The Dream Team Of Quality Management

Kaoru Ishikawa is known as “the ‘Father of Quality Circles’ and as a founder of the Japanese quality movement”. (Beckford, John. Quality: A Critical Introduction) Ishikawa was also a pioneer in Total Quality Management. He believed in working for the customer before, during, and after product and/or services were delivered. Ishikawa was a Chemist, held a doctorate in Engineering, and was Professor at Tokyo University

The evolution of quality management first evolved through the works of six philosophers; Shewhart (1924), Feigenbaum (1951), Crosby (1979), Ishikawa (1972), Deming (1982), and Juran (1986). Shewhart was most known for his invention the control chart. Feigenbaum is known for having introduced the concept of total quality control. Ishikawa best known for associating quality circles as a way to achieve continuous improvement and using cause and effect diagrams to solve problems. Crosby is known for defining the 14 steps for quality improvement and introducing the plan-do-check-action cycle. Juran is best known for identifying the three basic functions of the quality management process: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement.

Deming laid out a “quality improvement program” for companies such as Ford, GM, and Procter & Gamble, when invited to work with them to improve their quality.

In health care, the industry is facing tremendous challenges from rising costs and larger demand for a variety of services. To help address these issues requires establishing a strategy for organizational leadership. This will serve as foundation for developing a quality management program. To achieve these objectives there will be a focus on: understanding the purpose of quality management in health care, examining three key concepts, outlining three of the organization's long / short term goals, identifying five internal / external factors that can influence quality, discussing three quality management policies and highlighting the differences between risk management / quality assurance. Together, these different elements will illustrate how our health care organization can achieve different benchmarks over the long term. ("Why Are Health Care Costs Rising," 2010)

In the healthcare industry one of the health professional’s duty is to provide medical help and care to patients, and not create further injury or damage. Unfortunately accidents do happen in the healthcare industry, and as a result there has been a demand and need for quality and safety measures to be carried out (Iizuka, Munechika & Tsuru, 2009). Since quality can be somewhat subjective and relate to patient outcome, there are a number of ways to define quality. Iizuka, Munechika and Tsuru (2009) define quality as the ability to provide patients with effective health services with minimal utilisation of health resource. Alternatively Rose (2005) defines quality as fulfilling patient health needs while avoiding the repetition of staff and mechanical errors. Overall the quality of healthcare refers to the effectiveness and value of the health service.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming is a man that I admire. He was the chief statistician for the United Stated during World War II. After the war, he was sent to Japan to assist with the process of rebuilding the nation 's industries. He believed that the Japanese could go from being the worst in the world to being the best by utilizing statistical methods. He believed that the Japanese could take over a world market in five years if they followed his advice (Asq.org, 2015). Demming stated "I was the only man in Japan who believed that Japanese industry could do that." and "They beat my prediction. I had said it would need five years. It took four." (Asq.org, 2015). Later, the Toyota Corporation based their quality systems on Dr. Demming 's teachings.

The President Ralph Larsen has realized that Wengart has some major problems with the quality however he is focusing on the profitability instead of the longevity of the company. He needs to have the team focus on improving the quality problem or the company’s profits will continue to decrease. Larsen in the effort to improve the quality has decided to seek out help from an OD practitioner who suggests to Ralph to implement Top Quality Management (TQM). Larsen feels that this should be easy to implement and hands it off to Kent Kelly the Vice President. He feels that the TQM program was a matter of common sense (Brown, 2011, p. 365).

Before I started my classes at Southwestern, I thought I had a good grasp on leadership and managing teams in a quality environment. However, I believe Southwestern has taken that knowledge I had and built upon it in magnificent ways. The Business Quality Management degree relates to my primary Air Force specialty. Going back to college after 10 years scared me. However, it was the best decision I could have made. I am now equipped with knowledge and skills necessary to be an adaptable quality manager. Quality managers need to have broad knowledge over leading people, organizations, and total quality management.

Deming Juran and Crosby considers measurement as very important to improve quality but they use it in different ways. For Juran and Crosby they view the cost of quality as a focus of measurement. Cost can measured in dollars and for both Crosby and Juran they consider that money is the language of management. Success of the efforts of the quality will be ultimately measured by meeting customer requirements. Juran normally considers the cost of all the poor quality as a important factor because it shows how much they are losing. He also knows they are other factors which are important to measure such as how the organization compares with the competition and how customers perceive

The following is an attempt to analyze AT&T's use of Total Quality Management throughout its organization. Since AT&T is an elaborately enormous corporation I will focus my study to AT&T Power Systems/Lucent Technologies. This division of AT&T has been the industry standard for excellence since TQM was first introduced to the company. AT&T Power Systems has become one the world's most dynamic companies because of its use of TQM. I will provide a brief description of who AT&T Power Systems is, a description of the events that lead up to its use of TQM, AT&T's TQM philosophy, and how this philosophy was implemented. Finally I will discuss the benefits AT&T Power Systems realized through their use

Ishikawa was constantly mindful of the significance of top administration help, the kind of help from the top management is a key component in Japan's all-enveloping quality technique that Dr. Ishikawa named, "broad quality control", Dr. Ishikawa has worked with all top management and the lower management and including the whole administration team to teach quality control to secure they were able to give the best customer service as possible to their customers, and in the late 50's and in the early 60's, he created quality control courses for executives and for top directors, he additionally helped launch the Annual Quality Control Conference for top administration in 1963. As a part of the panel for the Deming Prize, Dr. Ishikawa created the thorough review framework that figures out if organizations meet all requirements for the prize, that review requires the interest of the organization's top executives, as stated by Dr. Ishikawa, that animated obvious support as opposed to the praise that runs with the prize is the greatest profit a champ gets.

Dr. W. Edward Deming is best known for reminding management that most problems are systemic and that it is management's responsibility to improve the systems so that workers (management and non-management) can do their jobs more effectively. Deming argued that higher quality leads to higher productivity, which, in turn, leads to long-term competitive strength. The theory is that improvements in quality lead to lower costs and higher productivity because they result in less rework, fewer mistakes, fewer delays, and better use of time and materials. With better quality and lower prices, a firm can achieve a greater market share and thus stay in business, providing more and more jobs.

Quality is defined as conformance to the requirement, not goodness: The first absolute explains that management must strive to ensure that during the quality improvement process everyone is getting things done right the first time. Crosby stated that in other to do this management must state clearly what are the individual roles of the employee, management must also supply the employees with the resources needed to do their task and lastly management must give continuous support and encouragement to the employees during the improvement process. When quality is defined as conformance to requirement it helps to reduce hassle and improve quality at the same time. Crosby (1995).

The concept of TQM (Total Quality Management) was developed by W. Edwards Deming along with Joseph Juran and Armand Feigerbaum in the 1950s when their mission was to revive the Japanese manufacturing sector, which was known for its poor quality products at the time. Deming and his colleagues demonstrated through a TQM approach that adopting a new quality-focused way of doing business indeed bring successes in improving products, services, and profits. The idea of TQM did not become popular in America until 1980s, but today it is widely applied in almost all sectors, including education.

Even though Deming, Juran, and Crosby all have similarities between their key principles in quality management there are several aspects that are different to the approaches. They all recognize the importance of measurement to improve quality; however, the level of importance each emphasizes is different. Crosby and Juran view the cost of quality as the focus of measurement whereas Deming does not use the cost of quality as a focus (Suarez, 1992, p.18). To Deming, meeting the customers’ needs and expectations about a product or service is of higher importance to quality. He also considers unknown costs such as the impact of lost customers to be more significant than visible costs (Suarez, 1992, p.18).