Organizational change and total quality in Argentina

INTRODUCTION

Cordoba companies, of different sizes, must prepare to compete with other players other than those who have been playing so far in local markets. In business terms, it is equivalent to redesigning and adapting their information systems, defining a strategy according to market needs, and having a management team "in line" with said strategy.

They should not discount, whether for commercial, strategic or financial reasons, the possibility of seeking funds from third parties or even partnering with other generally foreign companies, for which it is undoubtedly necessary to present "the house in order" as an indispensable requirement. For this, it is essential to have information. This information is that which can be provided by foreign companies, in their human resources, who already have previous experience in terms of the quality with which products and services must compete internationally.

An important aspect to review is management. Many of the media companies have been personally run by their own owners, who take excessive risks. The trend is to limit those risks. How is it achieved? Precisely, through adequate information systems that provide data in a timely manner, not only on the operational side, but also as means of control that allow timely corrections to be made.

The challenge of change is - and in this there seems to be unanimity of opinions - too coarse and complex to be assumed by a single individual. In the world of politics, and even more so in business, the notion of the providential figure has already been almost totally replaced in favor of the slogan of teamwork.

And it is here where we find the greatest resistance, because people are used to working as they did 50 years ago, and they refuse to change those habits for those of the new technology. In addition, it should be clarified that in general, models for change arise in other countries, with different social and economic situations, and even with a different mentality than ours, which makes it even more difficult for us to apply those models..

In any case, providing the company with greater efficiency and productivity is by definition a tool that should not be lacking in any managerial action.

All this information should be reflected in informative files, along with reports on the company's history, market penetration, background of management personnel, description of products, services marketed, historical and projected financial statements that reflect a medium-sized business plan. term.

The quality, veracity, and depth of the information give the company an outward image of professionalism in management and it is undeniable that they give it greater value for its owners, with a low cost of execution, and with relative simplicity., once the use of these tools is almost routine.

On the other hand, it is worth remembering (and meditating) about mythical characters, such as 1Henry Ford, promoters of true revolutions in their time, who are evoked as admirable, but unrepeatable phenomena. And nevertheless, the new dogma involves the risk of falling into the error of forgetting that individuals leave traces, signs of identity that powerfully influence transformation processes; that enhance, accelerate -and sometimes frustrate- the collective effort.

THE FLATING OF ORGANIZATIONS

GOODBYE TO THE CHART?

To remove stiffness in organizational structures, some academics and consultants suggest that companies destroy organizational charts and function manuals. What happens in the Argentine reality?

When a frog falls into a bowl of boiling water, it immediately jumps and is likely to be saved. If, on the other hand, the water heats up slowly, the frog does not perceive the change and dies. In Argentina, water boiled in the early 1990s with convertibility and economic opening. Many companies jumped on time. In the case of the banks, some were simmering, until the crisis of 1994-95 led them to bankruptcy.

The new organizational structures of surviving companies tend to be more informal, dynamic, flexible and blurred. In the opinion of Bernardino Pérez-Santamarina, president of the local branch of the international consulting firm AT Kearney, Latin American companies have gone through three major processes: flattening of organizations, reengineering and teamwork, as I mentioned at the beginning: The first dynamic refers to the reduction of levels in organizations. There are fewer and fewer intermediate levels. Second, reengineering, which, in addition to modifying the way of working to focus on the customer, eliminates activities that do not add value. Third, team work as a systematic method of work.Creating cross-functional teams to solve a specific problem is something we have known for many years. The real innovation is in creating and maintaining cross-functional teams around processes. All of this comes together in a new approach to how people organize, communicate, and most importantly, take action.

FROM THE CUSTOMER'S HAND

In parallel with its main client, the state-owned National Telecommunications Company (Entel), Siemens Argentina developed innumerable hierarchical levels that corresponded to its bureaucratic structure. The arrival of the privatizations found the traditional German company overloaded with positions and ranks. The organization chart strictly respected the classic functional division scheme and reproduced for each area the vertical and control model. “The levels in the factory were: operator, leader or supervisor, master or general supervisor, section chief, manager, another manager level (depending on the size of the factory), and finally the factory manager. This in turn depended on the business manager, and then there was a director or general manager. So we could have eight or nine levels »,relates Hugo Mayer, director of Human Resources.

After a strong process of organizational change, between the operators and the head of the area there are now only one or two levels, more oriented to participate in improving the process than to supervise or verify compliance.

Much of the changes responded to a concrete and particular fact: the privatizations. The arrival of Telefónica and Telecom meant a total transformation in the way of doing work. These new clients were unwilling to pay the price for internal inefficiency. The current structure is made up of seven business units, each with its own business strategy.

The cause of the creation of strategic business units is the unmanageable dimension. The objective is to form companies within the company in which each one can say: 'Shoemaker to your shoes'. It is to look within the company for small centers of excellence while maintaining the advantages that the great company can give you.

WHERE IS IT CUT

When Argentine companies began to look to the rest of the world, they found that their profit margins were unsustainable at the level of costs they had and that it was difficult to increase sales with increasing international competition. Then the well-known reengineering process began which, on more than one occasion, was a shield to reduce personnel. The question that arises is: did companies reduce costs thinking about competitiveness in the long term or profitability in the short term?

Many of the companies that have cut their costs have probably done poorly. When you simply worry about cutting costs without thinking about what the future business should be, you run the risk of cutting muscle as well as fat. Arthur D. Little arrived in Argentina to collaborate in the restructuring of YPF. "A strong restructuring took place there, but at all times it was guided by a clear vision of future business." In what would appear to be a paradox, the company shrunk but at the same time expanded. According to the consultant, this is the great challenge: to achieve a dimension large enough to compete internationally while simultaneously reducing costs significantly. "Dimension is not just a matter of size, it is a matter of resources, access to markets, greater power in distribution,in the commercialization. You don't have to be great for being great, you have to be great for some reason. »

SOMETHING MORE THAN A SMILE

"The main objective that Docthos set itself was to reduce the structure and, at the same time, expand the scope of the company," says Luis Zorraquín, president of the Roberts Group prepaid medicine company, who, since that goal was set in 1991, doubled the number of staff on its campus. The structural change arose from the decision to focus on the customer, leaving the financial business behind. This brought about the creation of a new customer service area, the change in job profiles and in the management and flow of information.

