Bradford University School of Management

UNIT 2:
QUALITY MANAGEMENT
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OBJECTIVES: After completing this unit, you will be able to:
 further develop your understanding of the meaning of quality
 explain the significance of quality for world class operations
 describe the essential elements of quality management, and
discriminate between them.

Key Reading: Slack et al. Chapter 12. Quality Management.

Your notes and slides from your first year.

INTRODUCTION
Providing a product to an acceptable standard is now a worldwide competitive
pre-requisite. Organisations must provide quality products and services just to
be considered by potential customers. Not to do so will inevitably mean the loss
of customers. Together with Dependability, Quality is an absolute for any
organisation that wishes to stay in its market

It might seem obvious to some of you that quality is a critical aspect for the
development of a world class organisation. If you do not provide a quality
product and or a quality service, then your organisation will find itself outclassed
by those that do. This is emphasised by the vast amount of published research
into the role of quality within organisations.

As an example (and one of many) Ferdows and de Meyer (1992) asked

automotive organisations about factors that the organisation believed critical to
success. From the responses they created the sand cone model (Fig 2.1 below).
The thinking that initiated the research was a popular if erroneous held belief
within many western manufacturing organisations that it was possible to be
excellent at one aspect of product provision, for example cost, or speed or
quality, but not at all three, because attempting to do so weakened the total

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effort. The belief that you could only be good at one thing at a time seems to
have been fairly consistent throughout Europe and the Americas. Yet Japanese
manufacturing were obviously good at all of these. How and Why therefore was
of interest. The results of the research indicated; …. well, read what Ferdows
and de Meyer have to so say …..

Cost
Flexibility Variables
Speed
Dependability Absolutes
Quality

Fig. 2.1 Ferdows and de Meyer 1992. Sand Cone Model

….. “With our model, we are implying that by focusing on quality first,
the seeds of these organizational abilities are nurtured more than if the
emphasis had been say on cost efficiency. While the quality efforts get
on their way, by focusing also on making the system more dependable,
the organization identifies the gaps in its knowledge and the reliability
of its systems.”
Quality becomes the base; it would appear that once the organisation has managed
quality to its customer’s satisfaction then dependability almost automatically
follows. And once both are embedded in the organisation’s culture then more
could be added to the organisation’s capabilities. The concept of managing just
one expertise at a time to the exclusion of all else seems to have disappeared for
those organisations who consistently follow a quality improvement program.

The concept of quality has been with us for a long time, as if it were embedded
in the human psyche although not really a subject of academic, manufacturing
and service interest until about the early 1960s. Think of Sir Henry Royce and
Rolls Royce or W. O. Bentley or the service you would have received at a world
class hotel, the Savoy for example. It does not take much to realise that then
quality was synonymous with great expense and that was the belief of a lot of
industry in the west.

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What seemed to be being offered by the Japanese operations model, probably
best exampled by Toyota was that quality could be built into a product and not
only was it no longer more expensive, a quality model could improve an
organisation’s profitability because there would be less returns, fewer errors in
production and delivery of both services and manufactured items, therefore
happier customers!

It was customers, voting with their wallets and purses who decided that a
product or a service that they had used or experienced and which was better
than expected was worth returning to. Organisations that provided these
products, Toyota, Fuji, Mitsubishi, Canon et.al. (notice; all Japanese and all in
manufacturing) kick started a ‘race’ to attract and maintain customers. Sadly
European and American organisations took a long time to catch up. Those that
could not disappeared! The demise of the UK car industry is a perfect example1.
However, you should not get the idea that quality and dependability are the only
pre-requisites for organisation success, what is happening to Sony, an
organisation world famous for its quality products, demonstrates that very
clearly.

The concept (if you like, ‘the invention’) of our present day understanding of
quality was initially the work of three individuals: Walter Shewart, Joseph Juran,
W. Edwards Deming, Armand Feigenbaume and Phil Crosby, who between them2
created a body of knowledge that is still being developed. When their ideas
were introduced to Japanese industrialists and managers after the Second World
War, they were seized upon and implemented with the results that we are all
aware of today.

1
This is a book review and covers British Industry from the Second World War. The reviewer
takes you through a history of the demise of UK manufacturing, including the UK owned car
industry.

