Contents
1. What is Total Quality?
What quality means, The consultant, Defining the terms, Company-wide quality improvement, Homogeneity.
2 Quality related costs.
Who suffers most - service or manufacturing? Supply and demand,
Quality-related cost elements, No quality absolutes!, -The Hutchins hypothesis - Unnecessary perfectionism, Accounting for quality-related costs,
Total Quality success stories 1.
Kanzanji Hotel, Hawaiian Spa, Matsuchita Refrigerator Company, Summary
Total Quality success stories 2.
Kobayashi Kose, Komatsu, Total Quality in the United Kingdom,
Short Bros, Belfast, Amersham International, H.J. Heinz, UK, Conclusion. 5 Statistical process control
Case 1 The leaky catheter bag, Case 2 Bandage knitting needles, Variable data,
Case 2 revisited - measuring the finished product,
Case 3 Plant maintenance, Frequency diagrams for simple control, Concentration diagram method,
Case 4 Stitching faults, Variable data control, Moving up the scale,
Case 5 The cracked bed. 6 Quality improvement - the human factor.
Getting results from people, Professional specialization, A remedy for short-termism, The role of Quality Circles, Strategy for the chief executive,
7 Systems, ISO 9000 and BS 5750 in context, Supplier evaluation, Third party assessment and supplier evaluation, Summary, Alternative strategies
8 The problem-solving process
Project ownership, Project identification, Project selection, Project description, Problem-solving, Project by project improvement to overcome excessive, order to delivery time.
9. Implementing Total Quality
Policy management, Policy development, Critical success factors, Customer perceptions, Strengths and weaknesses against competition, Benchmarking, Annual goals, Establishing the structure, Facilitator and team leader training, Policy deployment or dissemination, Feedback loop, Annual audit and review, Recognition and reward, Quality Council, Conclusion.
Appendix I A brief history of Total Quality, Its roots in Japan, Japanese Total Quality Control, The 1990s, Appendix II The international scene, Quality in the United States, Quality in Japan, Quality in Europe, Singapore: Total Quality - a national programme, Conclusion.
Appendix III Total Quality health check
Self-assessment inventory.
Suggested scoring method.
Personal evaluation by QCC members
Total Quality Health Check |
Achieve Total Quality
Preface
The object of this text is to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the key concepts related to Total Quality. The book is not exhaustive on any one aspect of Total Quality, since the subject is so complex that to achieve this would require several volumes. And indeed, this is not my purpose here. Rather, the aim is to provide the busy executive with the basic knowledge necessary to avoid going down false trails in the quest for the best strategy for the company's development.
All the techniques and concepts described in this book have been tried and tested: it contains no unproven theories or hypotheses. And to support the, argument, extensive use is made of case study material.
Thanks are due to the work and support of many colleagues in the writing of this book. Of particular importance are the contributions of colleagues from David Hutchins International Limited and the knowledge I have gained from Dr J.M. Juran. There is also the subconscious transmutation of other people's ideas, but the reader will find enough original material here to ensure that this text is a genuine contribution to this fascinating and fast-developing and exciting subject.
I stumbled unwittingly into the world of quality in the mid-1960s. At that time, I was a production engineer in an automotive component manufacturing company. The level of defects there was unacceptably high, and it was obvious that the cost of poor quality could not be sustained. To remedy the problem I introduced statistical quality control. I had learned it as a student and believed that every company except ours used it. Two decades later I realized that we had probably been pioneers in the field, even though the techniques had been invented in the 1930s. It is ironic to note the current 'discovery' of what is now referred to as Statistical Process Control, bearing in mind what we did so many years ago. However, I do not wish to take credit away from my boss at that time, Brian Banfield. Without his foresight and inspiration my career would probably have taken a different path. For, having entered the world of quality from outside the quality profession, I have been early in the field of challenging some of the basic tenets of traditional western thinking on quality. One thing is certainly true: from the first publicity related to the British Defence Standards, which came into force in June 1972 and proved to be the forerunner of BS 5750 (ISO 9001:2000), I have never been comfortable with the principle of third party assessment. I have always believed that third party assessment leads to quality being perceived as a policing activity, parallel to operations but not intrinsically part of them. Nothing that has happened since then has altered my view. It was this concern that led me to study Japanese quality before many others, and I am convinced that, in the end, Total Quality, based on project by project improvement and supported by policy management, will prevail over all other initiatives. |