To put the new structure into operation, Docthos did not use a consultancy, but rather formed a change committee, "a place of transition to give the process a boost."

Zorraquín, who chaired this committee, is highly critical of external advice. When they started looking for training in customer service, they found that most of the consultants proposed "the famous smile and the friendly greeting." The creation of the customer service area sought to fundamentally change the way of working: "What we achieved was to end up with that typical folder that the employee has and says: 'I know this and I don't tell anyone.' We started to have everything in manuals, and the processes can be consulted by anyone, even online ».

The systematization and incorporation of electronic technology become key factors in a service company that is growing steadily and trying to expand its provision so that it has a national scope. “We saw that moving telephone attention to automatic systems, in principle, does not reduce the number of people or lower the cost; what it allows is to grow over time based on the same structure. »

WHAT IS NOT SEEN

Automation is also one of the obsessions of Alberto Salinas, Director of Operations of Banco de Boston, who, after working for 15 years in the operations area of Banco O'Higgins de Chile, was hired by Boston to carry out a restructuring to achieve a better adaptation to customer needs.

Salinas criticizes the approach of some banks that, to improve the quality of service, are based on massive image campaigns. "While we are concerned with facing the customer, we are also very concerned with what we do behind the scenes," he says. In this sense, the bank is changing computational applications and the way of processing information through reformulation of tasks, elimination of controls and automation of decisions. However, the gigantic sign at the entrance to the Boston Bank headquarters on Florida Street accounts for the bank's long list of areas and departments and would seem to indicate that there is a long way to go before changing the complex organization chart. of the company.

Salinas defends himself: «Restructuring is not only about changing the organization chart. Nothing is accomplished by changing the organization chart. You have to change the way you do things. You have to change the processes, you have to change the support for those processes, which in the case of services comes from the information processing side ». Will it be successful?

HABITS MATTER

With the elimination of the intermediate levels and the creation of business units, the current organization chart of Siemens has been significantly reduced. In areas where large groups work, there is a person in charge who, without being a boss, acts informally as such. It is a kind of outstretched hand: 'the most experienced', 'the one who replaces me when I am not there', 'the one who somehow leads the group'.

Everyone seems to agree that changing the structure of a company is much more than breaking the old organization charts. You can't say: 'Before, I had an undifferentiated and functional organization. Now I am going to have an organization by business units, more specialized, less functional, and lighter. Ready!. People don't know how to work that way. People are used to working as they have always worked. Changing your work habits is not a quick thing.

At Dochtos, the members of the change committee did not want to wait for people to adapt to the new rules of the game. To solve this problem, they massively incorporated young people who molded themselves with the brand new structure and pushed to change what was established. People who have been with the company for years feel bewildered. They do not understand, for example, that the company does not have an organization chart.

ORIENTING TO THE PROCESS

One step ahead of the business unit structure, Dochtos begins to focus on processes, one of the most modern ways of ordering a company. "We are definitively transforming the organizational chart of departments into a process diagram," says Zorraquín. The idea for the future is that, once growth is consolidated, the managers' task is to think about the strategy and provide support and training to the members of the work teams. The organization will then be made up of a group of managers without exclusive identification with any department, who will act as mentors to the work teams through which the stages of the process flow.

At Siemens, the effort to oil the processes and order the structure towards the clients is also thought towards the internal client. Mayer imagines for her area, Human Resources, “a group of specialists developing the strategies, then a partner for each business unit responding to the human resource needs of each, and then a team of assistants working on projects and creating a species customer service. Surely the economic differentiation will be given by the requirements of the position but not by the number of people who have to supervise. They will supervise by projects: if he takes responsibility for a project and four people work, for that period he will be the boss, but if tomorrow another specialist has another project, the boss will change. The exchange of experiences is going to be delicious.But it requires a very different personal attitude from what we have been taught.

CHANGE THE CULTURE

In order for the new structure model to be sustained over time and to be more than just a diagram on paper or a diagram in the minds of managers and consultants, participation is essential. "We were interested in replacing a number of people who were working with customs and habits, who were with him 'this was always done this way', by people who came and rethought what was being done," says Zorraquín, who has promoted, in addition, the almost tripling of the investment in training of Docthos employees.

If the transformation is not completed with training, variable compensation systems, performance evaluations or broader profiles, the cost reduction and efficiency achieved may be just mirages. “Structural changes have a greater economic effect in the short term. And many of the companies started out there because they needed to survive. It is understandable, but you have to be aware that this is so. Many companies never go to that second stage, "says Roca. «If culture cannot be modified, structural changes have no future. You no longer have to look for the current structure in the organization charts but in the results. If a company is adequately meeting the needs of its customers, this is evidence that its structure is adequate. If not, the changes hang by a thread. ”

FROM HEADS TO MENTORS

The more traditional working groups received orders from a boss and carried them out without question. Modern trends assume that the group can make and apply its own decisions. The manager has a group support function, but does not intervene in the management.

AND HOW IS THE FLAT STRUCTURE CHANGED?

* Fundamentally it is a cultural change, rather than a technological one.

* It implies seeing the development of organizational structures as an engineering activity, that is:

* Stop inventing the wheel, reuse it.

* Know how to distribute tasks and delegate responsibilities.

* Reorganize the market, mainly the level of general knowledge of the components of the organization.

ADVANTAGE.

* It is a more natural way to model systems.

* Lets you better model complexity.

* Facilitates the maintenance, monitoring and extension of the company system

* The relationship between cells is simple (So the problems of one do not arise in other cells).

* Cells are integral in their components (They do only the things for which they were created, which makes it easy to locate problems).

WHAT IS AN OBJECT?

It is an individual item or entity (conceptual or real), with a well-defined role in the organization.

These objects will be the minimum units of the cells, or in other words, they will be the processes that take place in that unit.

PROPERTIES OF OBJECTS.