2
These three hypertext links are to the ASQ web site, a global community whose interest is in
quality. It is a comprehensive and knowledgeable site worth browsing through if you are
interested in quality

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The service sector also recognised that the ideas presented need not belong
entirely to manufacturing, but that they could be further developed. In particular
the concept of process mapping and process analysis has created significant
improvement in service design and delivery. As also has the concept of ‘the
customer’, especially after Joseph Juran’s work

We will spend a little more time with Deming and Juran because their ideas are
seminal to understanding quality.

This video is of W Edwards Deming discussing what he called the 5 Deadly Diseases
that prevent a quality environment in organisations. Deming’s comments as you
will hear were aimed at industrialists in the USA. The fact is they applied just as
equally to organisations in Europe.

Juran had a different but equally effective perspective, he concentrated on creating

a quality product by seeking the customer’s viewpoint and translating that
statement into product and process. Agreed, that is a simplification but it will serve
for the moment. Have a look at the following video: Juran on Quality.

John Oakland (Oakland 2000) developed some of Juran’s concepts, amongst which
is the concept of the Quality Chain. The example Professor Oakland uses in the text
is repeated here:

On a short hop flight from a local to an international airport, the air hostess pulls
back the curtain and sets off along the aisle with a trolley full of breakfasts to
feed the early morning travellers on this short domestic flight, she is not thinking
of quality problems. Having stopped at the row of seats marked 1AB she passed
the first tray along to the man sitting by the window. By the time the lady sitting
beside him received her tray, the first tray was on its way back to the hostess
with the complaint that the bread roll and jam were missing. She calmly replaced
it on her trolley and reached for another – which also had no roll and jam!

The calm exterior of the girl begins to evaporate as she discovers two more trays
without a complete breakfast. Then she finds a good one and, thankfully, passes
it over. The search for complete breakfasts continues down the aeroplane,

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 causing inevitable delays, so much so that several passengers did not receive
breakfasts until the plane had started its descent and of course could not,
because of landing preparations. At the rear of the ‘plane could be heard the
mutterings of discontent, from those who would not receive any breakfast.

A problem of quality? Yes of course, requirements not being met, but where?
The passengers and at least one crew member suffered from it on the aircraft,
but down in the bowels of the organisation there is a man whose job it was to
assemble breakfast trays for short haul flights, perhaps he ran out of bread rolls,
perhaps he was called away to service some other aspect of the flight (it’s a small
airport) perhaps he did not know, perhaps he does not care?

These two are linked together by the task (provide breakfast for a short haul flight)
there are others who are also linked, the baker of the rolls, the supplier of jam, and
so on. They form a chain and in a lot of instances they do not know it. A break in
the chain caused by a misinterpretation of requirements or as in this instance, a lack
of bread and jam, breaks the chain, creates an error, causing a quality fault.

Customer-supplier chains: In any organisation, there is a chain of customers

and suppliers.

Fig. 2.2 The Customer Supplier Chain. Oakland 1993 and 2000

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There is the external customer: the passenger on an aircraft, the customer who buys
a computer, or the customer who goes on a ‘learn to sail’ holiday. These customers
have a set of requirements that must be met. We can only meet the external
customers’ requirements if we have a series of internal customers and suppliers
connected in a chain. This applies to my job in education as much as it does to the
courier for the ‘learn to sail’ holiday.

Each of us must behave like a supplier and identify what our immediate customer’s
requirements are, and then set about meeting them. We are also customers in the
chain, we must help our suppliers to understand what our needs are, and find out if
we can help suppliers meet our requirements. It is a ‘quality chain’, and as the
cliché has it, it is as strong as the weakest link.

The chain reaction. Once we begin to visualise the customer-supplier chain, we

can begin to see how the aim of delighting the customer can only be met if quality
is achieved at all the supplier-customer links in the chain. At the most basic level, a
small defect early on in the chain can produce a chain reaction. An issue that is
minor when perceived by people involved at that stage becomes a major problem
at a later stage and an unacceptable product to the final customer.

Failure to build quality into all stages not only leads to quality failures being passed
down the chain, it also leads to a feedback failure of essential information about
customers’ requirements passing up the chain. This applies not just to the external
customers but the internal ones as well. If the production department is delighted
by the output of the design department; if the sales department is delighted with
the output of production, then we have more hope that the external customer will
be delighted with the product.

Links in the chain: A basic element in quality management is the involvement of

workers and managers in sharing in the understanding and improvement of quality.
The study of customer-supplier links cannot be achieved effectively by some expert
thinking about it in an office and trying to understand the problems. It should be
done by the people who work together, the internal customers and suppliers who
know and experience the problems. A framework is useful to promote the right

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sort of involvement. Everyone at each link in the chain should be able to answer
the following questions about their customers.

