Customer Orientation

Customer Orientation

Total Quality requires a shift from inward looking organization to an outward looking organization. In customer oriented organizations the goal of constant focus is to be ahead of customer's needs and competitors.

Customer Satisfaction:

Customer defines the quality. This unambiguous concept has profound implications for organizations that take it seriously.'You have to start with the customer and key your actions off them. See the customer as the starting point,listening post and ultimate arbiter for everything'.First they determine the customer's needs and expectations - the attributes that are desired. then they develop the product or services to suit their continuing changing needs.

Focus on customers - Outward looking:

It prescribes an approach to quality improvement that begins by looking at the needs of the external customer and then working backwards through customer-supplier links. Instead of asking 'what is that we can make' a total quality organization asks 'what is it that customer desires that we should attempt to make'. This applies to every individual,section or department in the organization.

Internal customer orientation:

TQM focuses on the internal customer as well as external. you can not meet the needs of external customers unless your internal processes are in alignment. The idea that everyone has a customer provides a framework for improvement. Regardless of one's job everyone in the organization is a link in a chain of internal customers and suppliers that eventually leads to ones company's external customer.

Human Resource Excellence - continued

Human Resource Excellence - continued

Continuous Training & Education:

The vitality of an organization depends on its people and its human organization. Adequate attention must be paid to the training and development. Market competitiveness,profitability,industrial relations and quality of life depend in large part on training. Because a timely competitive edge comes from people who know why they are there,what their job is and how it fits into the larger picture. What the system needs is people who are resourceful,innovative and educated and who can operate in new culture with new attitude.

Link individual & organization goals:

Organization goals must be broken down and in that light individual's roles and their job descriptions should be prepared and intimated to them. Each individual has his own personal goals. Care has to be taken that while achieving the organizational goals, each individual also attains his personal goals. This goal congruency will motivate people to a great extent. This implies a management capable of specifying multiple goals, weighing them,inter-relating them and finding synergetic policies.

Participation in Improvements:

Participation leads to involvement which improves efficiency and leads to member's / employee's satisfaction,enhances morale and makes the relationship more harmonious.Human resource policies today have to be oriented towards encouraging participative management culture and team work. The present information age needs synergy that results when several people focused on a common goal work in a collective manner with cohesive behavior, a higher productivity is accomplished than could ever be achieved by them independently.

Working in teams is one of the best examples of participative management.Team work is characterized by a striving for perfection. - a relentless pursuit of excellence. Again the objective of team work is to obtain the commitment of employees at all levels. A simple conceptual diagram given below demonstrates the commitment objective quite succinctly,while emphasizing the importance of participation.

TEAMS-PARTICIPATION-OWNERSHIP(INVOLVEMENT)-COMMITMENT

Eliminate fear of failure:

The main thing to bear in mind is that competence is created on the job. It is only when one shoulders responsibility that he makes his own decisions and deals with people that he develops. The secret of development lies in encouraging the people to take initiative and to attempt the seemingly impossible,even if this entails some failures. It is known that initially only few venturesome take the risk,with encouragement more and more people become venturesome. It provides the best strategy for generating and managing creative human energies.

Cross functional teams / Quality circles etc.:

Some of the successful methods in developing the people and encouraging participation are cross functional reams,departmental quality goal teams,Quality circles and suggestion schemes. Through these structured activities people participate in the improvement process as teams.

Recognition & reward:

People who stand out in their efforts should be recognized and rewarded both for performance and behavior. Those working for continuous improvement need this in particular as a stimulus and motivation. When desirable behavior is encouraged by recognition and rewards, such behavior is reinforced. When people are recognized for a worthy effort, others who come to know of it, will strive to emulate them for similar recognition.The selection criteria should not be just what has been achieved but how it has been achieved.

Next: Customer orientation

Human Resource Excellence

Human Resource Excellence

It is well known that happy people alone can produce outstanding quality. The creation of happy, skilled and motivated people is on the other imperatives of total quality. Self-esteem and pride in their organization and pride in their organization and in the work they do is a prerequisite for human resource excellence.

Pride is a function of two main factors:

A clear and consistent articulation of appealing corporate values - what the organization stands for.

The product offerings that embody quality service and value, or in other words giving people a product or service them can be proud of.

An individual's performance in an organization is the result of two factors: ability and attitude. It is only the synergetic combination of these two factors acting together in balance which will result in the desired performance. Anyone of these factors working in isolation will fail to achieve desired results. The ability aspect helps answer the employee's question, 'what should I do and how should I do it?' Ability is the basic and primary requirement. All ability building interventions will help bring performance to the threshold of average mediocrity in to the domain of customer delight. On the other hand, attitudinal development interventions focus on creating a strong purpose in work for the industry and other organizations and help answer the employee's question,’ why should I do it?' It is here that pride helps answer this question. Once an employee is proud of his / her organization he/ she will never let it down. The employee then performs not because the organization wants performance but the employee has a desire to perform for him or herself, and it is this intrinsic pride that will take performance beyond the threshold of mediocrity into the domain of customer delight.

Following are the focus areas to sustain and develop human resource excellence in an organization:

a. Continuous training and education

b. Participation in improvements

d. Eliminate fear of failure

E.Recognition and Reward

Product, Processes and Systems Excellence

Product, Processes and Systems Excellence

No organization can endeavor to become a total quality organization unless it produces goods and services that go well beyond the value expectation of its customers. To be able to produce such outstanding goods and services an organization will have to focus on the following:

1. Listens to Customer's voice: Develop products and services suitably after listening to the voice of the customer.' A total quality organization asks what is it that customers desire which we should attempt to make' instead of producing something and then trying to sell that.

