Management consulting

Quality awards

Quality awards are an important part of quality improvement systems, including TQM. Management consultants can advise on the design and purpose of quality recognition by making clients aware of the world’s best awards systems, such as the Deming Prize (Japan), the Malcolm Baldridge Award (the United States), and the European Quality Award. They all play a key role in the quality movement in three major markets.

The Deming Prize serves as a symbol of company-wide quality efforts, the pursuit of continuous improvement, and the extension of quality management to the suppliers of the firm. The Baldridge Award focuses on customer satisfaction, and has popularized concepts such as competitive comparisons and benchmarking. The European Quality Award incorporates a host of new ideas – impact on the community, employee satisfaction, and financial and non-financial results. European quality prizes are awarded to companies that demonstrate excellence in the management of quality as their fundamental process for continuous improvement.

21.4 Implementing TQM

One of the common reasons for failure of TQM is a lack of understanding that it is not a programme but a process. The process should integrate and optimize a number of business and operational processes, including business vision and strategy development, product and services creation and manufacturing, different support processes, suppliers’ and customers’ relationships, effective use and development of company capabilities and resources, and many others. This means that the approach of management consultants in advising on TQM should be evolutionary, particularly if a client organization is new to the TQM philosophy and approach. A simple and systematic road to TQM is outlined in box 21.3.

However, while this road provides a good perspective on the process of moving towards TQM, real life is more complicated. These steps cannot always be used, for example in organizations that already have some experience in quality improvement and management.

Box 21.3 The road to TQM

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Where to start

In some cases, the consultant may need to apply a more sophisticated approach. It may be useful to make a distinction between four stages:

●TQM I, the simplest start, covers quality control and quality assurance. This embraces all aspects of quality that have to be managed throughout the organization. Quality is defined as conformity to specifications.

●TQM II applies the “total” concept to management and quality, as more attention to people and their attitudes begins to take effect. It is realized that the people-management implications of quality are all-pervasive.

●TQM III also applies the “total” approach to management, but with the spread of the paradigm towards customers, “total” takes on a broader sense when linked to quality. It no longer simply refers to ensuring quality but is expanded to mean delivering what the customer wants.

●TQM IV is a way of life in which everyone works wholeheartedly to do the best for customers, be they internal or external. Quality means giving customers the best value possible, not just what they think they want. Going beyond satisfaction, the total capability of the organization must be marshalled to delight customers by determining and fulfilling their latent as well as their manifest needs. This has fundamental implications for the way the entire company is organized and led. TQM IV stands for a way of managing that empowers everyone in the organization to devote their full energies and talents to being competitive in delivering value to the customer.

Recognizing the four stages of TQM evolution has practical value in:

●helping to diagnose where a company stands in the implementation process;

●ensuring that quality improvement does not end with TQM I or TQM II; it is only the beginning;

●ensuring that a company does not plunge into the full sophistication of TQM IV without putting in place the elements of TQM I and II;

●realizing that TQM IV has transcended its origin and is better understood as a shift of attention from product quality (TQM I) to delivering value to the customer.

These four stages can also be a useful tool for a consultant when deciding how an organization should make practical use of the profusion of TQM techniques. The consultant and the client can start their cooperation at any phase depending on the degree of client readiness.

Organization-wide TQM process

Before discussing the TQM process it would be useful to illustrate it through the linkages between its main process elements. Figure 21.3 shows the main elements

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Management consulting

Figure 21.3 TQM process blocks

Feedback

•Adaptability

–customer, supplier, and the organization’s TQM support and measurement system. The description below describes in more detail the characteristics of each phase of TQM.

Phase 1 – Diagnosis

This should start with a diagnosis of customers’ perceptions of suppliers’ performance, and of how much cash is lost through problems with materials and ineffective time. Having made this diagnosis, it is important to continue to ask the opinions of customers, suppliers and employees to remain in touch with the changing situation. This phase also includes the organization quality audit – the “before” situation – establishing the need for TQM, and assessing the cost of quality, market share and profitability trends. It is also important to assess the status of the quality management system and to carry out employee opinion surveys. The consultant has to define the concept of TQM and “sell” it to the senior management team.

Phase 2 – Management commitment

Obtaining the commitment of top management to TQM is essential if the process is to advance and benefit the organization. A series of workshops should

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be run, to give the top management an opportunity to understand the process that is about to begin, agree a vision, and decide on the first steps of the implementation plan. The agreed direction should be shared with all personnel, to ensure their participation. The sense of ownership of the TQM process really starts here.

Phase 3 – Establishing process ownership

All people in the organization need to understand which part of the process is their responsibility, and who their customers and suppliers are. Once the business and individual processes have been mapped, the departments should also be mapped. Any process without an owner should be assigned one; then people can start agreeing on process requirements. To do this, it is necessary to identify stages in the process flow where excessive communication occurs, identify bottlenecks, and eliminate processes that do not add value. The focus should be on process output requirements that are not being met.

Phase 4 – Defining the TQM introduction programme

Here it is necessary to define the content of the total quality introduction programme, to plan the training cascade and follow-up, develop the system development programme and plan the introduction of cross-functional process management. Consulting activities in these areas call on professional training and project planning skills and will involve working closely with the human resources department.

Phase 5 – Developing and delivering total quality training

Training should start with top managers, and focus on leadership, supporting and translating quality goals, identifying potential improvement opportunities, managing project teams, TQM and quality improvement principles, application theory, project team approach to quality improvement, the role of facilitators and the process for nominating them. Team members and team leaders, as well as facilitators, should be trained in project management, communication of goals, gaining commitment, and the process for submitting possible projects for quality improvement.

Phase 6 – Intensive action

Quality problems are addressed at functional and cross-functional levels and coordinated by the steering group or quality council with the aim of getting as many people as possible involved. The TQM support system should be developed, to support quality improvement projects, provide professional input, monitor the cost of quality, develop a project database, report on cost–benefit, etc. A tracking system for projects should be established. The company quality council should set quality goals, draft a statement of commitment, objectives and measures, define the quality process and the operation of quality teams, assign roles and criteria for facilitators, define the need for formal evaluation of the quality improvement process function by function, and arrange for publicity and recognition.

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