If we go to Juran’s thinking then the following statements are those that always
have to be foremost in your quality thinking:-

 Who are my immediate customers?

 What are my customers’ true requirements?
 How are customers’ requirements made known?
 How do we monitor changes in these requirements?
 How do we ensure that everyone at this stage is aware of the current
requirements?
 Does the capability exist to meet the customers’ requirements?
 If the basic capability exists, is there a level of quality control and assurance
that ensures continued meeting of requirements? If not, why not, and what
must be done about it?

We also need to ask similar questions about our suppliers.

 Who are the immediate suppliers?
 What are the true requirements?
 What does my group need of our suppliers?
 How do I communicate my requirements?
 Can my suppliers measure and meet my requirements?
 How do I inform them of changes in my requirements?

Everything we do inside an organisation is part of a process and we can examine

the inputs and outputs of each process in each department or area. Clearly, to
produce an output that meets the requirements of the customer it is essential that
we are clear about the requirements for the inputs to the process. At every link in
the chain of quality between suppliers and customers, there is a transformation
process and we can view every task in an organisation as a series of related
processes.

From the above discussion of quality chains, we can see that everyone has a
contribution to make. It is not just a specialist activity. Improving quality involves
the whole of an organisation. Each department, each activity, each person at each

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level has to be organised so that every part works properly together. Have a look
at Oakland’s TQM model below, the model demonstrates how a Quality System is
supported by Management Commitment, Teamwork and the Application of
particular Tools. In its current version, the TQM model places the customer-supplier
chains along with the organisation’s processes at its centre. This is now surrounded
by the ‘soft’ outcomes of TQM, those of Culture, Commitment and Communications
and supported by the ‘hard’ management techniques of Tools, Systems and Teams.

Fig 2.3 Oakland JS., 1994. Total Quality Management, Butterworth and Heinemann.

Commitment: Organisations must have a constant purpose, and commitment to

this must start at the top. TQM requires this commitment and also helps to sustain
it. The way that organisations go about improving quality is a good indicator of
commitment. Some organisations start with a pilot scheme in one department in
the hope that the good news will spread from there. The results of that exercise
have to be communicated with the rest of the organisation; otherwise there is no
point in doing the exercise in the first place. It is suggested that the only place
where quality can really start is with the leaders of the organisation, which probably

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means in the boardroom. However, once the process has begun quality
improvement ideas can come from any level in the organisation.

Culture: An organisation operating according to the principles of TQM develops a

culture in which ‘getting things right every time’ and ‘meeting the needs of the
customer’ are attitudes that are highly valued. Culture, is of course, a social
construction. Its elements, such as values, beliefs and understandings, are held
commonly by all the members of the group.

To make the change in management that is often necessary to achieve Total

Quality, managers need to change the thoughts and practices of people
throughout the organisation.

Communications and teamwork: The various functions of an organisation –

finance or production or marketing are often very separate from each other, as if
each functional area operated within a silo and does not communicate properly
with any other functional area. Functional management often creates barriers.
TQM, to work properly requires the building of cross-functional teams supported by
excellent communication systems. Recognising and identifying the internal
customer-supplier chain and the processes that create the product helps to do this.

The ‘hard’ aspects of TQM are Systems, Teams and Tools.

Systems: It is a responsibility of management to define the performance

standards expected and the systems that are needed to achieve them. TQM must
not be a loose, well-intentioned approach to running the organisation. It requires
careful planning and a fully integrated strategy. It needs a systematic approach that
will help the organisation to realise its vision.

Teams: There is a need for teamwork in quality. Teams are an efficient way to
tackle process improvement and complex problems. Teamwork is, of course, also
good for the development of individuals and organisations. In order for teamwork
to be effective, it needs to be driven by a strategy supported by management.

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Employees will not engage in the process of continual improvement without
demonstrated commitment from the top.

Tools: A number of tools have been identified which help people who are working
in teams to collect, analyse and interpret data about processes. Using these tools
effectively requires commitment and participation from the people who actually
work on the process. This, of course, is dependent on management supporting the
idea and providing training and resources to make sure that any developments are
put into effect. Have a look at the seven tools of quality. And the new tools of
quality.

