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.

Approaches for Quality

Approaches for Quality

In the traditional approach to Quality Control the focus was largely on output of the process. In the TQM approach the interest shifts from just the desired results to an active focus on the process of producing the results as well. Thus focus on the process and output together is a Total Quality requirement.

In the traditional approach through a process of inspection and detection of defects, the output from the firm was usually segregated into good production or bad production. This way customer's satisfaction to a certain extent was achieved because bad production would not get to them. This was an extremely wasteful way of quality control. When competition is intense, it is obvious that TQM approach is definitely a more prudent approach because by continually improving the process to deliver the right kind of output to the customer the very first time and every time the extent of wastage encountered in traditional approach is greatly reduced. It follows from this that while doing things right is essentially a sign of efficiency, doing right things right first time and every time is sign of both effectiveness and efficiency and points to the fact that Total Quality is the result of a completely new strategic direction adopted by choice. Therefore Total Quality has to do with the performance of an organization. It calls for the streamlining the operations so that non-value-added work is eliminated and continuous improvement takes place. The process on which continuous improvement is based in general is known as Deming Wheel, which consists of P (plan) - D (do) - C (check) - A (act)
This wheel shows a continuous movement in a certain direction. The idea behind this is that the input which generates activities with measurable output is the process and the perfection of the process is the ultimate objective. In Deming's wheel, the 'plan' defines the process which ensures documentation and sets measurable objectives against it. The 'do' executes the process and collects the information required. The 'check' analyses the information in a suitable format. The 'act' obtains corrective action using TQM techniques and methods and assesses future plans. At the end of each cycle, the process is either standardized or targets are adjusted based on the analysis and the cycle continues.

Organizational Problems

Organizational Problems

The issues are

How do we get everybody to work together?

How do we maintain their involvement?

How do we make them contribute their best?

How do we create their satisfaction?

How do we continuously improve?
The beliefs are
Employees are just resources; they are the very purpose to achieve the objectives
Company employs the total man with body, mind and intellect and not just hands
Problems are with systems and not with people
Variance analysis focuses on what - how- why (and not who)
People will be able to improve systems and solve problems
Aim is to utilize the full potential of all employees
Total employee involvement is essential for customer satisfaction