* Status (eg, the sales employee may be attending, invoicing and delivering merchandise)

* Behavior (They are the stimuli that cause the object to change state (ex. An end of attention must happen so that the sales clerk goes from attending to invoicing)

* Identity (eg Sex, task, cell to which it belongs, etc.)

RE-ENGINEERING AND TOTAL QUALITY

The need to quickly change the cycle of new product development, improve market responses, redefine operations, improve product quality, and strengthen customer relationships is influencing organizations to implement continuous improvement processes based on total quality and process reengineering or redesign.

It had its beginnings in the early 90's as an important contribution to business thinking. The concept proposes the reorganization of companies around processes rather than tasks and functions. It also proposes that through the use of computer technology companies will be able to improve their performance substantially. The changes that the implementation of the reengineering concept is generating, together with the already known total quality processes, are becoming fundamental pillars to support the competitive strategy that will allow companies to survive and grow in a global and dynamic environment.

Some of the changes that can be observed when implementing these processes are3:

- Changes in work units: functional departments towards process teams

- Job changes: multi-functional tasks

- Behavioral changes: from task control to shared responsibilities

- Changes in personal training towards personal education

- Changes in values: from protector to productive

- Changes in evaluation: from activity to evaluation of results

- Change in managerial mentality: from boss to coach

- Change in organizational structure: from vertical to horizontal

- Change in managers: from results meters to leaders.

Through this work, the reality of the region and experiences in the application of the concepts of reengineering and total quality will be taken into account. This factor is fundamental for the success of companies in our country.

WHO DOES IT APPLY TO?

If a company or institution is still not doing well what it has to do, if it is in clear competitiveness problems, if its operating costs are very high and it is exposed to being out of competition, if it is in a changing market and has become kept relatively static, if it does not fully satisfy the requirements of its clients, if the service it is providing to its clients is not the best possible, if it is not technologically at the level required, if it has not made use of the multiple opportunities that They offer us almost daily, if you have only implemented relatively superficial reorganizations or changes, if your processes are already very old and potentially obsolete, if you automated existing processes without completely redesigning them, if you have excessive controls or verifications that do not represent a clear added value,if there are too many processes ordered very sequentially or very complex or multiple versions of the same process, if openly specialized people or persons are required, if the processes are taking too long to execute, if the methodologies applied in the past have not represented spectacular innovations, in short, if you have not applied the methodologies of total quality and continuous improvement adequately, it is very possible that you are interested in the subject.If you have not applied the total quality and continuous improvement methodologies properly, it is very possible that you are interested in the subject.If you have not applied the total quality and continuous improvement methodologies properly, it is very possible that you are interested in the subject.

Reengineering may make it easier for you to be the best in your industry or the most efficient in the face of the spectacular demands arising from today's high global competitiveness.

TOTAL QUALITY IN ARGENTINA

The definition contained in the Pocket MBA (a prestigious guide to management theories, edited by The Economist) synthesizes the essence of total quality, a concept developed by the North American W. Edwards Deming, who only in his old age managed to be considered as a prophet in his own land, after having educated the Japanese in the precept that "the consumer is the most important part of the production line."

Before the acronym TQM (total quality management) acquired its current celebrity, the North American industrial tradition had enshrined as a dogma the need to segment processes and human resources as much as possible to carry out small repeated operations to infinity. This practice, inspired by the teachings of the prolific inventor Frederick Taylor, seemed to be the key to America's commercial success in the 1940s and 1950s.

But the Americans failed in the attempt to transplant Taylorism to Japan as part of the post-war economic reconstruction plan. The Japanese chose, instead, the path indicated by Deming and incorporated these ideas into the culture of kaizen (improvement), with a character of continuity and globality.

Almost three decades had to pass before Deming's compatriots recognized the teacher's influence on the Japanese boom and decided to test his theories. In 1981, beset by competition from the Japanese electronics industry, Motorola became one of the first North American companies to successfully embrace the new philosophy. The results were astonishing: Between 1984 and 1992, its annual sales went from $ 5,000 to $ 11 billion.

But not all the stories of the landing of total quality in the West had a happy end. In the United States the sighs of discouragement begin to be heard. The case most cited by critics is that of the aeronautical giant McDonnell Douglas, forced to fire 4,000 workers after having accepted the new doctrine for three years.

The demoralization caused by a long recessive cycle and the recurring threat of mass layoffs, argue skeptics, make it impossible for the United States to maintain the basic conditions that make such a program prosper: persistence in a long-term effort, the patience to wait for concrete results and the commitment of the employees with the company. Total quality never reaches - by definition - the finish line. It is always a distant horizon, and Americans are extremely eager to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

THE ARGENTINE CASE

Similar difficulties in rooting the idea of total quality could be imagined in Argentina, where a past of inflationary crises and speculative culture tends to discourage perseverance in long-term projects, and where the ongoing retraining generates job uncertainty in many sectors.

For Leonardo Mertel, president of the Argentine Association of Quality and Reliability (Asadecc, founded in 1976), the latter should not be considered as a factor of discouragement, but quite the opposite. "In the worst case, even if a total quality program is not enough to secure a source of work, the employee will leave there with invaluable capital: improving their self-esteem."

Mertel recalls that in the mid-1970s «we began to speak, in Argentina, of more horizontal, more participatory business structures. In conjunction with this, we began to work on the concept of quality circles. In the traditional organization, the lowest levels are usually those who make contact with the client (the bank teller, a stewardess, a nurse). That person is usually, however, the least considered, the least capable, the least equipped with tools. The turn consists in turning into true protagonists those who were previously mired in devaluation. It consists of investing all the principles, all the criteria that were in force up to that moment ».

The first quality circles began operating in Argentina in the late 1970s in a handful of pioneer companies, including Ford, Propulsora Siderúrgica, Agfa and Villa del Sur. According to local experts, the idea grew with particular vigor in the automotive industry, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and in the service sector.

Even some state companies tried, with varying luck, the new path. There were quality circles in Segba and Aerolíneas Argentinas, YPF tried to launch a program with its suppliers, and the doctrine of quality found many militants in Water and Energy. The phenomenon, in turn, generated a new streak in the consulting business: today there are more than a dozen that offer courses and training in full quality.

