Quality Is Personal

A Foundation For Total Quality Management

Harry Roberts

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780029266250
• eBook ISBN: 9781439118528
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

In this penetrating guide to involving employees in the process of total quality management, the authors make the argument that "personal quality checklists"--by which employees monitor waste reducers and value adding activities in their immediate work environment--can significantly increase individual understanding of the general concepts and implementation of top quality management.

1 QUALITY, PERSONAL
QUALITY, AND PERSONAL
QUALITY CHECKLISTS

1. QUALITY AND TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Although our primary interest is quality for the individual—in work and in everyday life—we begin with a brief survey of organizational quality, or, as it is frequently called, Total Quality Management (TQM). (Parts of this survey are drawn from the Report of the Working Council on Core Body of Knowledge for the Procter & Gamble Total Quality Forum of 1992.)

The working assumption of TQM is that continual organizational improvements, small and large, are not only possible but are necessary for long-term survival. Opportunities for improvement are recognized primarily by continuing reexamination of all existing constraints on the way that work is done. This reexamination is focused on all organizational processes, and it is guided by three basic ideas, which have to be sold to all employees:

1. Orient all efforts towards delighting customers and removing waste in (or constraints on) internal processes.

2. Stress team effort at all levels inside and outside the organization, including cooperative efforts with suppliers and customers.

3. Use data and scientific reasoning to guide and evaluate improvement efforts, and to hold the gains from past improvements.

These three ideas, when applied systematically, lead to management practices that are very different from traditional practices. The new practices are so appealing that many people, upon first encountering them, will insist that they have been following them all along.

The ideas of TQM lead to much more than meets the eve on first glance. And they pose a profound psychological challenge: they say that, no matter what we have done in our lives up to now, we must be prepared to find that we can do enormously better. This is gratifying in the sense that improvement is always gratifying. But it also suggests that what we have done in the past is going to look bad in the light of present knowledge. For many of us, that is hard to accept.

The detailed management tactics of TQM go beyond traditional optimization within fixed constraints to shoot at ever-moving improvement targets by relaxing or eliminating constraints. Since there is no end to opportunities to relax or eliminate constraints, improvement is never ending.

Relaxing Constraints

“Relaxing a constraint” is an abstract expression. One of the authors offers a personal example of what it means. In 1968 the author and his teenage son were jogging along a mountain trail in North Carolina when they were confronted by a large eastern timber rattlesnake who was visibly and noisily blocking the trail. They stopped abruptly about ten yards short of the rattler. The father picked up a large dead branch and advanced on the snake, intending to make him move off the trail so that they could continue the run. The son called out in alarm, “Dad, let’s just walk around him!”

They took a wide semicircle around the snake and continued on their way. The rattler went on rattling, but the confrontation had been avoided. Here, the constraint was the assumption that the process of jogging demanded that they stay on the trail; the removal of the constraint permitted the run to continue without a potentially disastrous incident.

A Definition of TQM

TQM is a people-focused management system that aims at continual increase of customer satisfaction at continually lower real cost. This is a total system approach (not a separate area or program), and an integral part of high-level strategy; it works horizontally across functions and departments, involves all employees, top to bottom, and extends backward and forward to include the supply chain and the customer chain. TQM stresses learning and adaptation to continual change as keys to organizational success.

The foundation of TQM is philosophical: the scientific method. It includes systems, methods, and tools. The systems permit change; the philosophy stays the same. TQM is anchored in values that stress the dignity of the individual and the power of community action.

TQM is in one sense a highly democratic system, but it requires dedicated and informed leadership from senior management, leadership that is aware of the obstacles to successful implementation. TQM goes beyond specific improvements, however desirable these may be, to the transformation of organizations and organizational cultures from what they are today to something very different.

What Is In an Acronym?

TQM is only one of many acronyms used to label the management system that we have just described. Some of these acronyms are widely used, especially CQI for Continuous Quality Improvement. Others are specific to given companies or organizations. Three comments are in order:

• The substance that underlies the acronym is what matters.

• Labeling a given organization’s activities by one of these acronyms does not in itself demonstrate that the organization is implementing the management system we are discussing.

• All the current acronyms could pass out of use without affecting the usefulness of the management system here described. An organization could implement the concepts without using any acronym at all.

