Total quality

Introduction

Different definitions revolve around quality. For Deming, quality means offering customers reliable and satisfactory products and services at low cost. While for Juran, the important thing is that the product or service is suitable for its use, for Crosby, quality is the fulfillment of the quality requirements of each company, or in other words, to comply with the specifications.

Starting from a different perspective, we can define quality as the ethical commitment to excellence, because only a company that has defined in its supreme values the generation of quality products and services will be truly committed to achieving it.

Excellence must be pursued as a strategic objective in order to maintain competitiveness, but it also constitutes a philosophy of life and a work ethic. Bringing the company to the top by generating high-level products and services with efficient use of resources should be the ultimate goal of company managers and staff.

Each manager and employee should be proud of the products and services that they generate, in such a way that quality becomes a strong motivating element, which leads to a spiral of growth in levels of quality and satisfaction.

Quality must understand all corners of the company. If internal quality is not generated, an appropriate quality can hardly be offered to external agents. Therefore, quality is built and generated in each activity, task and process of the company.

Each design, each component, each task, each product, each service must be improved day by day. To do this, leaders must model their minds and then do the same with the rest of the staff. Thus, in the manner of an athlete who must improve every day to be able to aspire to the podium, in the same way, only those organizations that have the firm intention of continuously improving will be able to succeed in today's markets.

Quality does or does not mean continuous improvement. If we don't think of an "excellent" doctor but with knowledge and treatments of not twenty, but five years ago. This doctor will not be able to provide his patients the same service as those who are fully updated, therefore his service will not be of quality. In this way, patients receive a lower quality service from the first of the professionals. It should be noted that this situation is unfortunately something quite common in many professionals who, once they have obtained the degree, do not update their knowledge accordingly, thus revalidating their levels of competitiveness.

In the same way, companies must improve quality every day, because by improving it they can obtain lower costs, increase customer satisfaction and reach a greater market share.

Building excellence implies complying with seven fundamental points.

1. Awareness of owners, managers and employees about the crucial importance of quality as the basis and foundation of productivity, costs, differentiation, market share, level of sales, company survival, competitiveness and return on capital.

2. Take the quality defined by customers and / or consumers, based on their needs and wishes, proceeding to set the specifications of products and services based on those.

3. Determine the parameters of the inputs, components and processes in order to achieve compliance with the specifications of the products and services.

4. Plan for the purpose of setting quality objectives and policies, and consequently determine the pertinent strategies, tactics and actions to make them a reality.

5. Organize the company in order to establish relationships between the various members of the company in order to make quality objectives feasible.

6. To direct and lead the human forces of the company to inspire and motivate them in the search for excellence.

7. Implement control systems in order to measure and correct individual and organizational performance to ensure that events are consistent with the objectives set.

Awareness

The first to become aware of the importance of quality are managers and owners. Managers should be the ones who, taking into consideration the real dimension of the strategic importance of the company to achieve the highest levels of quality and productivity, must convince the owners and shareholders of this, who in search of the greatest benefits in the short term, they neglect the importance for the corporation of continuous process improvement, investment in personnel through training and development, and research and development activities.

Only when they are truly embedded in the urgent need to establish quality as the supreme objective for the survival and competitiveness of the corporation, will they be able to demand equal awareness from the rest of the staff. This leadership is the key and necessary factor for the conceptual to be put into action through concrete facts.

It is the daily example shown in its decisions and determinations by the top management, which will serve as a stimulus for action by the middle and lower levels of the organization. For this it is essential that managers avoid contradictions between their sayings and deeds, hence the importance that actions do not contradict their words. A manager cannot demand quality and at the same time not comply with the components fixed in the container, in order to reduce costs. Or demand first-class attention from clients and reduce the number of personnel for their attention.

Management has to commit to quality; In other words, you should not knowingly ship defective products or provide poor quality service. You must do what you say you will do, and not less. A director who authorizes the breach of any requirement without the client's agreement is not committed and consubstantiated with quality, whatever the reasons. When we speak of quality we are speaking of total quality, and it encompasses all the sectors and activities of the organization. It is useless to have the best product at the lowest cost, if the order reception service is of poor quality, if deliveries are not made in a timely manner, or if the billing sector lives causing problems for customers.