Within the Argentine business structures, the idea found more followers in middle management than in the upper levels, naturally adhering to the traditional criteria of verticality. The unions, to which a proverbial resistance to change is usually attributed, showed, in most cases, and after the first misgivings, a positive attitude. ("They finally understood that they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. And this is so, unless one can imagine that, in the long term, a successful program of total quality could render the very existence of union representatives unnecessary", one of the consulted experts ironized).

Curiously, the philosophy of total quality has not yet penetrated the official academic cloisters. A professor at the University of Buenos Aires recalled that during a recent seminar attended by 500 advanced economics students, only three knew Deming's figure and thoughts.

WHO IS WHO

To draw a more precise picture about the validity and application of quality programs in Argentina, the firm Pessah Consultores conducted a survey on the subject. The research, which had the advice of Leonardo Mertel, took 500 leading companies in the Argentine market as a universe.

The questionnaire was answered by 49 companies, almost all of them involved in a total quality program (67% answered that they are doing it, 7% have it planned and 6% have already done so), which allows us to conclude that the results are representative of the opinions of those who are currently walking this new path in Argentina.

The respondents are, for the most part, companies with a significant turnover (more than $ 90 million annually in 45% of cases) and with staffs of more than 300 employees (79%). Among those currently implementing a total quality program, manufacturers of consumer products (14%), chemical and oil companies (11%) and metallurgical companies (9%) stand out.

One of the most significant - and encouraging - data from the study is that almost all companies (81%) answered that the total quality program is a permanent activity. Even those who set deadlines (13%) referred to relatively long periods, from one to three years.

Regarding the way of applying the programs, the majority (51%) use their own resources, a third hire external consultants, and 16% (all of them multinationals) receive advice from their headquarters. The vast majority of companies (83%) correctly interpret the postulate that the program must be directed to the entire campus, which in turn implies accepting that profound cultural changes are required within the organization. Only 7% of those who answered the questionnaire made the frequent mistake of confusing the criteria of total quality with those of quality control, in the opinion that the participants must belong to the factory personnel.

Customer satisfaction concentrates almost a third (32%) of the responses about the program goals. This is followed by an increase in productivity (15%) and an increase in staff participation and motivation (13%). Curiously, the goal of reducing costs appears only in fourth place, with 12% of the responses.

The analysis of the ratings given by the companies to the results achieved with the total quality programs indicates that the greatest successes are perceived in the production area: "fewer complaints", "greater control of the production variables", "greater productivity global »were the achievements that obtained more than 7 points.

On the other hand, the increase in profitability received a relatively modest score (6.4) and the improvement in relations with suppliers (a particularly important objective in total quality programs) does not seem to have developed sufficiently in the experiences. local: only 5.9 points were obtained. Other areas of seemingly slow progress are relationships with staff and customers.

This would reveal that, until now, the most definite progress has been connected to the industrial process, while the greatest difficulties are registered in changes in leadership style and in relationships with people, both inside and outside the company.. This chart clearly reflects the stages of the process within the organization. The first achievements are seen in the more specific tasks (industrial products and procedures), while the visible results in the attitudes of staff, suppliers and customers are perceived as more distant. The paradox that the "increase in the number of clients" appears rated with the lowest score among the achievements reached (5.3), while the satisfaction of those same clients obtains the highest index among the objectives sought (32%),it reveals how far the process is underway but still requires time and effort to achieve results.

THREE EXAMPLES

To illustrate the most significant aspects of the Argentine experience with the philosophy of total quality, it is worth citing three largely paradigmatic cases: the local Xerox subsidiary (a name that has become a symbol of TQM internationally), Refinerías de Maíz, a leading manufacturing company in the area of mass products, and the insurance company La Buenos Aires, which offers the particularity of having applied a total quality program in a service activity.

"The total quality strategy was born, at Xerox Argentina, in 1985. We deliberately speak of strategy and not program, because that is how it was conceived, as a long-term effort," says Héctor Sambucetti, director of Quality and Customer Satisfaction of the company. "Not only was this conceived as a business strategy, but one of the keys to success was permeabilization, because there is a risk that these things remain at the top management level, and are a nice office speech, without a change of conduct in the practical, in the immediate. What Xerox adopted was a cascade scheme, which is that each and every one of us has gone through an apprenticeship first, and then participated in teaching.It is the only way to ensure that this philosophy comes with the commitment of the number one company, and reaches the last employee entered yesterday. "

Xerox Argentina has four priorities in this area: customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, market share and return on assets. According to Sambucetti, "in the four priorities there are substantial improvements, and we measure them, it is not a matter of opinion."

The case of Corn Refineries presents, in turn, two unique aspects: on the one hand, the implementation of the total quality project begins with the drive and personal commitment assumed by the president of the company, Oscar A. Imbellone, a convinced promoter of the idea at the local level. On the other hand, the company (which currently has slightly more than 2,000 employees) did not delegate the design of the plan to external consultants or buy "closed-package" models.

“What was done, two and a half years ago, was to create a quality committee with four or five managers who were getting involved in the subject and training. From that management, an induction was made at a general level with about 700 people, to present the basic ideas at all levels and throughout the country, "explains Alfredo J. Giglio, coordinator of Total Quality of the company. «We design a methodology that has nothing to do with any other, seeking the best for us. We went from the general to the particular. Of the conditions that reign in the country, our society, culture, State, macro and microeconomics, and from there to our company, and our personnel. »

Corn Refineries starts from the conviction that, in the current competitive environment, before two products of the same price and quality, the client buys the one with the highest added value, the one that gives him something more. “Our goal is to meet and exceed customer expectations, a concept that involves suppliers, shareholders, consumers and our own people. The added value comes from the customer-supplier relationship within the company, and is shaped through a value chain. The idea is that we sell much more than mayonnaise, soups or broths, Refineries also sells when a telephone operator answers a call, and when a carrier makes a delivery, "says Giglio.

