FREE online courses on Quality Management System - Quality Management Principles

 

Quality management principles are a set of comprehensive and fundamental rules or beliefs, for leading and operating an organization, aimed at continually improving performance over the long term, by focusing on customers while addressing the needs of all stakeholders.

 

Quality management principles provide understanding of and guidance on the application of quality management in an organization.

 

As per International Organization for Standardization, following eight quality management principles can facilitate any organization in creating quality work culture and successful implementation of quality management.

 

n       Principle 1      :        Customer focused organization

n       Principle 2      :        Leadership

n       Principle 3      :        Involvement of people

n       Principle 4      :        Process approach

n       Principle 5      :        System approach to management

n       Principle 6      :        Continual improvement

n       Principle 7      :        Fact based approach to decision making

n       Principle 8      :        Mutually beneficial supplier relationship

 

1. Customer focused organization: Organizations depend on their customers and therefore, should understand the current and future needs of the customer, meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.

 

Customer focus means producing and supplying the products and services that are liked and wanted by them and provide customer satisfaction.

 

Customer satisfaction is the result of a number of positive and negative factors, which are experienced by the customer.  The more satisfaction factors present, the higher the customer satisfaction.  This can be achieved by the following actions.

 

n       Identify the customer needs

n       Design a product which responds to customer needs

n       Produce and deliver the products as per the design

n       Enhance after sales service and handle complaints quickly

n       Measure the customer satisfaction

n       Improve the quality to delight the customer

 

2. Leadership: Leaders establish unity of  purpose and direction of the organization.  They should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives.

 

Leadership comes from senior leader's personal leadership and involvement in creating and sustaining values, company direction, performance expectations and a leadership system that promotes excellence in performance.  Leadership system refers to how leadership is exercised through the company - the basis for and the way in which key decisions are made, communicated and implemented at all levels of the organization.

 

An effective leadership system creates clear vision, figures out shared values, brings intrinsic change in the behavior of the people and motivates them to respect the requirements of customers and other stakeholders and sets high expectations of performance and continuous improvement in performance.  It builds loyalties and teamwork based upon the values and pursuit of shared purposes.  It encourages and supports the development of leadership skills in the people, provides guidance and examples regarding behavior and practices and avoids chain of command that delays decisions.

 

Changing the behavior of the people is one of the most critical challenges for the leader during the process of change.

 

People do not necessarily resist change - they resist being changed.  Most of the problems faced during a change are generally due to communication.  It is important to give people adequate time to understand the true needs and the process of change.  Leaders should promote open communication and reinforce values, directions, expectations, customer focus and the commitment to learning throughout the organization.

 

The stronger the organization culture/values towards the customer and market place, the lesser the need for policy, procedures and chain of command to achieve the organizational objectives.

 

3. Involvement of people: People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization's benefit.

 

To get full involvement of people, three things are essential - desire to get involved, an interesting work system and the capacity to perform the job.

 

Desire to get involvement of people can be created by motivation and employee satisfaction.

 

Some of the factors which enhance the desire for involvement include:

 

n       A good corporate culture

n       Safe and healthy work environment

n       Reward and recognition system

n       Opportunities for career growth and personal development

n       Family welfare and social security

 

An interesting work system can be established by work and job design.  The basic aim of job design is to enable the employees to exercise their discretion and decision making ability, leading to flexibility and rapid response to the changing requirements of the market-place.  This can be achieved by job classification, job rotations, cross-functional training, work layouts, etc.

 

Capability of the people to perform specific tasks can be enhanced by education and training.  Education and training addresses the knowledge and skills employees need to meet their overall work and personal objectives.

 

According to the great Japanese quality Guru Kaoru Ishikawa “Quality begins with education and ends with education”. 

 

4.  Process approach: A desired result is achieved more effectively when related resources and activities are managed as a process.

 

In fact, an organization works through a network of processes. Processes should be managed to meet the requirements and needs of both internal and external customers. Clear responsibility must be established for managing the process and interface of the process with functions of the organization must be identified.