Definition of Quality

This approach to TQM suggests that customer satisfaction—even customer delight—is a useful definition of “quality.” Customer satisfaction has many dimensions, of which conformance to specifications* is only one. In addition, in Building a Chain of Customers (New York: The Free Press, 1988), Richard Schonberger, distinguishes:

• performance*

• quick (some suggest “timely”) response

• quick change expertise

• features*

• reliability*

• durability*

• serviceability*

• aesthetics*

• perceived quality*

• humanity

• value

The eight starred items are taken from a listing by David Garvin, Managing Quality: The Strategic and Competitive Edge (New York: The Free Press, 1988). Schonberger points out that the four unstarred items are not just variations or extensions of the first eight: they are basic and vital in their own right. Thus quality, considered carefully, includes more than has been traditionally subsumed in the term, certainly much more than conformance to specifications. Conformance to specifications is desirable—essential—when the specifications are aimed at achieving customer satisfaction.

But even more, quality becomes everyone’s job; it cannot be delegated to inspectors or a quality assurance department. This is where personal quality fits in. This seems like a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but it does need to be discussed, elaborated, and, above all, made concrete in terms of what we do from day to day.

Manufacturing Quality and Service Quality

Much of the work and literature on TQM has been focused on manufacturing. Quality in manufacturing requires meeting or exceeding customer expectations by making products that consistently operate within customer-based specifications.

Although manufacturing quality and service quality are similar—manufactured products are desired only to the extent that they provide services to customers—it is easier to understand and visualize good quality in manufacturing. People nod their heads in assent when they hear about service quality, but they don’t know how to go about making it happen.

From manufacturing experience, we know that managing quality has two key components: to count and reduce defects; and to measure and reduce cycle time, the time that it takes to complete a given process, such as the assembly of a car. These fundamentals carry over to services. If you do not address these two fundamentals, you will not achieve your quality objectives. Do a good job on these fundamentals, and the rest is straightforward; it’s fun. This requires, however, that every person in a service organization count defects or measure cycle time for those processes that are the most important in meeting or exceeding customers’ expectations.

This sounds simple, but it demands a fundamental culture change in which customer expectations are accorded the highest importance, and ambitious goals are specified for improvement in all current processes. Note, in particular, that the easy answer of improving quality by hiring more people or spending more money becomes a last resort rather than a first step.

Service in the United States

Airplanes don’t often take off and land on time, even in decent weather. When you get something repaired, it is likely that it won’t be ready when promised, and that something else will be damaged in the process. If you need work done in your home or you expect a delivery to your home, prepare to rearrange your life for the convenience of the supplier. Salesclerks talk to each other and seem offended that you are interrupting them. There are lines to check in at hotels in the evening and then to check out in the morning. You may die in the hospital emergency room while they get the information you gave them three months ago; if you survive the emergency room and are admitted to the hospital, you will provide the same information again, perhaps many times.

Traditionally, these examples are typical of service levels. If customers have even thought about it, they have concluded that poor service, like death and taxes, is inevitable. The only option seems to be to grin and bear it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way: things are changing. If you need next-morning delivery of a package from Chicago to Los Angeles, you can rely on Federal Express to get it there. If you want to have a wonderful vacation with your children or grandchildren, you know that you will have a great time at Disney World. If you need a customized pager the next day, you can bet on Motorola having it in your hands. It is possible for U.S. companies to provide outstanding service. Not many are doing it yet, but the number is increasing, and there are great opportunities for executives and managers who want to differentiate themselves—whether an entire company, a department, a work group, or an individual. It costs something to do so, but the payout on the investment can be enormous.

2. PERSONAL QUALITY

Now we come to personal quality, which relates these generalizations about TQM to you and to us.

Bob Galvin, formerly CEO of Motorola, has listed “The Welcome Heresies of Quality,” in which he contrasts the “old testament” (ot) and the “New Truths” (NT). The first items on his list are:

ot: Quality control is an ordinary company and department responsibility

NT: Quality improvement is not just an institutional assignment, it is a daily personal priority obligation

Our aim is to elaborate Galvin’s “New Truth.”

Galvin made it plain that one key to implementing a strong quality program in any organization is personal quality. You cannot delegate the concept of quality. One of the basic tenets of leadership is that you don’t ask others to do what you are not willing to do yourself. You will make progress faster by leading and showing the way than by drawing maps and telling folks where to go.

This book elaborates the personal quality journey. A major emphasis is on a tool called the Personal Quality Checklist, which is introduced in the next section. But we also go beyond checklists to consider other tools for achieving and improving personal quality.