The company's total quality program is still somewhere in the middle of the so-called cascade effect, which begins with the management staff. In some sectors, the front line has already been reached, with personnel who are in direct contact with the public. In the field of manufacturing plants, the process has so far reached the level of supervisors. "We are not in a hurry," Giglio admits. "We don't want to make mistakes."

The urgency did not mark the path of La Buenos Aires either. The initial step was taken eight years ago, when management announced that the company should not be viewed as an insurance company, but as a service company. The task was no longer to sell policies, but involved the provision of services to clients. Also in this case, the initiative was conceived in the cupola. The CEO, Gonzalo Aguilar, was not only convinced, but was the engine of the idea.

Like Maize Refineries, La Buenos Aires opted for an in-house design and ruled out the alternative of resorting to outside consultants. Instead of employing the classic concept of quality circles, the company manages the program through improvement groups that operate at the primary, interdepartmental level, and in ongoing activities that involve the entire company.

"The cascade effect took different times in different sectors," explains Carlos M. Guevara, attached to the general management and coordinator of the program. “This depended not only on the people, but on the subject. In June 1988, for example, we launched the claims jet system on the day. This required organizing meetings of all the sectors involved in the settlement of a claim, removing barriers, creating standards. But the truth is that we managed to put it on the street in just three months. On the other hand, in other cases, where supplier-customer relationships were involved within the company itself, the process took between one and three years. ”

The measurement of the results of the total quality program achieves a high degree of thoroughness in La Buenos Aires. An internal use brochure published in 1991 revealed that in the last five years the monthly number of policies sold had climbed from 9,100 to 11,000, the error rate in policies had dropped from 20% to 2%, training hours had gone from 5,500 to 8,800 and the weekly meetings had started from scratch to reach the vicinity of the TQM apostles' dream; They summoned, already then, 95% of the staff.

For Guevara, it is positive that the issue of quality is increasingly exposed to public light. "When there is a lot of publicity about customer service, there comes a time when the customer starts to complain, and that is the real acid test for any program."

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Despite investing more and more in computing, many companies still cannot transform all the information they have into value. The axis of competitiveness will, in the future, go through an efficient knowledge management strategy.

Peter Drucker, the patriarch of modern management, maintains that the origin of wealth is in knowledge. If this is so, the basic economic resource of the future will no longer be employment, neither capital nor natural resources, but knowledge.

Knowledge should not be confused with information. When we talk about data, we are referring to numbers, words, sounds or images that are not necessarily organized. When we refer to information, that data has been processed and has a clear and defined meaning. And when we talk about knowledge, we are generating an action with the information that comes from that data.

5At Xerox, industrial psychologists and social anthropologists examined the way service technicians worked and found that they met at lunchtime and told the anecdotes of the day. They shared knowledge, benefiting from each other's experiences. This is how the idea of creating an improvement group was born, so that technicians from all over the organization could share them and have access to them when they needed them. The result was a program named Eureka.

Launched three years ago at Xerox in France, the system leverages social media to capture, validate and disseminate knowledge. The program incorporates diagnostics, service documentation, and information that are provided to technicians through laptops, CD-Rom, and other electronic means.

Eureka is the heart of knowledge management at Xerox. It is a way of sharing information. Once the solution to a defined problem is found, it is put in a database, so that everyone in the company can access that knowledge. The idea is that if we have a certain problem in France and then it is repeated in Argentina, we should not reinvent the wheel, "explains Cervetti.

WHERE TO START?

The consulting firm Booz, Allen & Hamilton is currently developing two projects related to knowledge management in Argentina. One is for a privatized public services company that wants to establish a competitive knowledge and intelligence system in the interior of the country; and the other for a multinational that plans to introduce its global knowledge management practice locally.

"You start by creating competitive intelligence pilots. They are processes that serve to start deciding what information is going to be collected, in what way. These pilots do not require large investments: just a database, a simple PC, and a person who acts as a catalyst and does not even work full time.

Once that structure is assembled, the processes begin: round table discussions, where everyone has to participate. Everything counts, even the gossip that is heard on the street. From there come concrete actions: solutions, ideas or new questions. It is a way to start a knowledge management process.

THE HUMAN FACTOR

Specialists agree that those companies that believe that a good investment in computer technology is enough to develop knowledge management are doomed to failure. The human factor is critical because the experience of knowledge is always within people. Managing databases and filling them with information is useless if they are not used as a communication tool.

Many companies in the United States have spent tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars on sophisticated data mining software tools. However, are they better segmenting their customers? Are they achieving a greater response to direct marketing? Are they selling the second and third products to the right customer? No, because with a base we are creating infrastructure to start gathering information, which will only be transformed into knowledge when we add a series of management processes. For example, setting up competition analysis groups, where the different areas of the company are represented. Teams that have a leader who spends time coordinating and, above all, has the capacity to abstract to draw conclusions. Something that often does not happen.

INFORMATION, FOR WHAT?

Businesses, in general, are a gigantic machine for collecting competitive information. The problem is that they do not transform it into knowledge. Top management often knows much less about the competition than its vendors. There is a capacity for generating knowledge in the bases that is not used. At the beginning of this decade, the response was to give a laptop to each vendor to prepare reports. It did not work, because the question is what to do with that information, how to bring it to life.

Knowledge management because it is like rowing in the air. It must have an end, which is to improve performance through a well-oriented and systematic approach of creating, developing and applying knowledge throughout critical processes. You have to add value, and while today is a hot topic, it is not relevant to everyone.

Knowledge is always necessary, but in each company a prior definition is required: what we want to be and what is the knowledge necessary to achieve that objective. So I think that all kinds of knowledge management should be based on a strategy. Before getting into a great effort, you have to understand what it aims at and what we want to develop.

In general, applying a program to manage knowledge requires a significant investment and the concrete results are not seen quickly, so that if they are not oriented to medium and long-term objectives, the company can easily abandon the attempt and believe that it is not. it is necessary.

Those companies whose primary product is knowledge, such as consultancies, often make significant investments in knowledge management. Ernst & Young (one of the first to apply it) and McKinsey, invest 6 and 10% of their annual global profits, respectively. A similar proportion would be allocating other large ones such as Price WaterhouseCoopers and Andersen.

