. We will explore Total Quality Management (TQM) activities and the crucial dimensions that contribute to quality products and services.