So far this perspective of quality may seem biased towards manufacturing. There is
of course a much wider application. R L Heidke, when vice president and director of
corporate quality for the Eastman Kodak Company is quoted in Bounds (1994):

“… we have found that the principles of Quality Management which we

practice at Eastman Kodak Company are just as applicable to hospitals,
schools and local government. We believe the basis of Quality Management
is universal. Application of these principles is not something people do in
addition to their regular work. It is the way they do their work. When that is
realised, the quality journey has begun.”

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More measurement: You will remember that in Unit 1 there was some discussion
on measurement some of you might have thought that there was, maybe, too
much! Guess what, here is some more:

Quality has to be an aspect of measurement. When we talk about quality we

are applying a measure, this could be formal, as in ‘the machine component is the
diameter specified and is in tolerance’ that’s quality. It is also a measure if you are
looking at a pair of shoes in a window that exactly fit the specification in your mind,
well, until you try them on. That’s another, admittedly less formal, measure.

Inspection is another form of measurement: Most organisations perform

some checks on their outputs. As a consumer, you have probably unpacked a new
purchase and found a sticker or document stating that it has been ‘checked by
inspector XYZ’. Presumably, this was done just before the product was packed and
covers several key items. Why do you think the producer does this inspection?
What are the benefits to the producer?

No doubt the producer wants to be sure that there are no faults with the product –
and that it functions according to the specification. If it didn’t the customer would
be disappointed, might want a replacement, and could well be put off dealing with
the company again. All of these undesirable outcomes are costly. Inspection is
intended to prevent this.

Why is it then that despite inspection, products with faults still sometimes get to the
customer? Inspection is surprisingly ineffective in identifying all the errors. Even if
people have a reasonable amount of time and know what they are looking for they
often miss things. If you find this hard to believe, try the following experiment.

ACTIVITY Below is a short sentence. See if you can accurately count the
number of times the letter f occurs.
Note you should count forward first, and then count forward for ‘f’ again, and then
count for ‘f’ backwards. Hopefully you won’t get three different numbers!
Some of the most
important features of scientific files are
often overlooked for deliberate simplification
of qualitative analysis

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This little exercise has been repeated with hundreds possibly thousands of students
and there is always a range of results typically between 8 and 11. There are in fact
nine fs. For some reason the brain has a problem identifying the word ‘of’,
depending on its place in a sentence. The lesson to be learned is that even if we
inspected backwards (that is, counted for the letter f backwards – someone
experienced in editing would have done that) we cannot be absolutely sure of the
result. Similar issues apply to virtually all inspection methods. The method to be
used for inspection has to be very carefully thought through so that it covers all
aspects of the process.

Some organisations have tried to overcome inspection problems by making a

separate function with specialists who are expert at checking. Even with experts the
approach is can be ineffective. First, an inspection function is often perceived as
being responsible for quality when all it can do is separate the good from the bad
because quality has to be built into the system. Second, the people who are
actually making the product are likely to be less careful if they know there is a safety
net, provided by inspection, to catch any errors.

The quality approach to the problem is to study the process rather than just looking
at the output from the process. The idea is to make the process capable of doing
what is required all the time (back to Juran’s thinking again). This might mean
improvement, by improving the inputs to the process and - or by improving the
process itself. Have a look at this – a discussion on quality and the supply chain

You will have heard in the discussion that quality is involved with just about
everything. In this instance the quality of the product is involved with three chains.
The first of course is the customer supplier chain and the links between the
customer’s requirements, the designer of the product, the variations available, the
future proofing of the product or service and so on. The second chain is that of the
supply chain itself. There are issues about the reliability of the supply chain, in
effect its quality. Supply chains are as a much a part of the quality view as is every
other aspect of the organisation. The third supply chain is that of the ‘Value Chain’
which looks at the whole system and attempts to reduce waste.

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How do we find out about these issues? A number of tools have been identified
which help people who are working in teams to collect, analyse and interpret data
about processes. The approach to using these tools is sometimes called continuous
improvement (The Japanese term is Kaizen 3 and means continual improvement). It
requires the commitment and participation of the people who actually work on the
process and this in turn is dependent on management support and the provision of
training and resources.

3
This is a video from the Gemba Academy, they present a series of short videos on the subject of
quality and continual improvement. Well worth looking up when you have a few moments

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Customer satisfaction: Throughout this unit the importance of the customer has
frequently been referred to. We have seen that customers exist internally and are
connected by customer-supplier chains so that they serve the ultimate, external
customer. If we fail to satisfy our customer we fail to do our job. So we will now
look in detail at customer satisfaction and how to measure it.