According to McKinsey Argentina experts, initially you need to invest in computer technology, but training and attracting people is what costs the most. In addition to the knowledge managers, who are all day thinking about the best way to develop knowledge within the firm, there are the rest of the consultants and managers who in their daily function must dedicate the necessary time to synthesize their knowledge. and communicate it, so that others can use and apply it.

That is why we say that knowledge management goes far beyond buying a database or an Intranet.

A recent investigation by Management Review in the United States revealed that, among those who apply knowledge management programs, 78% believe that this has increased customer satisfaction, 60% that of their employees, and 59% acknowledge that it has led to innovate in products or services. For 60%, intangible assets are part of their market value, so they consider that applying knowledge management allows them to increase the financial value of their companies.

Only 36% of respondents claimed to have lowered costs. For the Gartner Group, no organization has yet recorded substantial cost reductions for having implemented a knowledge management program. This means that organizations that only buy information technology to reduce risks and costs are unlikely to invest in knowledge management programs.

The impact of knowledge management is more justified in terms of reducing time to market or increasing quality or value, analysts say.

WHO NEEDS IT?

Faced with each problem, companies spend time reinventing the wheel; they do the same things multiple times because people don't communicate with each other; There are good ideas but not everyone knows them because they are not shared, errors are repeated, new product launches fail because they are not based on good information, they have problems getting the best staff or retaining it, I think the subject of knowledge management is just emerging in Argentina.

KNOWLEDGE IS SHARED

Xerox was the first company to investigate where information resides within a company. The conclusion was that 12% is on an accessible electronic base, 20% on electronic documents and 26% on paper; But the majority (42%) resides in people, who although it constitutes a very important capital of the company, is a risk asset because, when someone leaves, knowledge goes with them.

Only the stored information can be shared. That is why we say that documents are the DNA of knowledge. Hence, the first step in applying a knowledge management program is to understand how information is shared from the three or four critical processes that make the company work, how they are documented, or how the information is stored. Sharing knowledge to gain a competitive advantage is how we are applying knowledge management.

In reality, sharing knowledge is an act against nature. Even in America, you have to do a brainwash to get people to agree to share what they know. We tend to hold you back out of fear, shame, or laziness. Therefore, when it comes to managing knowledge, there must be incentives for insights to be shared, evaluation processes to follow up on the contribution that each one makes, and it is also important to pressure the group to permanently require their participation. input.

THE HUMAN FACTOR OF CHANGE

It is not enough with the search for increased productivity through production systems. It is necessary to pay attention to the personal transformation of the people in charge of carrying out these changes. Smart organizations, based on learning and systemic thinking, appear as an important alternative to achieve the required culture and behavior changes.

"An organization that learns is one that permanently expands its capacity for the future," says Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline. In 1990, this expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revolutionized the world of management by combining the theory of learning in organizations, formulated by Chris Argyris in the late 1970s, with the ideas on the functioning of systems developed by Jay Forrester in the 1950s.

"Senge's great merit is having added to the four disciplines necessary for learning (personal mastery, mental models, team learning and shared vision), a fifth: systemic thinking," says César Grinstein, director of the Center for Organizational Learning of the Southern Cone Foundation.

Grinstein has been working on the subject in Argentina since 1991, in companies such as Acindar, Agrocom, Garovaglio & Zorraquín, IBM Argentina, Banco Francés, Loma Negra, Metrogás, MetroRed and Ayling-Marsh & McLennan.

MUCH MORE THAN TRAINING

«An organization that offers training courses teaches, but does not necessarily learn. Learning is being able to do something that was not possible in the past, permanently expanding the capacity to obtain results, find barriers and overcome them. Consequently, an organization that learns acts in such a way that, upon encountering an obstacle, it puts all its energy and efforts into overcoming it and projecting the desired result, "explains Argentinean Fred Koffman, director of the Organizational Learning Center of the Technological Institute of Buenos Aires. Aires (Itba), a former professor at MIT and considered one of the world's leading specialists on the subject.

In 1990, Koffman and Senge founded the Organizational Learning Center in the United States, a research consortium led by MIT and funded by giants like Ford, Chrysler, Harley Davidson, EDS, Federal Express, Shell, Hewlett-Packard, and AT&T..

"Some time later, when I came with Senge to give a series of conferences in Argentina, a group of local companies proposed that I recreate a similar center in the Itba," he says.

Koffman has applied his apprenticeship programs at Siderca, Siderar, Río and Galicia banks, Gancia, Ferrum, Miniphone, Molinos, EDS Argentina, Telecom and, currently, the Clarín group.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

For the consultant Santiago Lazzati, organizational learning can be applied through four fields: training programs, on-the-job training, knowledge, and the development of human processes that promote learning. “It is in this last sector where Senge's great contribution is because, depending on how those processes are, people can learn more or less. For example, if a group expresses its thinking without major restrictions, it is obviously going to learn more than in a traditional organization scheme, where its members always play to win or lose and hide their feelings. But achieving this requires change, both individually and across the enterprise. ”

Ernesto Gore, co-author with Diane Dunlap of the first book written in Spanish on the subject, Learning and organization (Thesis, 1988), maintains that all organizations learn something. However, there are some that do it better: they allow to question their practices and they are willing to modify the status quo when it no longer works.

“Today, the capacity and speed of learning generate competitive advantages, because knowledge quickly becomes obsolete. If we have an exclusive product or technology, sooner or later the competition will also have it. Therefore, it is not enough to fully exploit our advantages; other products and skills must be explored at the same time, ”says Gore, who also wrote Education in Business (Granica, 1996) and is a professor at the University of San Andrés.

The consultant Néstor Braidot explains that «traditionally the learning organization was seen as the one that takes advantage of its experience to correct errors or wrong decisions; but in reality this is only a first stage. A company of this type, with prospects of being successful in the third millennium, will use its ability to learn to generate a different, innovative solution. ”

Silvia León, a partner at the consulting firm LIM Argentina, points out that learning is a change in behavior whose objective is to achieve more effective action. It does not matter how many courses, seminars or potential skills are developed, but how it is done to put all that knowledge into practice. “People can learn individually, but that does not make organizations move and transform automatically. A company learns when knowledge and experiences can be shared and transmitted to the rest of its members. In this way, everyone acquires the ability to face the challenges that they have to live in a different way ».

