Total Quality Management (TQM)

Principles, Methods, and Applications

Sunil Luthra, Dixit Garg, Ashish Agarwal, Sachin K. Mangla

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000194494
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industrial Management
• Index: Business

Organisations are now focused on total customer satisfaction. However there is a lack of understanding the requirements and the customer needs. Total Quality Management (TQM) integrates all phases and ensures a defect free quality product. This textbook provides the understanding of all aspects of TQM and the implementation.

This textbook covers all aspects of TQM, discusses quality systems in detail, highlights the importance of the needs of the customer, and presents the concept of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM).

Written as a textbook for students of engineering and management, but also explains all quality systems which will be helpful to all organisations in choosing the correct quality system and helpful to managers in decision making while analyzing any process.

A solutions manual and power point presentations slides are available for qualified adoptions.

1
Concept of Quality

1.1 PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Utmost customer satisfaction is a primary need for a product. It is therefore necessary for products and services to meet or exceed customer expectations, resulting in market share improvement. Quality is the expected service being realised. Before a customer makes a purchase, they do a calculation of whether that product and its services are good or not, so the question arises: ‘Is the worth of the product/service equal to the money that I am about to give in exchange?’

At any time, when customers buy products, they are convinced that it is worth it or not. They are in a situation where they must or must not buy a product. The operational vision of quality involves getting product/services manufactured/produced to specifications tailored to their prices. The customer receives the value he/she expects only when a functional operation is undertaken that institutes the quality standards into that product/service. A vision of the quality of operations is a shared vision of the concept of quality.

Quality is the effect of a certain customer’s view on something as they receive it. Customers indulge themselves in comparing the received product with their own expectation for that particular product/service. This is regardless of the manufacturer’s perception of quality for that product/service. Marketing/sales have a great impact on the opinions of customers and their perception of quality. It depends mainly on the product standard and its quality. A customer is dissatisfied when the delivered product is not as good as was promised by the sales and marketing team. The quality is thus not assured. At the same time, it leads to widening of the gap between the operations/manufacturing team and the sales and marketing team. Quality is not absolutely determined by the operations/manufacturing team. Other factors/variables in the fray affecting quality are:

1. Customer expectations.
2. Actual product/service received.

So, customer expectations should be fulfilled by the quality of the product or service. Actually, customers also expect that product they are purchasing should be as they want, and the service should be properly carried out by an authentic dealer from where he purchased the product.

1.1.1 PRODUCT/SERVICE FEATURES

New products and services are the cornerstone of every business. Investment in your own growth is essential for profitability and overall growth of the business. But getting involved in the development process is risky. It requires considerable planning and organisation. This guide will describe the main stages of the life cycle of products and services. The best investment decisions happen when the right time to make such an investment is understood. Once that developmental process starts, it proceeds with phased and planned development of the organisation. It will also indicate how to best create a development team and manage a project.

The development process has been perceived as designing a set of product features that improve customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is a priority. While a customer may or may not be concerned about adding additional features in the hope of developing customer satisfaction, this is the approach. This approach increases the cost of the product, markets and sales. The justification for these new functions must be compensated with additional costs for the client or a commercial gain as a result of the improvement of the company’s brand and the marketing/sales expectations of the clients.

For example, a hotel guest who wishes to stay at a 5-star hotel with per night charge of Rs10,000 would have quite a lot of different expectations to a guest who wishes to stay in a Motel 5 with per night charge of Rs 500. Therefore, the guest of the Motel 5 and the guest of the 5-star hotel may conclude after their stay that they have received quality rooms. Now the question arises as to why Motel 5 and a 5-star hotel can both offer a quality room. The answer is that the 5-star hotel and the Motel 5 rooms are not compared to each other. In each case, the expectations of the clients were met with the room received for the price they paid. The quality of the characteristics of the product corresponds to the expectations of the client.