There are four ways in which contact with customers is made.

 Product delivery – customers receive our product, whether it is a

service or goods, and their satisfaction must relate to the quality of

that product, some aspects of which the provider can measure.

 Provider’s contact – when we provide our service or product there is

a natural point of contact.

 Problem contact – when customers have a complaint or query they

come to us.

 Proactive contact – when we go out to conduct a survey or just keep

in touch through some after-sales system.

Each type of contact provides a means of getting information on customer

satisfaction. For the information to be useful and so that we can act with
confidence on what we find out, great care and attention to detail is needed. We
have to adopt and develop methods that provide unbiased information that
represents the opinion of the population we are concerned about. If we were to
use a survey, for example, it would mean planning the sample and the methods of
contact and data collection, training people to perform their part of the tasks and
deciding how to carry out an appropriate analysis. Looking at the four kinds of
contact in turn.

Measuring using product delivery: When a customer receives the product,

there will be certain characteristics that are expected. For the external customer,
these may be implicit or explicit. For the internal customer, we can make sure that

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they are made explicit. With such explicit statements of customer requirements, we
can measure our own success in meeting those requirements.

For example, when we use the telephone to make an enquiry to find a train time or
a telephone number, none of us like waiting very long for the phone to be
answered. It is one of the queuing situations which happen because of a shortfall in
capacity. The proportion of enquirers who have to wait more than a specified time,
say ten seconds, is one way of measuring customer satisfaction. This is easy with
modern telephone equipment.

This gets to only part of the problem, of course. Voice mail systems that answer
promptly – only to present the customer with a menu of options before being left in
a different kind of queue – do not create customer satisfaction. We can see from
this how important it is to properly design a satisfactory satisfaction measurement
system.

Measuring using provider’s contact: The salesperson is the most direct contact
with the customer. We can get the supplier at the point of contact to gather
information on customer satisfaction. Alternatively, we can be ‘pretend customers’
and try and share the average customer’s experience. Bank counter staff make
great use of computer systems in carrying out transactions. With certain types of
transaction, the process is straightforward and most customers would like to be
dealt with as quickly as possible. The system automatically records transaction
times and produces histograms and information on actual versus target transaction
times. Staff can also record problems arising. The Consumer Association regularly
puts cars with known defects in for servicing at randomly selected garages. A
national report then records statistics on the numbers of defects found and
properly repaired during the service.

Some other ways of point of contact study are by:

 Response cards – you often see these in hotel rooms or on trains.

Perhaps you filled one in the last time you signed out a hotel.

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  Video booths – provided at some airports by British Airways. You
simply sit in front of a video camera and describe your experience of

flying with BA.

 The direct question – ‘Did you enjoy your meal, sir?’, or ‘Was

everything all right?’.

Measuring using problem contact: Records of customer complaints are the

most common form of measurement of customer dissatisfaction. The problem with
them is that they often grossly underestimate the level of dissatisfaction since most
people do not complain about poor service or products, they just don’t buy again.
Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons (1997) provide the following information about
complaints.

 The average business only hears from 4 per cent of their customers who are
dissatisfied with their products or services. Of the 96 per cent who do not
bother to complain, 25 per cent of them have serious problems.

 The 4 per cent who are complainers are more likely to stay with the supplier
than the 96 per cent non-complainers.

 About 60 per cent of the complainers would stay as customers if their

problems were resolved and 95 per cent would stay if the problems were
resolved quickly.

 A dissatisfied customer will tell between ten and 20 other people about their
problem.

 A customer who has had a problem resolved by a company tells about five
people about the situation.

It is obviously important to respond to complaints and also to analyse them

regularly. A Pareto study of the types of complaints and problems will highlight
those that require urgent preventative action. However, the aim should be to show
every customer who complains a positive response and visible action. The
organisation has to deal with complaints effectively and rapidly. A good system is

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to have the complaint dealt with within a clear hierarchy of levels. If one level
cannot resolve the problem it immediately moves up a level for resolution there.

There are organisations that regard complaints as embarrassing and best hidden.
However, complaints are a vital means of finding out what to do to improve quality.
Some organisations therefore go out of their way to solicit complaints; they make it
easy to complain; they ask you what you least liked about their service even if you
were very happy with it. To such organisations, this feedback is essential in
attaining a ‘delighted customer’ reputation.

