Introduction
As part of the job and training needs assessment, the company chosen is Rolling Technologies, based in United Kingdom. The job analyzed is total quality management. The head of this section is the total quality manager. For the purpose of this paper, the title of the job will be “total quality management”. Since the person interviewed performs or oversees many functions, the report will detail the main functions, such as quality assurance, customer focus, and benchmarking and supplier management. The report will entail the exact definitions and descriptions given from the interview and not what the interviewer knows or read in books.
What Are the Major Functions of This Job?
The job is total quality management. Total quality management is an integrative management approach aimed at enhancing the quality of processes and products (Farr & Tippins, 2013). Total quality management usually works on the premise that the processes and products quality is everyone’s responsibility, especially those tasked with the consumption and creation of products. In other words, total quality management usually maximizes the participation of employees, management, suppliers as well as the clients, with the purpose of meeting or exceeding customers’ demand. The major functions include Quality Assurance, Customer Focus, Benchmarking, the Quality Function Deployment, and Managing Supplier Quality.
What Is It the Employee Is Supposed to Accomplish?
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance is an element of quality management and aims at ensuring that quality prerequisites in the company have been accomplished (Nigam, 2005). This aspect of TQM has always been implemented at Rolling Technologies in UK to assist managers to produce services and products that assure consumers’ value for their money. In addition, quality assurance is helpful in assisting the company to avoid breakdowns that might occasion unnecessary costs in the company.
Customer Focus
The main work is incessantly collecting information by way of different focus groups, customer interviews and market surveys in the process of staying in line with their customers’ demand.
Benchmarking
Morfaw (2009) states that benchmarking is another way that telecommunication companies, especially the Rolling Technologies, have been using to execute continuous improvements. It is important to note that contrary to PDSA, benchmarking is usually based on studying different business practices. This is actually based on the understanding that the aptitude to study and learn the way others carry out their practices is an essential aspect of continuous improvement.
The Quality Function Deployment
Spector (2012) shows that QFD is a vital element of creating quality into services and products in order to make sure that the design of products and services meant for customers actually meets their demand. It is an important element used by the organization to translate the feedback of clients into reality.
Managing Supplier Quality
In the telecommunication sector, total quality management extends the quality concept to the suppliers as well (Farr & Tippins, 2013). Conventionally, some of the telecommunication corporations tend to record many suppliers that take part in the competitive price bidding. In fact, when materials from suppliers arrive at the companies’ premises, inspections are to be conducted to ascertain their fitness.
What Constitutes Acceptable Performance and Outstanding Performance?
Quality Assurance
There are many things that constitute acceptable performance of total quality management in regards to quality assurance. Quality Assurance helps to avoid breakdowns that might occasion unnecessary costs (Morfaw, 2009). Some of the costs comprise prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal and external failure costs. On the other hand, when QA is employed to produce services and products that assure consumers value for their money, then it is identified as outstanding performance.
Customer Focus
At this point, acceptable performance is evident when the TQM recognizes that an ideal fashioned service and product bears no value if it does not meet customer demand. Outstanding performance entails ensuring that things wanted by clients are provided based on their preferences and tastes. For instance, in the telecommunication company, the employee ensures that all phones and network systems are efficient.
Benchmarking
Acceptable performance at this point entails recording the existing procedures, identifying problems and collecting data that is useful for solving the established problems. Outstanding performance here entails continuous improvement. That is, ensuring that services are continuously produced, successfully solving problems and promoting learning.
The Quality Function Deployment
In terms of acceptable performance, QFD ensures that there is continuous improvement of quality of services and products in order to make sure that the design of products and services meant for customers actually meets their demand (Spector, 2012). In terms of outstanding performance, the employee must design products and provide services that really conform to the expectations of their customers and are usually in line with particular technical needs.
Managing Supplier Quality
In terms of acceptable performance, suppliers themselves need to check on the quality of the material before supplying them to company. In terms of outstanding performance, the employee ensures that the company has representatives based near their suppliers in order to ensure that all the materials delivered to companies meet the required standards.
What Would Best Reflect Good Performance on this Job?