The proof that managers are committed to quality will be evident from their actions and decisions. When you start spending quality time and money, dedicating people to solving problems, listening to your staff and the customer, then there will be commitment. A commitment is an obligation that a person (or a company) has to do something. It is very easily tested by examining the results.

"Commitment means doing what is said, not saying what is done." A commitment that is not communicated is merely a personal commitment, with no obligation except with one's conscience. Therefore, managers and the company need to communicate their commitment to employees, customers, suppliers, investors and the community.

User defines quality

It must be understood that the user is the one who defines the quality; the company must please customers, and not be content with just ridding them of their immediate problems, but going further to fully understand their present and future needs, in order to surprise them with products and services they never even imagined. This knowledge should no longer just be the exclusive domain of special groups in an organization; it must be shared and developed by all employees.

A company that defines quality without taking consumers into account runs the risk of producing goods and services with little or no demand, either because customers have other expectations and needs, or because competitors are generating goods with greater value added.

For these reasons it is essential for companies to practice both market research, competitive intelligence and benchmarking.

Knowing the wishes and needs of consumers, these must be translated in quantitative and tangible terms. This translation process is not easy and requires the integration of marketing knowledge with engineering and administration, so that the consumer's needs and the expectations that he developed during the product selection process can be fully satisfied.

Among the most important technique for such purposes we have the Quality Function Deployment (QFD), which is used to carry out this entire translation process, helping the client's voice to spread throughout the entire organization.

The quality display function aims to ensure that customer expectations are met from product design, through its manufacturing process, and until it is used by the consumer. In Japanese it is called ten kai which means “deployment”, referring to the idea of taking the needs and expectations of the client expressed in their language (voice of the client) to all those involved in the organization, and going at each stage “translating them ”To the appropriate language.

Determine the specifications of the inputs, parts and processes

The complete QFD procedure covers four phases. In the first, which focuses on the general design of the product or service, the attributes required by the client are related and evaluated with the technical characteristics of the product, which results in the design specifications.

In the following phases, the correlation and evaluation is carried out between the design specifications and the characteristics of the main components or parts of the product (detailed design phase), resulting in the appropriate specifications for these; then the specifications of the components and parts are correlated and evaluated with the characteristics of the production process (process phase), obtaining as a result its specifications; finally, the process specifications with the production characteristics (production phase), to have the most appropriate production specifications.

This philosophy is based on the fact that it is much easier to incorporate quality at this stage than to force it to have products with complicated designs and excessively complex processes. It is difficult for products to achieve a high level of quality at low cost if the characteristics of the product, and therefore the effect this has on the design of the processes, have not been properly analyzed and evaluated from the beginning.

The planning of products and processes will be carried out through the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) with which the design is planned based on the requirements of the consumers and the most suitable design alternatives are selected; the Modal Analysis of Failures and Defects (AMFE) with which the designs are validated based on the potential failures that they can present and their correction; and the Statistical Design of Experiments (DEE) that allows optimizing the designs based on the variables that configure them to obtain the highest quality at the lowest cost.

Planning

Planning for quality, or taking due consideration of quality in planning, is the central theme of this fourth point. If quality must invade all areas, activities and processes of the organization, it is essential that it takes quality into account in each of the fundamental functions of the administrative process, planning being the first of the functions. In strategic planning it is essential to set the values of the organization. Values are the basic belief that one specific form of behavior or behavior is preferable to others. Therefore, in an organization that strives for excellence, total quality and its continuous improvement must be set as one of its transcendent values.

Planning conceived as the selection of missions and objectives, and the strategies, policies, programs and procedures to achieve them, must have a benchmark in quality. When it comes to quality objectives, the ISO 9004 standard defines quality objectives as fundamental elements of quality, such as fitness for use, function, safety and reliability.

Furthermore, it mentions the calculation and evaluation of costs associated with all quality objectives. He goes on to suggest that specific quality objectives are documented and consistent with the quality policy, as well as with the other objectives of the organization.