SIMULATE ALSO SERVES

"Working with the technology of smart organizations means intervening on the capacity of reflection and analysis of its members, and at the same time improving the communication skills that allow for a more orderly joint action", explains Grinstein. "Basically, the work is carried out with groups of people who, either due to their personal characteristics or the positions they occupy, constitute support points from which new practices can be installed throughout the company."

The activities of the center run by Grinstein take place in two basic formats: dialogue programs and learning laboratories. In the former, they relearn how to work as a team without fear of aggression or disqualification, and without raising questions of power that can inhibit the members of the group to say what they really think. The labs are based on case studies and simulation models. The activity includes the use of managerial flight simulators; a technique, developed by MIT's Sloan School of Management, that allows executives to test different policies without risk of harm to the real business.

Koffman's programs are divided into two parts. In the first (off line) a group meets for two or three days, in a place away from the company. The objective is to introduce it to new concepts. The next step (online) is to accompany the group with facilitators on their return to the company, so that they can start working with the new methodology in real life.

Two months later, the off line was repeated. The idea is to bring up problems that appeared during that time, and dramatize them to answer the question, how else could they have been solved?

"It is remarkable what happens with the management of a company: while an orchestra or a soccer team practice 90 or 95% of the time, the managers never do it," says Koffman.

A NEW MENTAL MODEL

IBM Argentina began developing its organizational learning program in early 1995.

“Four years ago we did a benchmark (comparison study) with the management development centers that IBM has in Belgium and Canada, probably the most advanced in the world. We clearly warn that the concept of learning organizations, developed by Senge and Argyris, appeared as a fundamental reference for business management in the coming years, "says Rubén Rolando, manager of management development at IBM Argentina, and human resources of its division Global Services.

“We understood that we had to move from one teaching model to another of learning. That management development should stop being seen as an event, and become a process, so that executives stopped attending courses and seminars without any practical effect on the company. That is how we got to MIT, where they gave us an update on the work that César Grinstein had been doing in Argentina from the Fundación Cono Sur, with whom we began to work immediately ».

Among the tools incorporated, Rolando highlights two: the ability to differentiate between observation and opinion; and the left column exercise.

The first allows us to distinguish an observation (incontrovertible and unique fact) from opinions, which can be many and all valid. The left column aims to abandon the habit of saying something so as not to look bad, when in fact you think otherwise. Taking real life cases, participants are invited to write on the right what was said and on the left what was actually thought. "This kind of internal laundering leads us to be more authentic and makes communication much easier," explains Rolando.

IBM Argentina is gradually developing the program, from top to bottom, and Rolando says that at some point the entire organization will have acquired the new tools. Ultimately, we are looking for all of us to relate and work in a different way, to challenge our mental models and have that amount of daring to change the way we do things. But if we put the 1,250 employees of IBM Argentina under this program today, we would not have the necessary infrastructure to maintain it and we would run the risk of burning an excellent idea. ”

UNITAN SAICA CASE

Unitán is an English company that from our country sells tannin derivatives, a product extracted from trees. This versatile natural compound that is extracted from the wood of the Quebracho Colorado - abundant tree in the northeast of Argentina - is present in the entire product line with which UNITAN supplies inputs to:

- the tanning and leather manufacturing industry (tanana

vegetables), - the wood industry (adhesives and additives for boards), - the oil industry (injection mud dispersants), - the mining industry (additives for mineral flotation).

It is the industry leader in volume, product line, and quality. Its annual production of extracts exceeds 40,000 tons, of which 80% is exported to more than fifty countries, through a qualified network of representatives

It is also the exclusive representative in Argentina of first-rate international companies such as Gardena (Germany), Hodgson Chemicals (Great Britain) and Vamo Mills (Belgium).

For a couple of years, the company implemented an ISO certification plan to export its products in Latin America.

To achieve this, the plan consists of a restructuring in every sense: personnel, products, information technology, security and training, which are the main parameters on which we work daily.

As for personnel: training is carried out in different specialties, seeking a multifunctional profile, that is: for example, the electrician is trained in welding, mechanics and lubrication, while the mechanic is trained in electricity, welding and lubrication, and so with each of the operators. This is to find the best relationship between person and job. This process is called «Personnel Balancing».

This not only applies at the operational level, it also applies at the management and middle management level. For example, the comparisons manager is changed to finished products manager and vice versa.

The incorporation of young personnel in middle and higher positions is very notable.

Regarding products: there is a research area on new product applications, which is in charge of studying the market and adapting products to these niches of non-existence of products. The marketing technology they use is the so-called one-to-one marketing that aims to know the needs of customers at all times and try to solve them in a timely manner; and on the other hand to elaborate updated databases for the study of potential clients according to their behavior and needs. Information Technology is also involved in this.

Information technology: There is a notable change in the handling of information, for example, it is not allowed to present notes or handwritten reports, which puts pressure on staff to sit at a PC or typewriter and write their work. All types of documentation have an established format, with the company name and logo, any type of information exchange is determined a priori with the exception of the content, all this is written in Instructions, and they are mandatory to use, they are constantly updated on change processes and are automatically notified to all areas and people that involve the operation of the process definition.

There is a suspension regime for non-compliance with any process established in the instructions. These range from one to three suspensions, then comes the separation of the company.

Another change that is being made in IT is the migration of the current IBM AS 400 system to a Windows NT and Windows 98 type platform and an exhaustive use of the Office package, in terms of Excel, Word and Outlook. is already in a high degree of implementation) Outlook is used to pass information between factories and fax was replaced by email, not yet in its entirety, but it will be in a short time.

Safety: due to the characteristics of the company, there is an area dedicated to maintaining and safeguarding safety and hygiene, under the responsibility of a Lic. In industrial safety and hygiene. For example, when accessing the factory from the administration, you must wear a helmet and shoes with a steel toe, which are provided when you join the company, they are mandatory, if for any reason you forget to wear them, the license sanctions in a first instance and a second one suspend the employee.

