TQM AND HR INTERVENTIONS

THE NEED for TQM

" The customer is the king" is truer today than ever before. As the quality of life improves, demand for better quality services and products also increases. Customers all over the world now demand that they be assured and satisfied that the product or services for which they are paying will meet their specifications and expectations and will perform as anticipated.

In this changed environment of the economy and the industry driven by the customers, the business is open to competition worldwide. With the transformation of the entire world into a boundaryless global village, echoing the new mantra of " World class Product/Services", the factors that contribute to competitiveness - quality, competitive pricing and timely delivery- play a primordial role.

This emphasis on quality in product and services is forcing the industries to adopt internationally recognised and proven quality management systems in their operations to stay in the business. This reminds us to the prediction of J.M. Juran, the
quality Guru of the world, who said that business in 21st century shall be decided by " Quality " and industries ignoring this fact shall be wiped out. Internationally, there have been several authoritative studies to compute the cost of non-compliance and they point out that while manufacturing industries which donot adhere to the TQM precepts may lose around 25% on this account alone, the loss by way of cost in the service sector could be as high as 40-50%.

GENESIS
TQM is widely believed to have originated in the post-world war Japan. Many Japanese companies were very conscious of their image as producers of shoddy products. The Japanese invited two American statisticians W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran to teach them basic principles of quality control. The Japanese were very receptive to the ideas of Deming
and Juran. They eagerly adopted these ideas and developed them over a period of 20-30 years. By the late 70s and early 80s, Japanese companies had become a major competitive force to reckon with world over. US companies lost the market share to their Japanese counterpart. American and other western companies launched vigorous quality improvement campaigns ushering in a quality revolution across the World. Today, 1 out of 3 American companies have adopted TQM
in their industries. In Japan ans some south Asean countries, TQM has been adopted as a mission. In India, TQM has started in the true sense of the term in the early 90s and is yet to take any deep root in the Indian organizations excepting some companies such as L&T, Kirloskar Group, Sunderam group of companies, Telco and few other Automobile Companies. Janak Mehta, the prominent advocate of TQM in India has said that in India more than manufacturing, it is the service sector which took its time to recognise the importance of TQM.

TQM: A CONCEPTUAL LOOK

TQM is defined as a " Management approach of an organisation, centered on quality, based on participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organisation and to society."

TQM is an overall organizational strategy that is formulated at the top management level and then is diffused throughout the entire organization. Everyone in the organization, from the CEO to the lowest paid workers is involved in the TQM process.

The total part of TQM encompasses not only the external end user and purchaser of the product/services but also internal customers such as co-workers or other departments. In TQM , all work is seen as " Process" and TQM is a continuous process of improvement for individuals, groups of people and whole organisation. It involves a set of four principles and eight concepts. The four guiding principles are:

Delight the customer
Management by fact
People-based Management
Continuous improvement

The process of TQM can best be explained by the
following chain :-
Supplier Employees Customer
as as as
Partner Assets Guides

Each of the principles can be used to drive the improvement process. However, to achieve this, each principle is expressed with the help of two core concepts to make the principle workable. The principles and core concepts are depicted below:

Principles & Core Concepts of TQM

Principles Core Concepts
Delight the Customers Customer Satisfaction
Internal customers are real
Management by Fact All work is process
Measurement
People-based Management Team work
People make quality
Continuous Improvement Continuous improvement cycle
Prevention



Delight the customer
This focuses on external customer and asks " what would delight them" " Delight" means being best at what really matters most to the customers and this can change over time. Being in touch with these changes and always satisfying the customer are an integral part of TQM.


Management by Fact
Knowing the current quality standards of the product or service in customer's hands is the first stage of being able to improve. We can only mean improvement if we know the base we are starting from.


People-based Management
If people understand what to do, how to do it and obtain feedback on their performance, they can be encouraged to take responsibility for the quality of their work. The more people feel involved, the greater will be their commitment to customer satisfaction. Systems, standards and technology themselves will not provide quality. The role of people is extremely important in the continuous improvement of quality within an organization.

Continuous Improvement
TQM is not a short-term activity that will finish when a set target has been achieved. It is not a programme or a project. It is a management process that recognizes that however we may improve, our competitors will continue to improve and our customers will expect more and more from us. Here, continuous improvement is an incremental change and not a major
breakthrough, which shall be the aim of all who wish to undertake the total quality management journey.


CORE CONCEPTS
Each of the core concepts can be used to drive the process of continuous improvement and to develop a frame work for quality improvement over many years.


Customer Satisfaction
In this activity, the companies have to give equal importance to the internal customers as well as external customers. A better way for companies to use their customers to learn what is important to them and then manage their own performance against customer's expectations. Many forward looking companies of the world have started the process of conducting survey known as "Energy Meter" which reflects the satisfaction, morale and motivation level of the employees and develop the concept of " Employeeship" with core emphasis on customer satisfaction principles. Further, on the external customer front, surveys are conducted among the customers for identifying their satisfaction, expectation and in case of falling short, to identify the causes for low customer satisfaction. Accordingly, satisfaction index is compiled and monitoring done to improve customer satisfaction.


Internal Customers are real
It states that it is necessary to achieve successful internal working relations in order to satisfy the needs of the external customer. Whether we supply product/services, the people we supply internally are as real as our external customers. Therefore, they also require speed, efficiency and accuracy. We can use the idea of the internal customer as a focus for
improvement.


All work is process
Another possible focus for improvement is that of business processes. A process is a combination of methods, materials, manpower and machines and that taken together produce a product or service.


