Total Quality Management for Custodial Operations

A Guide to Understanding and Applying the Key Elements of Total Quality Management

Gaudreau, Stephen D. Gaudreau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781351407748
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Operations
• Index: Business

This book examines Total Quality Management for the building cleaning maintenance industry. It demonstrates how to motivate employees to improve the quality of your service. Total Quality Management for Custodial Operations focuses on the customer and applies a methodology used successfully by hundreds of teams.

Chapter 1

Total Quality Management

DOI: 10.4324/9780203735459-1

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a strategic, integrated management system that is focused on customer satisfaction and involves everyone in the organization using quantitative measurement tools to continuously improve the organization’s services and products.

A traditional TQM effort involves Total Employee Involvement and Continuous Process Improvement. To succeed, TQM requires a third component: Organizational Systems Management. This component provides the means for executives to clarify what they want: “Why does our organization exist and who do we serve?” The answers to these questions are being replicated throughout the organization, spoken or unspoken, whether or not they are directly addressed. The executives need to clarify the answers to these questions to ensure that the TQM process is giving them what they want. Organizational Systems Management provides the vehicle for the executives to maintain control over the TQM process as their organization improves.

It must be understood at the outset that the executive’s vision is being translated into the workplace. This must be clarified so that the desired result is realized. The vision is articulated through the process of Organizational Systems Management, implemented through Total Employee Involvement, and segmented into measurable areas for improvement through Continuous Process Improvement. All three components are necessary in order to realize Integrated Systems Management, or TQM, in your organization.

Although TQM can take many years to become fully integrated into the organization, with proper implementation the results can be both dramatic and immediate. It is the speed of this change that both attracts people to and repels them from TQM. This is revealed when people agree that there is room for positive change in the work environment, yet they become scared when the process improvements begin to take place. This fear arises when the discussion ends and the improvement action begins.

WHY BECOME INVOLVED WITH TQM?

Fear, improving effectiveness, and a desire to be the best are the most common motivators for starting a TQM process in the Building Cleaning Maintenance Industry.

Fear

Although generally considered to be a negative emotion, fear can motivate organizations to move in a positive direction. Management fears many things, including competition, loss of market share, and shrinking financial resources. Adopting the philosophy of TQM can calm many of these fears.

Improving Effectiveness in the Workplace

TQM will improve effectiveness in the workplace. Many managers are motivated to use TQM because it is a positive holistic approach to solving the problems they experience every day.

Being the Best

The philosophy of TQM is in accord with wanting to be the best, because it connects everyone in the organization with the customer. Everyone becomes committed to learning all there is to know about everything that affects the ability of the organization to continually improve.

RESULTS OF TQM

The most dramatic result of implementing TQM in an organization is the change in attitude toward work. The five most tangible results of a TQM effort in the Building Cleaning Maintenance Industry involve improvements in quality, cost, process time, service, and revenue.

The Change in Attitude

A change in attitude can have a profound impact on an organization. When examining organizations that have implemented TQM, success is often attributed to a change in attitude. People mistakenly believe that attitude can be changed by focusing on changing it. TQM changes people’s attitudes by changing their behavior. This is why so much time is devoted to teams and how they work. The team process in TQM allows people to work on a project in which they can make a difference, and being able to make a difference changes people’s attitudes. Therefore, it is through obtaining tangible results that the intangible result of a changed attitude is realized.

Improved Quality of Cleaning

It is no longer acceptable to think of quality as simply “conformance to specifications.” Quality means meeting and exceeding customer expectations. Specifications are static; expectations are dynamic. It is the dynamic nature of expectations that must be monitored and managed. Given this definition of quality, organizations must learn how to continuously deploy customer expectations into policies and procedures.

Lowered Costs

The most frequent example of lowered costs by implementing TQM is reduced waste costs. From an operations control point of view, the cost of waste represents resources spent that do not add value to a service. While spending is necessary, the amount of waste is not. TQM pays for itself in this one area alone.

Reduced Process Times

TQM reduces process time, which results in increased effectiveness. Process time is the actual time required for a procedure to be completed. Through TQM, cleaning schedules will become more efficient and more productive. In some instances, an increased process time may be required in order to meet customer expectations. The cumulative result, however, will be reduced process times.