 

Problems should be addressed by improvement in the processes.

 

5. System approach to management: Identifying, understanding and managing a system of interrelated processes for a given objective improves the organization's effectiveness and efficiency.

 

A system is defined by identifying all interrelated processes and their interdependence.  It is managed as a system of interrelated processes.  A system can be improved by continuous measuring and evaluating all related processes.

 

An effective system provides confidence in the organization's capability to meet the customer requirements.

 

6. Continual improvement: Continual improvement should be the permanent objective of an organization.

 

Quality improvement is a continuous activity, aiming for even higher process effectiveness and efficiency. (This was discussed in detail in Chapter 7).

 

7. Factual approach to decision making: Effective decisions and actions are based on the analysis of data and information.

 

All decisions should be based on facts instead of individual's “opinion”.  Facts are unknown until they are established through collection of measurable data.  By the analysis of relevant data, correct information can be generated.  Decisions arrived on fact-based information, significantly reduce the risk of quality failures.

 

Performance of any person or process can be improved by using correct data.  Decisions and actions should be based on the analysis of data and information to improve results.  The following “fact to act” process can be used for managing the quality.

 

What is fact? Most of the quality problems are generally caused either due to wrong knowledge or incorrect operations. To discover what is wrong or what is incorrect, one has to find out the fact.

 

The Fact is an overused expression; everyone assumes that they know facts, but no one actually knows.  This reminds us of the famous story of  “Panchtantra” in which five blind men wanted to know how an elephant looks like?  After touching the different parts of the elephant's body, they gave five different descriptions of the elephant - like a trunk, a wall, a rope, a pipe and a flat plate. Each of them believed that only his experience was correct and others were wrong.

 

In the same way, in our industrial and business situations, people describe a fact from their partial vision and feel that they are only right and others are wrong.

 

Quality problems cannot be solved by discussions of managers based on their personal experiences and opinions only. Words cannot always describe facts.  Many times what is understood as white, after fact-finding turns out to be black. Discussions based on the opinions of individuals cannot decide whether it is white or black.

 

To know what is black and what is white, “let the facts reveal themselves”.

 

To get fact from facts, with an open mind, carefully check things one by one.  In fact, facts have infinite features and our knowledge and experience are finite and always imperfect.  Humble acceptance of this philosophy would make the facts appear.

 

A person who is engaged in a job for a long time is known as Experienced. An experienced person has great deal of knowledge about the job that he has been doing for a long time.  But his knowledge may be correct or incorrect.  The problem is that he does not know what is correct and what is incorrect?

 

An experienced person who always furnishes his knowledge based on facts is called an Expert. A true expert goes on continuously correcting and upgrading his knowledge from the facts.  And, thus acquires true knowledge.

 

Unfortunately, all persons with experience are not necessarily true experts.

 

To dig out facts we have to work carefully to acquire true knowledge.

 

To find out facts, take the help of a true expert. With the application of true knowledge the facts can be found in the following ways:

 

n       Step 1: Observe work area and actual operations.

n       Step 2: Determine relevant features.

n       Step 3: Clarify the purpose of data collection.

n       Step 4: Collect valid data.

n       Step 5: Use statistical methods and analyze thoroughly.

n       Step 6: Think out correct solution

 

8. Strategic partnership for quality: An organization and its suppliers are independent and a mutually beneficial relationship enhances the ability to create value.

 

Continuous feedback on customer needs and requirements to sub-suppliers ensures continuous supply of quality products and services.  Based on mutual trust and open communication, partnerships for quality are established with selected primary suppliers for jointly understanding current and future needs of the ultimate customers.

 

A new approach known as partnering has evolved during the recent past. Partnering is a management process that promotes successful supply chain development and execution through teamwork. It allows groups to capitalize on each other's activities in order to contribute towards common quality goals. The customer and the supplier work together to accomplish a task that benefits both. Partnering creates a win-win situation among involved parties and more importantly, improves customer satisfaction.