1.2 QUALITY OF PRODUCTS

There are many various features of product quality:

1. Functionality
   This refers to the main characteristics of a product and a service. It is defined as a set of alternatives that are related to the existence of a set of functions and their specified properties. All functions have specific properties that explain the quality of the product and its services. The functions are also those that justify the declared needs for the manufacture of qualitative products.
2. Reliability
   Reliability is also the main feature of a quality product. Measurement of product reliability is done by finding the ‘mean time between failures’ (MTBF). It is an indicator of durability of products. For example, a car should not break down often, so the MTBF of a car can be specified as 1,000 running hours or 10,000 km.
3. Usability
   Usability is also a hallmark of product quality. This shows the client’s ability to use the product. It is expected that the client can use any type of product without the help of experts. For example, a car may need a mechanic to repair it, but its owner can drive it if they are trained.
4. Maintainability
   This refers to the ease of a product being able to be kept in its original state without creating a problem. The ability to keep a product for a while makes it expensive, but you may finally use a product for a long time. It may be defective during use and must be repaired to maintain its original quality at the lowest cost. It is measured as ‘Average Repair Time (MTTR).’
5. Efficiency
   Efficiency is the relationship between production and input. It means what we do after consuming sources of inputs. Therefore, a quality product must be measurable by its effectiveness.
6. Portability
   The quality of the product also has the particularity of portability. It is defined as a set of attributes that affect the ability of the software to transfer from one environment to another. It simply transfers different attributes from one place to another. The environment can be hardware, software or an organisation.

1.3 SERVICE QUALITY

Quality has also gained importance in the service industry. It basically focuses on customer satisfaction. Some of the key performance indicators of service quality are presented here by a model in Figure 1.1.

FIGURE 1.1 Model for service quality.

The quality of the service has additional characteristics; when using a service, the client connects more with the service provider. The quality of the service depends to a large extent on the correct understanding of the client’s requirements in such interactions. It provides customers with the right quality at the right time. Each service must be designed specifically for the client. The additional features of service quality are:

1. Quality of customer service
   Customer service is important in any organisation. The current challenge for the sector is to meet the needs of customers. In a service sector, satisfying customers and knowing their implicit requirements is more difficult. For example, Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal are online services that always meet the needs of their customers.
2. Quality of service design
   The design of quality services consists, first of all, of formulating a plan to satisfy a specific need or problem. The services are usually made to order, so it is important that the service is designed according to the specific requirements of the client. For example, the software developed for an organisation requires the complete specific program for the unique design requirements.
3. Quality of service delivery
   The quality of delivery is important in all sectors, but services are key criteria to success. There are so many organisations that work in delivery, such as Ekart Logistics, etc. So it is better for business growth.

1.4 DEFINITION OF QUALITY

1. Quality is defined as degree of excellence.
2. A quality process or product is fit for its purpose.
   Evolution of this definition took place in quality circles. It is applicable to any process, product, or service. It thus makes this definition useful, but it is a bit difficult to measure quality according to this definition.
3. In manufacturing, a measure of excellence or a state of being free from defects and deficiencies is called ‘quality.’
4. Garvin (1984) divides the definition of quality into five categories, including product-based, user-based, and value-based. Further, he gave eight attributes to define quality: Performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics and perceived quality, etc.
5. According to Crosby (1979) ‘Quality is conformance to requirements/specifications.’
   This is an ideal definition for quality control teams that need to validate processes, systems, services, and product quality. Depending on the requirements, they can easily validate compliance and identify nonconformities. The problematic part of this definition is that it can offer a biased and subjective view of quality. In many cases, the requirements are little more than the ideas of the business stakeholders. Often there is no objective validation that these ideas give a quality result.
6. Deming stated that the definition of quality is ‘meeting or exceeding customer expectations.’
7. According to Juran (1979) ‘Quality is a measure of fitness for use.’
8. In the mathematical method, quality is defined as the ratio of performance to expectation.
   • $\text{Quality}(Q)=\frac{\text{Performance}(P)}{\text{Expectation}(E)}$
   • Case1. If, P > E it means quality is best
   • Case2. If, P = E it means quality is good
   • Case3. If, P < E it means quality is worst
9. QUALITY also stands for
   • Q = Quest for excellence
   • U = Understanding customers’ needs
   • A = Action to achieve customer appreciation
   • L = Leadership
   • I = Involving all people
   • T = Team spirit for common goal
   • Y = Yardstick to measure progress
10. Quality is cost.
    Traditionally, the quality of the product was considered in terms of the cost of the materials. A gold watch is of better quality than a plastic watch. High-quality sheets have a number of threads of 180 or more. High-quality moisturiser for hands has a high shea butter content.
11. Quality is price.
    It is the price that customers might be willing to pay for a product or a service. Quality is a crucial part of many business models. Different definitions of quality have been put forth by economists. According to some economists, quality is synonymous with the expensiveness of the product. In other words, the bigger the price of the product, the higher would be its quality.
12. The manufacturing industry was the first to seriously consider quality. Concerns regarding the quality of pr...