Improved Service

An obvious impact of TQM in the eyes of the customer is improvement in delivery time, which is the time between the request for a service and the delivery of that service. This is, of course, connected to improvement in process time. Because delivery, like quality, is another criterion of customer satisfaction, the intent must be to manage and meet customer expectations.

Increased Revenues

Achieving improvements in the areas of quality, costs, process times, and service will create increased revenues. Increased revenue becomes a by-product of the improvements in other areas of the organization.

THE FOUR STAGES OF TQM

An organization will pass through four stages of development as it works toward customer satisfaction through TQM.

Stage 1: Enthusiastic Anticipation

When most organizations begin a TQM process, there is a high level of enthusiastic anticipation. Every organization has areas that are candidates for improvement, and people continually search for information that will help them. Enthusiasm is wonderful. In order to sustain the enthusiasm for TQM, as well as to help ensure its successful implementation, it is important to plan for small initial successes in team projects.

Be aware that some people are uncomfortable with change and may be skeptical. As the organization progresses into Stage 2, the skeptics will become more vocal. If the implementation is successful, the skeptics may become threatened and attempt to subvert the process. If the implementation is unsuccessful, the skeptics will say, “We told you so.” Either way, the skeptics will be identified during Stage 2.

Stage 2: Fear of Losing Control

In almost every TQM effort there are early successes. People connect with one another in their team, start to feel better about their work, view the customer differently, and usually achieve a positive result in their first project, all of which encourages self-motivation. As a result of these early successes, an executive or manager might feel that his or her authority is being challenged to some degree. The thought that first occurs is, “If people can begin to manage themselves, what is my job?” Add to that the normal fears we all have when we are beginners on a learning curve. What the executive or manager feels is a loss of control.

Oddly, the greater the successes of the first teams, the more fearful executives and managers become. Furthermore, experience has shown that custodial work teams learn and practice these ideas as fast as any managerial or executive group. That is either very exciting or very scary, depending upon your perspective.

It is the response to this fear that determines whether the TQM effort will continue or wither in the organization. When the fear is not overcome, sadly, TQM may be viewed as a current fad rather than a meaningful change for the organization. Those executives who recognize the value of the process improvements, in spite of their feelings of fear of losing control, move into Stage 3 and continue.

Stage 3: Changing Beliefs

One of the most significant ramifications of TQM is a change in people’s belief system in the way they view an organizational structure. Through this process, the view shifts from one of hierarchical, rigid, top-down management to one that is based on cooperation and support while working as peers, utilizing the innate assets that all people bring to the organization. This structural shift can only take place when people can view the organization in this non-traditional manner. Not everyone will appreciate a supportive environment, nor will everyone look at others as peers. Some may decide to leave voluntarily. Organizational clarity emerges when this understanding is reached.

Stage 4: Organizational Clarity Emerges

Once “our ships are all headed in the same direction,” both cooperation and a clarity of the organizational plan emerge. This is only possible when people are willing to change their beliefs.

As a result of organizational clarity, the TQM implementation will move forward using the initial teams as models. Several people will emerge as leaders or facilitators, and they will start the next round of projects in new teams. During this stage, new team members are integrated into the process, and TQM begins to spread through the rest of the organization. These stages are natural, and if you are prepared for them, you will have the necessary perspective to work through them.

THREE IDEAS KEY TO THE TQM PHILOSOPHY

The TQM philosophy of focusing on the customer includes three components. Total Employee Involvement is working as a team to get better at what we do. Continuous Process Improvement is improving the system to get better at what we do. Organizational Systems Management is aligning people and systems to get better at what we do. What the organization does is serve the customer.

Total Employee Involvement

Total Employee Involvement (TEI) requires that everyone in the organization becomes involved in getting better at what they do. It creates a self-managed environment in which employees are empowered to become involved in problem-solving and decision-making. This is accomplished most successfully by creating Self-Directed Work Teams.

Continuous Process Improvement

The idea of Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) involves improving a system by quantifiably measuring each facet of the system and individually working to improve each part. By breaking an otherwise complex system into individual components, the system can be worked on in manageable parts, which ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgment
• The Authors
• Table of Contents
• 1 Total Quality Management
• 2 Total Employee Involvement
• 3 Continuous Process Improvement
• 4 Organizational Systems Management
• 5 Integrated Systems Management