There is one final comment on this issue. Customer satisfaction is about the
products and services and their delivery by the organisation’s staff. It is no good
doing lots of statistics, if the analyses just go into a limited circulation report. The
results of all the measurements have to be circulated generally and also carefully
directed, with specific dissatisfactions being reported to the areas that can take
action.

All our discussion concerns the customer as an individual. Of course, many

customers are other organisations or the next process down the line internally. And
what has been said so far in relation to the external individual customers applies
equally well to these additional classes of customer. But here there is one great
advantage, the relationship is much closer, we can go and talk to the customers in
our own ‘chain’ and they will see the value in talking to you. It is therefore possible
to get down to a greater level of detail. The ‘voice of the customer’ can be heard
loud and clear.

Implementation of quality in an organisation: Many organisations have

adopted and implemented a Quality Management system. Each tends to follow a
similar sequence of activities. The following is typical (Oakland, 1993). It sets out a
seven-step process for integrating Quality Management into the strategy of the
operation.

Gain commitment to change through the organisation of the top management

team. The most senior managers need to have a broad, shared view of the
organisation and what needs to be changed. Commitment is not a gift but comes

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in the process of diagnosing what the business problems are and/or what must be
improved. It is important to get the top managers working as a team.

Develop a shared ‘mission’ or vision of the business or of the required change.

According to Oakland the mission statement should answer the questions ‘What are
we here for?’ or ‘What is our basic purpose?’ and thus define the business
boundaries. He states that there must be documentation, agreed by top
management, be sufficiently explicit for success to be checked and also short. He
produces a useful checklist.

 Does it contain the need that is to be fulfilled?

 Will people internal and external to the organisation identify with and
admire it?
 Does it take a long-term view?
 Does it take all ‘stakeholders’ into account?
 Will the purpose remain despite any changes in top management?
The mission statement guides all the following steps. It is vital therefore to
get it right and to make it realistic.
Develop the mission statement into its Critical Success Factors (CSF). An
example of a critical success factor is the development of new products that satisfy
market needs, but CSFs are not usually just plucked out of the air without effort and
analysis. The process involves analysing and identifying all the issues that might
affect the mission, consolidating the results into a few categories (no more than
eight) and then prioritising them. A company that is facing difficult circumstances
will be able to cope better if it has fewer CSFs. Oakland recommends no more
than four CSFs if the mission is survival of the organisation.

Identify the processes that are critical to the CSF. The intention is to isolate
all the processes, such as, ‘research the market’, or ‘recruit staff’ which are necessary
and sufficient to ensure the CSF such as ‘new products that satisfy market needs’

Break down the critical processes into sub-processes, activities and tasks and
form improvement teams around these.

Monitor and adjust in response to difficulties. The management team needs

to keep close to the changes brought about in response to the mission. Plans will
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not be exactly the same in execution as was intended. Management must also help
people who have different levels of acceptance and resistance.

___________________________________________________________
Summary: In this unit, we have considered some of the issues associated with
quality. We have begun to consider what quality is about by considering some
basic definitions and have emphasised the need to describe quality from the
perspective of our customers. We need to be concerned about who our customers
are and what they require. This applies to both our internal customers and the
ultimate customer.

The TQM movement has been one of the major influences for operations
management in the last twenty years and is the critical building block for world class
operations.

We also need to recognise the significance of people in the management of

operations. We will not be covering people management, you cover it elsewhere.
However, it is important that you make the connections between these topics as
you begin to apply the concepts you have met here.

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 A small note, something to think about:

There is one further aspect that you should keep in mind when thinking about
quality. This is the difference between Conformance and Quality. It is accepted
practice to think of the two having similar meanings. This may not always be
correct.

Conformance is the ability to keep to the requirements already written down as a

set of procedures. These could be anything from how you greet a customer to the
tolerance decided upon for machining a bearing housing. Following a written set of
procedures should guarantee conformance, but the final product may not be
considered as a quality product by the customer. Quality is invariably derived from
the perceptions of the customer and is invariably that individual customer’s opinion.
(Never forget Juran). Conformance is derived from a set of tried and tested written
instructions that could be considered good at the time of writing; but which over
time have become outdated.