“The requirement to define the objectives is one of the most important requirements. Without quality objectives there is no goal to achieve, the system stalls, there is no improvement and there are no indications of whether things are being done well. There are two types of quality objectives, those that serve for quality control and those that serve for quality improvement ”.

Although the Management is responsible for the planning and setting of objectives, the full participation of all company personnel must be achieved in order to commit them to achieving these objectives. It should always be remembered that there is no commitment without participation.

There are five types of quality objectives:

Objectives for the operation of the business, aimed at markets, the environment and society.

Objectives for the operation of the product or service, aimed at the needs of the client and the competition.

Objectives for the operation of the process, aimed at the capacity, efficiency, and effectiveness of the process, its use of resources and its control.

Objectives for the operation of the organization, aimed at the capacity, efficiency and effectiveness of the organization, its sensitivity to change, the environment in which people work, etc.

Objectives for worker functioning, aimed at the skills, knowledge, ability, motivation and development of workers.

The achievement of quality objectives implies the need to prepare an annual Quality Program. The program must be established and implemented in each department or, in small companies, a single program that covers the entire organization.

Once the objectives are established, it is crucial to determine the strategies and tactics for achieving them. For this, the inclusion of quality in budgets is of paramount importance in order to allocate the necessary items for prevention and evaluation activities. It is useless to set goals if resources are not allocated later in order to make them come true.

Organization

Consisting of establishing an intentional structure of roles to be filled by members of the organization. Thus, every organization creates a structure to facilitate the coordination of activities and to control the acts of its members. The structure itself is made up of three elements.

The first refers to the degree to which the organization's activities are broken down or differentiated. This is called complexity. Second, we have the degree to which rules or procedures are used, calling the same formalism. And finally we have centralization, which refers to the point where the authority for decision making lies.

Among the types of complexity we have to differentiate the horizontal, the vertical and the spatial. The horizontal differences consider the degree of horizontal separation between the units. The greater the number of different occupations in an organization that require special knowledge and skills, the more complex the organization is on the horizontal plane, because different orientations make it difficult for members of the organization to communicate and for management to coordinate their activities.

When organizations have coordination problems because cost accountants cannot understand the priorities of industrial engineers or because marketing staff have goals that run counter to those of credit staff, the source of the problems is horizontal differences. Overcoming this drawback involves breaking down the walls, overcoming the "silo" structure, and focusing on the product or service rather than the features.

In many opportunities this horizontal complexity is increased by intergroup competition. This problem exists because as groups become more committed to their own norms and goals, they also begin to compete more with each other and underestimate what others are doing, thus becoming a burden on the organization. The big problem, then, is how to establish intergroup relationships that ensure collaboration in those situations where the interdependence of the task or the need to achieve unity makes collaboration a necessary requirement for organizational effectiveness.

Vertical differences refer to the depth of the organization's hierarchy. The more levels there are between the high command and the operations, the more complex the organization is. This is because communication is more likely to be distorted, administrative staff decisions are more difficult to coordinate, and senior management has more difficulty closely monitoring the actions of operational staff when there are more vertical levels.

Information is much more likely to be distorted or misinterpreted if it has to go through eight or ten levels of the administrative hierarchy than if it only has to go through two or three levels. From this it is concluded that the organizations that pursue competitiveness should reduce the level of hierarchies to a minimum.

As for the spatial differences, these refer to the degree of geographic dispersion of the location of the physical facilities and personnel of the organization. As spatial differences increase, so does complexity, because communication, coordination, and control become difficult. An organization that strives for maximum quality is bound to decentralization and empowerment as a way to overcome this type of complexity.

The second component of the structure is formalism. This term refers to the degree of standardization of the organization's work. It is obvious that an organization that pursues quality must standardize its production of both goods and services.

The term centralism refers to the degree to which decision-making is concentrated at a single point in the organization. If top management makes key organizational decisions with little or no input from low-level staff, the organization is centralized. A modern organization that pursues quality and consumer satisfaction must pursue the highest possible level of decentralization, being conducive to the practices of small group activities, such as the Quality Control Circles. This is so in a decentralized organization, faster measures can be taken to solve problems, with a greater number of people making contributions when making decisions,at the same time, employees are less likely to feel alien to those who make the decisions that affect quality levels.

