Quality free essay sample

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management strategy that puts awareness of quality at the heart of all organizational processes. This is combined with a strong philosophy of lowering costs by eliminating waste and defects. So TQM can be described as a management system that aims at a continual increase in customer satisfaction while continually lowering real costs. The father of TQM was William Deming, an American college professor, author, and consultant. Deming played a major role in improving production in the United States during World War II, but after the war he moved to Japan. There, from 1950 onwards, he taught top management how to improve design, product quality, testing and sales (the latter by entering global markets). Deming is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. Demings ideas were developed in America around the same time by Feigenbaum and others, and an early adopter of TQM in the States was the US Navvy. We will write a custom essay sample on Quality or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In the original Japanese model of TQM there are four steps to improving performance: 1 Kaizen: a focus on continuous improvement through making processes visible, epeatable and measurable. 2 Atarimae Hinshitsu: making sure that things work exactly as they are supposed to. 3 Kansei: examining the way the user actually uses the product in real life in order to improve the product. 4 Miryokuteki Hinshitsu: making sure that products have an aesthetic quality. The slightly more restricted term quality assurance refers Just to product quality in a manufacturing operation, rather than wider issues of customer service, etc. Quality assurance involves sampling a random selection of the product and then testing this sample for hatever matters most to the end users. The causes of any failures are isolated and corrected, and the process of analyzing the causes of any problems often leads to a redesign of the production process or of the parts and components themselves (to make them easier to manufacture). TQM peaked in the early 1990s, and it is sometimes seen as Just another management fad. Perhaps it is a victim of its own success most modern products are much better quality than 20 years ago. It has been replaced by other related concepts and processes. These include lean anufacturing and Six Sigma. Lean manufacturing (= lean production) aims to eliminate waste in every area of production, so that means less human effort, less inventory, less time to develop products, and less factory space. Some key techniques include: Pull processing: products are pulled from the consumer end (demand), not pushed from the production end (supply) Perfect first-time quality, solving problems at the source Continuous improvement: reducing costs, improving quality, increasing productivity and sharing information Flexibility: producing different ixes or a greater diversity of products quickly Building a long-term relationship with suppliers through collaboration and the sharing of risk, costs and information Six Sigma is a collection of tools, training and measurements developed by Motorola to improve the manufacturing process. It aims to reduce defective parts to 3. 4 per million opportunities (this measure being called six sigma in statistics). One of its features is the appointment of in-house champions, experts and black belts to tocus on quality across tunctions and departments