CONCEPTS AND OBJECTIVES OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT

The concept of quality as we think of it now first emerged out of the Industrial Revolution. Previously goods had been made from start to finish by the same person or team of people, with handcrafting and tweaking the product to meet 'quality criteria'. Mass production brought huge teams of people together to work on specific stages of production where one person would not necessarily complete a product from start to finish. In the late 1800s pioneers such as Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford recognized the limitations of the methods being used in mass production at the time and the subsequent varying quality of output. Taylor established Quality Departments to oversee the quality of production and rectifying of errors, and Ford emphasized standardization of design and component standards to ensure a standard product was produced. Management of quality was the responsibility of the Quality department and was implemented by Inspection of product output to 'catch' defects.

Application of statistical control came later as a result of World War production methods. Quality management systems are the outgrowth of work done by W. Edwards Deming, a statistician, after whom the Deming Prize for quality is named.

Quality, as a profession and the managerial process associated with the quality function, was introduced during the second-half of the 20th century, and has evolved since then. Over this period, few other disciplines have seen as many changes as the quality profession.

The quality profession grew from simple control, to engineering, to systems engineering. Quality control activities were predominant in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The 1970s were an era of quality engineering and the 1990s saw quality systems as an emerging field. Like medicine, accounting, and engineering, quality has achieved status as a recognized profession.

Definition

Quality is customer satisfaction. According to ISO 8402, quality is “the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”

Broadly Quality is;

1. Fitness for use
2. Grade
3. Degree of preference
4. Degree of excellence
5. Conformity of requirements

Universal process of managing quality

1. Quality planning

Establish quality goals, identify customers, discover customer needs, develop product features, develop process features, establish process controls and transfer to operations

2. Quality Control

Choose control subjects, choose units to measure, set goals, create a sensor, measure actual performance, interpret the difference and take action on the difference.

3. Quality improvement

Prove the need, identify projects, organize project teams, diagnose the causes, provide remedies which prove that the remedies are effective, deal with resistance, change and control, and hold the gains.

Concepts

To have a systematic approach to TQM, it is necessary to develop a conceptual model. Generally, a model is a sequence of steps arranged logically to guide the implementation of a process in order to achieve the ultimate goal. Recognized practices were included to develop a step by step guideline which is universally applicable.