The analysis of each type of organization based on the products or services it generates, will determine the levels and types of: complexity, formalism and centralization that are required to achieve the highest level of quality and customer satisfaction, making use of optimal resources.

In an average industrial company that strives for excellence, both vertical and horizontal levels of complexity should be decreased, formalism increased in order to standardize its production, and centralization in decisions should be reduced in order to promote empowerment and self-control..

Address

When we speak of management, we are referring to the process of influencing people to contribute to the company's goals in terms of quality and productivity.

When it comes to quality management, we must concentrate our analysis on the top management levels, because as Juran verified, the most important part of the problems, approximately 80%, is beyond the control of the workers. For this reason, if employees always carried out their activities in the best way, only a fifth of all problems would disappear.

The highest percentage of difficulties reside in the processes, methods, systems, policies, equipment, materials, facts that only managers can change.

As long as the difficulties continue to be personalized, that is, as long as it only deals with finding out who or who are the culprits, they will continue to exist, since the causes are most likely to be found not in people but in the system. Blaming employees is an ineffective strategy for improvement; The great opportunities, the biggest advantage, is to improve work processes.

Control

Quality control is a process to maintain standards, which are maintained through a process of selection, measurement and correction of work, so that all products or services that arise from the process meet the standards.

The quality control must be carried out following the following steps:

Determine which parameters should be controlled or be measured. Establish their degree of criticality and, if necessary, control before, during or after producing the results. Establish a specification for the parameter to be controlled that provides limits of acceptability and units of measurement. Install, where appropriate and feasible, a sensor at an appropriate point in the process that detects variation from specification. Collect and transmit data to site of analysis. Verify results and diagnose cause of variation. Propose remedies and decide the necessary action to reestablish the status quo. Take the agreed measures and check that the variation has been corrected.

A distinction needs to be made between outcome controls and process controls. The first ones verify the final result (variable or attribute) of a process, be it a product or service. While the process control verifies both the operation of the processes and the quality of the inputs.

In this way, ensuring the quality of the processes and components, the final result is assured.

When it comes to control, there are three stages to distinguish, the first is the collection of data or measurements, the second is the processing, analysis and interpretation, and the third is the measures to be taken to correct the root causes of the problems. or observed deviations.

The Command Board

Through the implementation of a Dashboard software, Total Quality management can be integrated, since defined the control points, the measurements to be carried out and the specifications to be met, the responsibility of the participants in the process is determined, monitoring in a way regulate the proper functioning of the system and the results it generates.

Thus, by means of terminals located at predetermined control points, managers will instantly know the quality of the processes, as well as have an alarm for deviations to the control limits.

Likewise, any deviation to the control limits must determine a signal (andon) for the other previous stages of the process in order to verify and / or check the problems that cause the deviations.

When dealing with controls, we must not only take into account the measurements or durability of the products, but also the levels of customer satisfaction and the levels of costs associated with the existence or lack of quality.

Conclusions

Total Quality has been seen in this work from a different perspective. Perspective that emphasizes the ethical responsibility of the company, its managers and employees regarding the obligation to generate quality products.

Quality that is only conceivable in a continuous improvement process. Continuous improvement not only considered in the sense of generating the product “the first time”, of complying with the specifications and making it fit for use, but also in compliance with values relating to the principles of safety in its production and use, avoiding environmental contamination both in its production process, as well as in its consumption and subsequent elimination, and also generating products or services that, due to their cost and design, provide real added value for customers and consumers.

Then we have the key points in obtaining Total Quality, with a strong emphasis in the first place on the proper awareness of managers and owners, as well as the need to establish what are the real and authentic needs of consumers. To then go on to highlight how the different administrative functions take on special importance in the search for quality. How to plan? How to organize? How to lead? And how to control ?, are the questions to which we have tried to answer, since many speak of quality, but very few meditate on the needs for changes in the way of administration that this brings with it.

Finally, the use of the Command Board is developed as an instrument intended to serve the purposes of faster control and information about the levels of quality existing in the processes and products or services generated by them.

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