Quality became an important management subject because of the rise in competitiveness in global markets. Quality management should be introduced on each level of business and involved in everything that the company does, as it is a key to managing process and success.
Many quality pioneers have added to the evolution of quality concepts and tools. Among the most influential is Walter Shewart who proposed the term “quality assurance,” Joseph M. Juran who focused on strategic quality planning, Armand V. who introduced concepts of total quality control and continuous quality improvement, Kaoru Ishikawa who promoted the use of quality circles and evolved “fishbone” diagram (Kloppenborg 294).
Strategy Deployment is a process that connects superior leadership strategic planning into enterprise-wide business development practices. The strategic planning and deployment process enlighten how a company can unite and align the methods to attain performance superiority. Juran claims that:
“It addresses such critical issues as how to align strategic goals with the organization’s vision and mission, how to deploy these objectives throughout the organization, and how to derive the benefits of strategic planning.” (532)
Successfully deploying strategic implications of quality managing requires strong leadership, goals, mission, or vision, operational strategies and policies, an instrument for feedback, and a strategy focused on an understanding of the organization’s point of view of future goals. According to quality scholar Kaoru Ishikawa, “in management, the first concern of the company is the happiness of people who connected with it. If the people do not feel happy and cannot be happy, that company does not deserve to exist” (Bose 246). Rothaermel pointed out that “the company, which has a competitive advantage, performs financially much better than other firms in the industry or better than the industry average” (32). For instance, the stability of Toyota company quality management stands on essential quality and just-in-time service for customers. Toyota learned over many years that the key to the success of the business is the development of internal structures and behaviors to handle the influence of external forces and changing environments.
However, there might be some hidden dangers in strategy planning; for example, a manager usually faces difficulties while ensuring employees that the focus on planning and strict terms are significant or understanding stakeholder expectations sometimes correspond to a great deal.
The term “Six Sigma” is received from the normal distribution used in statistics. This phenomenon can be graphically illustrated as a bell-shaped curve or normal distribution. Six Sigma is a set of techniques and core tools to design, control, and improve the operational performance of the business by identifying and excluding the variability and causes of waste. Made it central by Jack Welch to his business strategy at General Electric, today Six Sigma is a set of quality management tools, chiefly statistical or empirical, and creates a particular group of people within the company, who are competent in these methods. Six Sigma management style should be taken into account if one trying to restructure his management style in order to improve business quality.
Infused by Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle of Deming, Six Sigma divides into two project approaches. The methodologies DMAIC and DMADV are including five stages each. DMAIC (an abbreviation for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) concerns to a data-driven development cycle used to improve, optimize and stabilize business processes and designs. DMADV project (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, Verify) is often recognized as a synonym of DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) while such alternatives as IDOV (Identify, Design, Optimize, Verify) are commonly used as well.
Statistical tools like linear regression are the basis of the DMADV that enables empirical investigation similar to that represented in other fields, such as, for instance, social science. The purpose of DFSS is defining the needs of clientele and the business and forcing those needs into the created product resolution, whereas a process required to be in place and functioning is indispensable for the tools and order used in Six Sigma.
DFSS is applicable for comparatively simple items or systems. It is utilized for product or process design opposing to process improvement.
Except the particular stages of a DMAIC or DMADV approaches, Six Sigma exploits plenty of reliable quality management strategies that are also utilizing out of Six Sigma. Among them are the seven basic quality tools that consist of the following: cause-and-effect diagram (also called Ishikawa chart), check sheet, histogram, Pareto chart, control charts, scatter diagram, and stratification.
The theory of quality management that is now normally referred to Total Quality Management (TQM) created by Edwards Deming, an American statistician, author, and professor, includes 14 Points, 7 Deadly Disease, Deming Cycle (Plan-do-check-act), and System of Profound Knowledge. Deming understood that the prevailing style of management needed to be changed to become competitive. Some courses of statistical quality-control strategies were elaborated by him for engineers and representatives of firms that were military purveyors during the period of World War II. After the war, Deming began teaching statistical quality control to Japanese and American companies.
Deming offered 14 key principles to transforming business effectiveness, after that Japanese companies like Toyota, Fuji, and Sony achieved great success. Although the recommendations he gives do not tell people precisely how to realize the transformations, they do provide enough information concerning what should be amended. Businesses, companies, and organizations are defied to practice Deming’s principles. Summing all of them up, the 14 points are a guide to the significance of generating customer consciousness, reducing variation, and developing permanent change and enhancement throughout organizations.
The System of Profound Knowledge, the culmination of Deming’s lifelong work, consists of four parts:
- Appreciation of a system;
- Theory of knowledge;
- The psychology of change;
- Knowledge about variation.
Probably Dr. Deming’s greatest contribution to the management was to outlook an organization as a system, that he determined as an arrangement of interrelated parts that act together trying to achieve the system’s intention. The greater collaboration between employees and managers also should promote the accomplishment. Properly applying the practices and principles of SoPK, a company can concurrently reduce costs through minimizing waste, rework, staff abrasion and proceedings while increasing quality, employee satisfaction, consumer loyalty, and, eventually, effectiveness. Unfortunately, deadly diseases such as lack of constancy of purpose, emphasis on short-term profits, etc. still stand in the way of transformation (Deming 17). However, Deming Plan-do-check-act theory (PDCA), so-called never-ending cycle based on the imperfection of socio-technical systems, allows to receive feedback loop (information about outputs) to analyze the business processes (Gupta 227).
The pursuit of quality requires that companies develop their system of interdependent stakeholders, which include employees, customers, investors, and the business environment. Learning strategic planning, deployment and core tools to design, control, and improve performance is indispensable for great quality managing, therefore for a business success.
Works Cited
Bose, Tapan K. Total Quality of Management. Delhi: Pearson, 2011. Print.
Deming, W. Edwards, and Joyce Nilsson Orsini. The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality Management. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. Print.
Gupta, Manish. Strategic and Practical Approaches for Information Security Governance Technologies and Applied Solutions. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2012. Print.
Juran, J. M. Juran’s Quality Handbook: The Complete Guide to Performance Excellence. 6th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2010. Print.
Kloppenborg, Timothy J. Contemporary Project Management: Organize, Plan, Perform. 2nd ed. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
Rothaermel, Frank T. Strategic Management: Concepts & Cases. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2013. Print.