Now consider this: Quality in the previous two paragraphs is mentioned - almost
in the same breath – with delighting the customer. So far there has been one
further aspect of quality that has been, if not ignored, then at least pushed into the
background. Suppose that you always receive perfect service from one of your
suppliers, it can always be relied on. Do you start to think of this service as being
the norm? It meets your expectations because this is what you as a customer have
been ‘trained’ to expect. Do you stop being delighted because your expectations
have been fulfilled every time? Do you think when you switch a light bulb on and it
always works that you are receiving perfect service, are you continually delighted?
No, of course not. The point is that quality service eventually becomes subsumed
as ‘normal’. Improving on that level can be difficult, or (in the case of the electricity
supply) virtually impossible. We only really notice when it goes wrong. The lesson
to think about is how do you continually inform the customer about the level of

service or standard of product that you receive or use?

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 APPENDIX 1

The Tools of Quality

A number of quality tools exist; they have been gathered from various analytic
methods and brought together as the initial analytical and measurement
techniques. Sometimes called the 7 tools of quality

Pareto charts, flow charts, cause and effect diagrams, scatter diagrams, tally charts,
and histograms, are effective in group problem-solving situations. They are used
when the objective is either identifying specific problems in a process, for example,
to try to find out why students are late for tutorials, or to reduce process variability,
to investigate why a service or manufacturing process varies.

The tools are very simple to understand and use. You do not have to be a
statistician, nor a mathematician to use any of them. Despite their simplicity they
encourage people to monitor processes in their working environment, analyse what
they observe, verify that the results are consistent with what should occur, develop
improved methods or solve problems, and implement their ideas. The tools and
the approach should be used within an established system that will continuously
promote quality in all aspects of its operation if they are to achieve lasting
improvements.

“As much as 95% of quality related problems in the work place can be solved with
these seven fundamental quantitative tools.” Kaoru Ishikawa

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 Pareto

Pareto is extremely useful because it can be used in many different situations to

identify those issues that have the greatest effect, and to screen out the trivial ones.
This screening allows us to focus attention on a few important factors in a process.
Plotting cumulative frequencies in descending order creates the Pareto chart.
When this is done, the picture that is produced makes it easy to see the essential
factors and equally important it makes it easy to explain. You will find an
explanation of Pareto on Blackboard

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 FLOW CHARTS

Flow charts are pictorial representations of a process. By breaking the process

down into its constituent steps, flow charts can be useful in identifying where errors
are likely to be found and where the crucial elements occur.

Flow Charting Techniques. There are a great number of charting techniques

available, their purpose being to allow an appreciation of the flow of work or of
information and in some instances the time taken for an activity or group of
activities to occur.

As with all quantitative techniques, charting is dependent on observation and an

understanding of what is happening. This frequently requires ‘walking through’ the
system being mapped. Doing this initially without questioning what is happening.
Once the system in question has been mapped, then questions can be asked.

Lucidchart have a program you can play with, it’s instructive

The simplest form of chart is just a series of boxes, each with a title and arrows
showing the movement of parts (if it is manufacturing) or the movement of paper,
or of information.

Office C

Office A Office B Office E

Office D

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The disadvantage with a chart similar to the one above is that we do not know why
the chart has been drawn, what activities are being carried out and what (if any)
time scale should be applied. It would also be useful if there was some idea of what
should be being achieved. It would probably be too complex to actually show all
the information that could be of interest. On the other hand, too little information
is probably as, or even more dangerous than too much.

Most charting techniques therefore have levels, from a meta level (top level view
similar to the diagram above) to detailed levels of the activity that’s supports a
process. The ‘top level view’ is a useful viewpoint but can lead to confusion. You
could for example view the whole figure above from Office A to Office E as showing
the movement of a form through an organisation. It starts life in A, and then moves
on to B, it then appears to be split and part goes to C and part to D. The form then
appears to recombine at E where the series of activities appears to end. You could
say then that the whole process is combined of activities and this is true for this
level. However it could also be true for the next level down. Therefore as charting
is a structured process you should remember to be clear about what is a process
and what is an activity within that process. Activities usually require far more detail
– though you will have to make a decision about the level of detail.

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The FLOW CHART uses standard symbols, these are:

Start
Used to denote the beginning and end of a series of
activities

End

Decisions are treated as binary. That is they can only be

Decision in one of two states. They are either Yes or No and this
Yes is indicated on the arrow line which leaves the decision
Description
box.

No

Process
Describes the activity that is to be carried out.

Description

An arrow denotes the direction of flow of information or

product. Shows the next activity in line.

A simple example would look as follows (see following page)

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 Start

Analyse the
current process

Determine the data to

be collected

There is no formal
Collect data
obligation for you to
follow the above Yes
Analyse data
symbols. However as
the meaning for each
symbol is
Is more Are there any
internationally data changes to be
required? No
made?
agreed, it is good
practice to do so and
Yes
means that others
Implement changes
will be also able to
No
understand the chart.