This process is majorly associated with self motivation in order to overcome troubles and to get things back on track (Nigam, 2005). High level of self management is an essential part of the performance, whereby discipline is the driving force in all the aspects an individual engages in. The benefits of being self disciplined are to minimize the work overload and reworking. At standardization level, an individual establishes end-to-end standards that will eventually assist to integrate personal processes. Ideally, this is the level at which an individual betters productivity and effective automation of engagements. Having accomplished all these aspects at this stage, an individual is then supposed to manage processes and performances quantitatively. This is normally the time for real-time corrections and reuse of best practices used to achieve the best results. Finally, personal maturity usually ends with optimization level for continuous proactive improvement. This is usually an important level during which the personal targets are achieved and personal agility to all engagements is enhanced.
Training part
The title of the job is total quality management. It entails delivering many things: services and products. The areas that need training include:
Continuous Improvement
The company employee/management usually focuses on the continuous improvement of products and services as an important element of the total quality management (Nigam, 2005). Since most of these companies know that achieving perfection is not easy, they always base their improvements on thorough evaluation of their performance and taking best measures to enhance it. Two aspects that are vital for the success of the company are PDSA and benchmarking. Therefore, there should be extra training in these areas to ensure they are integrated and deliver what is expected of them.
KSAO to Be Reinforced by the Recommended Training
To begin with, KSAO refers to knowledge, skills, abilities as well as other related aspects. Knowledge and skills of a leader are KSAO that would need some enhancements. Specifically, the employee may need to familiarize with different ways of analyzing and designing processes (Spector, 2012). The objective of the analysis stage of the business process design is to appreciate the way the business processes interact and function. For instance, it helps in understanding the organization, its mission and relating this to its existing business processes. It enables one identify and assess a wide range of activities and processes currently operational with the business premise, and ascertain the manner in which the business objectives can be achieved. In terms of leadership skills, the manager would want to lead his teams well. In some projects, the workshop teams usually spend a lot of time checking the functioning of processes, whilst others usually spend most of their time designing improved processes, in relation to the existing needs of the organization. In projects, that are design based, the workshop team may design processes that can be improved without a lot of emphasis on the existing organizational situation, but may consider the overall impact on the organization. Nonetheless, some level of analysis and oversight is usually needed as an aspect of the design, to build up a consensus among the teams regarding the major points or areas of failure in the existing processes and the opportunities for improvement.
Tasks that Would Be Facilitated by the Training
The nature of the PDSA cycle indicates that continuous improvement in most companies is a never ending process. The steps involved in Plan-do-study-act cycle are discussed below:
- Plan is usually the initial step in the cycle. With this, the managers in the telecommunication sector must always asses their existing process first and thereafter fashion out strategies based on varied problems found. Besides, the managers stipulate that there is always need to record their existing procedures, identify problems, and collect data that is useful for solving the problems found. At the end of this process, the information obtained is examined closely and employed to develop strategies for improvement.
- Do. In the PDSA cycle, Do is particularly essential in the implementation of the formulated plans. Particularly at this point, the role of the manager is to record all the changes that have been made, including the data for evaluation.
- Study is the second last step and is mostly concentrated on studying of the information that was collected previously. This stage is essential as the information collected is closely assessed to ascertain feasibility of the plan in relation to goals as laid down in the plan.
- Act. The final stage in the PDSA cycle is referred to as Act. It is mainly concerned with acting on the end results from the previous stages. Ideally, this is usually accomplished through relaying of the outcomes to all the stakeholders of the corporation followed by the implementation of the new procedures basing on its success. I is important to keep in mind that this process is cyclic, hence, the next undertaking is to plan afresh.
References
Farr, J., & Tippins, N. (2013). Handbook of Employee Selection. New York, NY: Routledge.
Morfaw, J. (2009). Total quality management (TQM): a model for the sustainability of projects and programs in Africa. Lanham MD: University Press of America.
Nigam, S. (2005). Total quality management : an integrated approach. New Delhi, India: Excel Books.
Spector, P. (2012). Industrial and organizational psychology: research and practice. Chichester, UK: John Wiley.