This Lic. Is constantly putting up warning signs and the need to use security elements, in order to create a safer work environment and avoid sanctions from ART.

training is something every day: there are two sources of training, one internal and one external, the internal one is the one carried out by the Security Lic. with all the workers, for example, and external is the one in which the personnel attend entities to take courses (computing, marketing, etc.). Training is for everyone from the highest level to the lowest and there is always some group of people who are being trained.

The form of control of the assimilation of training is done through surprise evaluations and audits of the affected personnel.

CONCLUSIONS ABOUT RELEVANT INFORMATION

AS TO THE STAFF

The goal of quality management is to routinely deliver the exact product or service that has been promised to customers, and to get it right the first time. The goal of quality management is to help a company make its employees succeed, its suppliers succeed, and its customers succeed. For me, that is a complete process. The purpose of marketing is to figure out who a customer can be, determine exactly what they want, and enable them to purchase the product or service without conflict, and then repeat the same process; And this is precisely what is being done trying to orient their processes to the customer and the product, something that companies in general still cannot see. This,and the help of databases containing useful information on the needs of consumers will make a perfect combination to satisfy customers and know a priori, what their needs are.

Marketing and quality are a powerful combination for anyone who wants to understand what quality really is and how to develop it. First, we must have a definition of quality that we can communicate and measure. The results come from our relationship with customers, employees, and suppliers. We must be able to communicate what is going to happen to them, and we must be able to measure the results with efficient feedback systems to continue improving further.

Many of the local companies should adopt the plan for their own production systems, and realize that not only is a supervisor required at the limits of the production lines, but that the quality goes beyond statistical controls.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.

A good handling of information by the system is very useful if you want to react in time to fluctuations in the environment, and being prepared with computer technology to maximize the speed of information through the structure of the organization is much more useful yet; But at this point I would like to return to the concept of knowledge management.

Among the bases for applying knowledge management are virtual offices, forums for sharing knowledge, which works through an intranet.

They are places where members of the firm, when they start working on a certain topic in any part of the world, can find out who the experts are, the basic documentation for each practice and a history of similar work done elsewhere.

But in addition to technology, we must take into account the human factor: those companies that believe that a good investment in computer technology is enough to make the most of the information they have is destined to fail. The human factor is critical because the experience of knowledge is always within people. Managing databases and filling them with information is useless if they are not used as a communication tool.

We should not fill with data all the capacity that technology gives us just because. What it is about is making sure that relevant knowledge is available to people, when they need it. No need to dive through huge databases and, after going through thousands of pages, not finding what you really need.

The idea is to have the appropriate information, at the right time and in the hands of the appropriate people, who will make good use of the information taking advantage of their knowledge on the subject.

FOR THE END

Change is not possible unless every person involved wants it to happen. It is necessary to make the ball circulate quickly and safely. Creating a type of work environment like the one proposed is a task that implies the determination of a great objective, and all the members of the organization must be the catalytic agent. They need to be there and contribute to quality becoming the fabric of the entire organization.

To achieve this, you must examine operations and ensure that you have incorporated the concepts of quality management into your way of life.

Are things done right the first time as part of the organizational routine?

Is growth always profitable?

Is it possible to anticipate customer needs?

Is it managing and causing the change?

Are employees proud to work for that company?

The answers to these questions may be answered with a quality plan consistent with organizational development.

The total quality strategy implemented by Unitan has, in my opinion, the following elements:

1. Excellence of all management, administration and production processes;

2. A culture of continuous improvement in all aspects of the activity;

3. The conviction that quality improvement produces cost advantages and greater possibilities of increasing profitability;

4. More intense relationships with clients and suppliers;

5. Participation of all staff;

6. A market oriented style of organization.

These elements, as mentioned in the conclusion, can be improved to achieve excellence, but they require effort and higher costs throughout the structure, and especially predisposition on the part of the members of the company. The fruits of the effort will be reflected in the medium or long term and require constant development to be prepared in the fight for the increasingly competitive market.

CONCLUSIONS

Changes in the working life of workers have been changing in the last 25 years. These increasingly rapid changes produced uncertainty and especially "resistance to change" the work habits to which we were accustomed.

The old concept of employment for life was replaced by that of "employability", understood as those capacities and abilities that make the subject potentially valuable to an organization.

Limited-term contracts, internal management, part-time work are some of the ways in which 2000 workers will offer their services.

Together with technological innovations, these new ways of working require continuous personal development, as well as flexibility and adaptability in the way of generating ideas.

As always, and in order not to be out of this world, we had to copy the models of globalization and the new structures of developed countries, in which these changes took place gradually and in some "natural" way.

Instead here, due to the need for change, foreign models were applied in reverse. First the new structures and thoughts were imposed on us, and then we were forced to change the mentality that we have about work.

Of course, young people are better predisposed to changes, but people who are already a few years old are suffering, and we see this in the controversial situations that occur in companies in our country: Banks that close, Brewers that leave a lots of people thanks to famous downsizing etc.

We are faced with a change in culture that will bring about great changes and great sacrifices of the working class, hopefully these changes are for the good (as it seems).

Unlike our elders, we face a total change of mentality, this I have already said, and perpetual training.

It seems that the key to competitiveness, from my humble point of view, is given in two fundamental concepts: ability and flexibility. And here is the challenge to change.

No flexibility to govern complex structures both in terms of management and operation; or learning to assimilate new realities and adapt them in the construction of new operating scenarios, there is no possibility of taking on the challenge of change, much less of competing.

On the other hand, the communicational ability to assume the linking role between the diversity of organizational cells and the environment; and the strategic ability to anticipate the future as a tool that creates the conditions to maintain competitiveness, will make the organization a difficult wheel to stop.

We cannot prevent the world from continuing to change. The best we can do is adapt. The high speed of change has eliminated the need for many positions, this means that in the future we will have to reformulate some paradigms, so as not to be helpless before a horizon that appears tinged with uncertainty.