Has the
Plan further process
experiments No improved?

Yes

End

A Flow Chart for Improving a Process

Adapted from Oakland and Followell Statistical Process Control 1990

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 Cause and Effect Diagram

There are a lot of names for this diagram used to associate multiple possible causes
with a single effect. It can also be called an Ishikawa Diagram or Ishikawa Chart,
after the inventor, or a fish bone diagram, because it looks like a fish skeleton. You
will find a good discussion on mind tools

The diagram is constructed to identify and organise all the possible causes for a
particular effect. We might want to know why assignments are late for example.
The primary branch represents the effect – the issue that we intend to understand
and eventually improve and control. It is usually on the right side of the diagram.
Each major branch of the diagram corresponds to a major cause (or class of causes)
that directly relates to the effect. Minor branches correspond to more detailed
ones. This type of diagram is useful in any analysis, because it provides a graphical
expression of relationships between cause and effect that can easily be shared.

The technique is based on the way we think about problems. To define something
as a problem we tend to view the problem as being self-contained. If we can alter
our thinking to define a problem not as being whole and to itself, but to be simply
the effect created by a cause, then we can use that thinking as a means of analysis.
Thus everything we identify as a problem is really an effect and has a cause. The
basic structure is always the same:-
The example below is from a baseball team analysing missed free throws:-

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 (Morestream.com)

Study this diagram for a minute or two.

Notice the vertical dotted line on the right of the diagram. On the right is the effect
being studied, on the left all of the possible causes, divided into Method, Material,
People Machine and Environment. Each of these is divided again into specific
issues that may be of concern. OK, but who built the diagram? – well, no one
person. It was created through discussion with the team, the team’s coach and
other interested and skilled individuals. Each aspect was after identification, studied
in detail and those areas that were identified as being critical and capable of
standardizing (so as to remove them from the list of variables) defined by
measurement. It does seem like an odd subject for a management technique – but
it clearly works.

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 Scatter Diagrams

Are also known as scatter charts or scatter graphs, they are used to demonstrate
the possibility of a relationship (correlation) between two apparently unrelated
areas. For example in trying to demonstrate a relationship between the number of
defects that occur and the length of time that a machine operator is at work? The
data for this can be set out quite easily in a simple table: Example

Tally Chart

The function of a tally chart is to present information in an efficient, graphical

format. This may be accomplished with a simple listing of items. We could list the
types of defect usually encountered in a particular product or information that
needs to be given in a briefing. We could then use the list to record the number of
occurrences that we observe. A tally chart can be made even more useful if the
object that is being checked is represented on the sheet. Ticks can then be placed
on the part of the object where defects occur.

Histograms

These provide a simple, graphical view of numerical data. We can see from a
histogram the extent to which the data are located around a central value or if they
are spread out. Numbers can be misleading. The average of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 is 3.
So is the average of 2 and 4. The average is much less informative than the data. A
picture of the data is easy to draw and it reminds us about the distribution of data.
Example in case you have forgotten.

The one tool not covered here is SPC (Statistical Process Control that will require an
hour or two – available if sufficient people are interested.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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References

Bounds G, Yorks L, Adams M and Ranney G (1994) Beyond Total Quality

Management: Towards the Emerging Paradigm, New York: McGraw Hill.
Deming, W.E. (1986) Out of the Crisis. MIT Press. Boston

Ferdows K and de Meyer A, Lasting Improvements in Manufacturing Performance:

In Search of a New Theory. Journal of Operations Management Volume 9, Issue 2,
April 1990, Pages 168-184
Fitzsimmons J A and Fitzsimmons M J (1994) Service Management Operations,
Strategy, and Information Technology, second edition, Boston: Irwin McGraw Hill.
Juran, J. (1988) Juran on Planning for Quality. Free Press. New York.
Morgan C and Murgatroyd S M (1994) Total Quality Management in the Public
Sector: An International Perspective, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Oakland J (1993) Total Quality Management: The Route to Improving
Performance, second edition, Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.
Oakland J (1989) Total Quality Management. Oxford: Heinemann.
Oakland J (2000) Total Quality Management. 2nd Ed. Oxford: Heinemann.

Further reading.
Deming, W.E. (1986) Out of the Crisis. MIT Press. Boston
Juran, J. (1988) Juran on Planning for Quality. Free Press. New York.

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