Pocket Guide to TQM

John S Oakland, Peter Morris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135389130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Another new book in the popular and original series of pictorial guides - John Oakland cuts through the complex concepts and confusing jargon associated with implementing Total Quality, and Peter Morris presents the information in his inimitable pictorial style. This book will show students and managers what they need to understand about TQM in the simplest, clearest and most memorable form.
Professor John Oakland is undoubtedly the British guru of quality management. Following a successful industrial career in research and production management, he has developed a pragmatic approach to introducing TQM which he and his colleagues have used successfully in literally thousands of organizations. He is founder and Executive Chairman of OAKLAND Consulting Plc. and Head of the European Centre for TQM at the University of Bradford Management Centre. Also published by Butterworth-Heinemann are John Oakland's bestselling Total Quality Management (now in its second edition) and Cases in Total Quality Management. Peter Morris is the creative force behind the illustrations in all Butterworth-Heinemann's pictorial guides. Originally trained as an art teacher, he spent several years as an industrial designer in Canada before returning to England to design educational and training materials for the University of Sussex. His experience working on industrial contracts convinced him, quite rightly, that cartoons are frequently the best way to illustrate the abstractions of business life.

1 Quality chains

In business, a major driving force is the element of competition. A supplier's competitiveness is determined by the quality of its product or service.

Angelo's pizza business is more successful than his competitors. How does he do it?

Angelo pays attention to satisfying his customers. He's constantly watching the reliability, delivery and price of his service.

On the knee of my mama I learned that the price of quality is constant vigilance

A company's reputation is based upon the customer's perception of its ‘quality’

Once a business gets a poor reputation it is very hard to lose it - and it can easily become a national reputation..

So what is ‘quality’?

What is it that makes people prefer one product or service to others?

The experts and gurus have various definitions…

…but they all add up to the same thing:

Meeting the customer's requirements

I think a watch is a device for telling me the time.

She thinks a watch is essentially a piece of jewellery.

The successful business meets all its customers' requirements.

Another customer requirement which distinguishes good service is RELIABILITY…

…and a readiness to put customers FIRST.

The aim of the supplier is to delight the customer

Angelo knows how to delight his customers by giving them more than they have asked for.

Defining the customer

The stewardess feels she has let the passengers down…..

but someone has let her down

The passengers did not get their bread rolls because there was a break in the chain of supply. The customers were not delighted.
But our guru has a query.

Our guru asks a simple question

..and there seems to be a simple answer - somebody outside the firm. But…

So, as well as outside customers there are inside customers

They are linked in the task of serving the outside customer

Throughout and beyond all organizations there is a series of quality chains of customers and supliers

Each supplier is someone else's customer and each customer is someone else's supplier

If the quality chain is broken at any point, the effect of the break becomes apparent at the link with the outside customer

And the consequences of a small break in the internal chain can be proportionally greater when they get to the external customer/supplier Interface

Quality must be built in from the beginning of an organization's activities, not “inspected in” at the end

The two-way street

Ensuring quality is a two-way process.

The supplier should meet the customer's requirements. At the same time the customer has a responsibility to make the job of the supplier as easy as possible within the limitations of the supplier.

The boss was lucky to get...