3. PERSONAL QUALITY CHECKLISTS

The authors have taken Galvin’s first “New Truth” at face value. Much of our discussion will be focused on a simple tool that we call the Personal Quality Checklist, which turns out not only to be useful for training about quality but to have astonishing potential for quickly improving general work effectiveness, and also for improving quality in everyday life outside the workplace.

We have tried the Personal Quality Checklist ourselves and have encouraged hundreds of others to try it. Most have been substantially helped in their work performance. For a few, the Personal Quality Checklist has done even more: it has proved to be a simple but powerful way to cope with chronic frustrations of job and daily living.

Many quality experts call not only for continuous improvement but for breakthroughs of performance. The Personal Quality Checklist is good for continuous improvement, but it also can lead to breakthroughs. It is not just an instructional tool. Fortunately, we do not have to ask you to take this claim on faith. If you follow the general approach outlined in Chapters 1 and 2, you can verify or refute it within a few days or at most a few weeks.

The Personal Quality Checklist has greatly improved the effectiveness of meetings in the Central Region of AT&T and aided in systematic quality training there. It has been useful in getting a fast start on several quality training programs at the University of Chicago, ranging from the campus MBA program to the Executive Program, quality training for staff, and even a special Quality Forum for senior managers who were interested in getting their companies started on the TQM journey.

The Personal Quality Checklist has also been received with interest by a number of audiences at short courses and seminars on quality. The checklist is something anyone can actually try out on short notice with minimal instruction, without preliminary organizational preparation, formation of teams, and provision of budgetary support.

Beyond the checklist itself, we have found that a personal perspective on quality strengthens the understanding of general principles of quality, including especially the ability to recognize and eliminate waste in all activities, the visualization of quality concepts such as Just-In-Time production, the understanding of the key role of customer satisfaction in quality improvement, and the use of simple tools of data analysis.

What’s New About Personal Quality Checklists?

Later we show that the idea of personal quality checklists goes back at least to Benjamin Franklin, so clearly the idea did not originate with us. What we try to do is to illustrate the possibility of tying checklists closely with the TQM approach and to show how use of quality checklists can improve on what many people—including probably many readers—have been doing in a less systematic way.

The Personal Quality Checklist resembles in some ways the various schemes for time management, which entail systematic checklists of things to do. There are two differences: the Personal Quality Checklist is aimed at improvement by removal of system flaws, and it entails much less paperwork. However, the two approaches are not incompatible: Some users of the Personal Quality Checklist have included a standard, “Keeping my time management system up to date.”

In the first three chapters of this book, we provide a detailed account of the Personal Quality Checklist, and we discuss contributions of personal quality to quality in general.

In Chapter 4, we discuss other routes to personal quality improvement, including routes based on detailed measurements rather than Personal Quality Checklists; use of other quality improvement tools; elimination of constraints; systematic approaches to the elimination of waste, Just-In-Time at the personal level; improving personal quality by benchmarking; inspection and personal quality; housekeeping for greater efficiency and reduction of waste; personal quality and athletics; personal health care; process mapping; simple questionnaires; personal vision/mission statements; personal process management; and statistical work sampling.

Chapter 5 goes beyond personal quality to survey Total Quality Management in organizations and to suggest how the personal approach can strengthen organizational efforts at the implementation of Total Quality Management.

The Conclusion gives a one-page summation of the message of the book.

The Appendix presents an elementary statistics tutorial based on data from personal quality checklists.

KEEPING TRACK OF “DEFECTS”

To begin a Personal Quality Checklist, you simply keep track of short-comings—we like to call them defects—in your key personal work processes. A variation on the approach is to keep track of cycle time. (Cycle time is the length of time it takes to go through a process once; for example, we may speak of the cycle time of order filling as the elapsed time from receipt of an order to its shipment.) The aim is to reduce both defects and cycle times for important personal processes.

Why Count Defects?

The word “defect” has a negative connotation for some people who would like to keep track of times we do things right rather than times we do things wrong. Fortunately, m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Tips for the Reader
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Quality, Personal Quality, and Personal Quality Checklists
• 2. How to Get Started on Your Own Personal Quality Checklist
• 3. Experiences with Personal Quality Checklists
• 4. Other Routes to Personal Quality Improvement
• 5. Beyond Personal Quality
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Elementary Statistics Tutorial Based on Personal Quality
• Index
• About the Authors