2. Process Reliability - Zero Errors: Develop suitable processes that are capable of delivering the desired products and services consistently and without errors.

3. Right thing - first time - always: Having procedures and systems in place which ensure production of the kind of products right the first time, every time. This is to conform to the requirements of ISO 9000 series of standards or equivalent.

4. Vendor Relations - Long term: Developing long term partnership with vendors effectively so that the quality level of vendors also improves. Without the quality level of suppliers improving there could be no assurance of outstanding quality being produced and delivered to the organization's customers, all the time.

Quality partnership: Briefly stated, quality partnership is a special long term relationship between a customer and a supplier. On the part of the supplier this involves a commitment to provide a service or product which meets the customer's 'fitness for use' criteria and provides continually increasing value to him. Both customer and supplier commit to using statistical process control principles in their manufacturing processes. In all cases. Customer and supplier commit to sharing information that will aid in achieving continual improvement in the products and services supplied and in the processes in which they are used. Quality partnership is a win-win situation both for the customer and the supplier. It is becoming increasingly important.

Product Excellence is determined by:

Function

Product Appeal

Reliability   

Management Leadership

Management Leadership:

Without the whole hearted involvement and commitment of management, at all levels, total quality can just not happen. Management leadership is also discernible when top management performs the following actions:

Formulates strategy

Develops vision

States clearly the mission

Clarifies organizational goals and objectives

Plans and converts Vision to reality

Develops culture for TQM

Involves all organization-wide

Formulates Strategy: Strategy facilitates organizational growth by way of exploring and exploiting opportunities. Once the basic mission and objectives of an organization are set, a strategy is required and a process through which the organization uses its resources to achieve its objectives.

Develops vision: Develops a vision of what the business can and will be in future. Vision captures the worth of business, integrating the goals, strategies and action plans. A vision statement is expected to build an emotional climate of commitment and togetherness in an organization. It is expected to cover the market environment, competitive and economic positions that an organization is expected to encounter.

States clearly the mission: Mission is the character, identify and reason for the existence of an organization. A mission statement is complementary to vision and it states the basic purpose of the business by clearly defining a company's relationship to other organizations including its competitors.

A mission statement is expected to set a general objective of what a business is and what the management philosophy is in achieving the mission. It helps in articulating corporate values, which are guiding principles for corporate actions and ethical behaviors.

Clarifies organizational goals and objectives: Communicates unambiguously what it wants the organization to achieve. In doing so it provides an inspiring leadership which promotes organization-wide alignment and a wholehearted involvement and contribution by all. The leadership's main function is to motivate i.e.; draw from each of its people their fullest potentialities. Clarity of goals helps an organization to focus on critical and key success factors.

Plans and Converts Vision in to reality: Plans suitable for the actions that must be taken to convert the vision into o reality. By doing this, management ensures that there are no surprises that disorient people in their quest and in that of the organization for total quality. Without effectiveness there are only dreams. Effectiveness means setting out to do something and doing it. It apparently is easy to confuse decision with carrying out a decision in to action. The action involves both decision and its implementation. If the management is to have influence over what goes on, it must have influence on not only on the decisions, but also on the motivation and skill with which the decisions are carries out.

Develops culture for TQM: Total Quality is synonymous with a change in culture. A culture compatible with concepts of total quality. The creation of a total quality culture has to be the task of top management. Culture is th4e integral pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech and action, and depends on man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. Most elements of culture take a long time in their evolution and equally as long to change. An organization has a mission when its culture fits with strategy. Culture enables organizations to function as a collective unit. The cultural glue consists of strong norms and values that heavily influence the way people behave how they work together and how they pursue the goals of the organization. To strengthen the organization's culture a set of values, behavioral characteristics, procedural rituals and role models for professionals working in the organization should be identified.

Involves all organization-wide: Total quality requires organization-wide participation at all levels. Participation leads to involvement which is a precondition to commitment. People become involved through seeing their ideas become part of their work and work environment. This can only happen when management instills a feeling of responsibility in everyone and also delegates authority to employees to fulfill their responsibilities. This implies that people are empowered to take action as and when required and also made accountable. Management leadership implies that anyone in a leadership position has this vital role to play.

Imperatives of Total Quality Management

Imperatives of Total Quality Management

One of the most important things that need to be accomplished for attaining performance superiority is that simultaneously a number of 'imperatives' have to be put in place in an organization. Imperatives represent basic minimum requirements that have to be incorporated within the organization for total quality to become an integral part of doing the business.

These are:

Management Leadership

Product, Process and Systems Excellence

Customer Orientation

Human Resource Excellence

Continuous Improvement

Definition of Total Quality

Definition of Total Quality
It is defined as an organization-wide approach towards quality which results in performance leadership in meeting customer's requirements by doing the 'right thing right the first time and every time'. The phrase 'Performance Leadership' implies that the organization has to be the best of its kind when compared with its competitors worldwide.
So what exactly is TQM?
TQM is relatively a new approach to the business of management. It seeks to improve product and service quality and increase customer satisfaction by restructuring traditional management practices. The application of TQM is unique to each organization that adopts such an approach. Common attributes which are vital for the implementation of TQM are customer focus, strategic planning, effective leadership, continuous improvement, fact based management, team work and involvement of all.
In TQM environment, company recognizes that the word 'Quality' includes 'quality management' as much as it means 'improving the management of quality'. In fact, taking steps for improving the Quality of management in the organization should take place before improving any thing else.
Need for Total Quality Management:
Rising customer expectations
Increasing competitive process and competitive position of organization
Internal pressure for improvement
How to do value addition in existing methods
To get the best from the people
Changing perceptions of vendors and customers
Perceptions of managers and work force
Organizational priorities for improvement
To survive.