All processes contain inherent variability and one approach to quality improvement is progressively to reduce variation. This can be done first by removing variation due to special causes and secondly, by driving down the common cause of variation, thus bringing the process under control and thus improving the capability.

Measurement
In order to improve, we must first of all measure how we are doing at present. By measuring our present situation, we can focus both internal customer satisfaction and external customer's requirements.


Team work
Team work can provide real opportunity for people to work together to achieve quality improvement. People who work on their own or in a small group often have a picture of their organization and the work that it does which is very compartmentalized. They are quite unfamiliar with the work that is done even by people who work quite near to them, as a result they are unaware of the consequence of poor quality in the work they themselves do. Bringing people together in teams, with the common goal of quality improvement, aids communication between people, departments and functional activities. Team work slowly breaks down the communication barriers and acts as platform for change. Team work also enables a group of people to work as a task force, CFT, Committee etc. looking at cross functional problems, solving problems, identify and adopt new ways of doing things. In this connection, the quality circles and QIT facilitate the team
building in organisations.

People make Quality
Most of the quality problems within an organization are not normally within the control of the individual employee. The system often comes in the way of employees who are trying to do a good job. In such a situation, motivation alone can not work. Therefore, the managers are required to ensure that everything necessary is in place to allow people to make quality. This in turn begins to create the environment where people are willing to take responsibility for the quality of their own work. Releasing the talents of everyone within the organization in this way can create a culture for quality improvement.

Continuous Improvement cycle
The continuous cycle of establishing customers requirements, meeting these requirements, measuring these requirements, measuring success and keeping on improving can be used both externally and internally to fuel the engine of continuous improvement.


Prevention
This concept is central to TQM and provides a positive approach to achieving continuous improvement. Prevention means seeking to ensure that failures will not occur. The continuous process of removing the problems and failures out of the system will create a culture of continuous improvement.


Methods of TQM
Total quality management can be implemented by putting into practice suitable methods.There are many methods of TQM and are broadly classified into four as mentioned below:-
1) Management Methods :

Benchmarking
Pokayoke ( Error Proofing)
ISO 9000
JIT
KAIJEN
Quality function Deployment
Total Productive maintenance
Business Process reengineering.
Etc.

2) Analytical Methods :

Cause & Effect analysis
Stratification
Taguchi Methods etc.

3) Data Collection, Analysis & Display:

Bar Charts
Flow charts
Pie chart etc.

TQM : The Journey to Excellence

Excellence
Quality Improved

Journey to TQM

Uncommitted

Operation of TQM in an Organization

Any organization wishing to implement TQM must be very clear at the outset that TQM is not a management technique, it is a change programme. Like any other change programme, it needs to be designed, sequenced and managed. Adopting the right kind of method is one of the most important jobs of senior management and degree of success obtained will depend on their knowledge and understanding these methods. TQM methods are unlikely to be very useful if not used properly.
The following points must be kept in mind for successful working of TQM in any organization.

1) Establishment of corporate TQM steering committee and formation of TQM council at the unit level involving senior Mgt. staff. Even TQM center can be formed to plan, manage and train employees for implementing TQM.
2) Selection of proper TQM methods required for the organization on conducting required survey based on the need and the organizational climate.
3) Complete knowledge for implementation of TQM tools for problemsolving.
4) In order to make TQM a success and powerful, quality culture must be put in place, which is all about culture change based on a desire to satisfy the customer and eliminate existing problems permanently.
5) Sustained and continuous effort must be made for company wide TQM activities and avoid it as one time activity/project.

HR Interventions for TQM

TQM is primarily an organizational strategy considered as a change programme to achieve excellence and therefore HR has an important role to play in designing the interventions to prepare the people and the organizations for the desired change.

Development of Total Quality People

As discussed earlier, the first pillar of TQM is internal customer satisfaction. People involved in each process have to treat those next in the process as their customer. In addition to the external customer, every activity in the factory has an internal customer. The service to the internal customer is the one which will help gear up the organization to deliver finally the required service to the customer. For example if Marketing dept. deals with external customer, it's commitments are to be
backed up by other departments for whom the marketing dept. itself becomes a customer. Therefore, all the departments and the people are to be oriented towards achieving total quality and the attitude of " Help us to help you better " must be developed on the philosophy of internal customers. Here lies the importance of HR in developing total quality people i.e. people with positive attitude, values in consonance with organizational mission and change the mindset so that the foundation becomes very strong. The HR effort should be to bring in/foster real spirit of TQM i.e. spirit of reciprocity in interactions and not merely the mechanics of it. The HR initiative in TQM activity should be oriented to demonstrate the
efficacy of Win-Win relationships as contrasted to Win-Lose or Lose-Lose relationships and thereby enabling effective spirit of team work.

Training

HR has also to undertake intensive training of personnel in understanding the application of TQM methods & its tools. In Japan, this part of applying TQM methods & tools are very much wide spread & people at all levels starting from top to bottom are very much conversant with this and apply in all spheres of their activity. HR initiatives in this context have to
address in training of personnel in becoming "data minded than opinion minded". The mindset of " What is wrong" than " Who is wrong" to be generated & built up. Though it is a formidable task, HR has to trigger this thinking in an organization to realise thought revolution of TQM dimension.

Employee Involvement

Further, HR has to initiate employee involvement in TQM activity. Ultimately, quality is physically produced by the operator on the shop floor. It is therefore very important that he understands the quality requirements of his job. This is possible provided his involvement in the job is very high and he is a very committed and empowered worker. It is in this context that Japanese have introduced Quality Circles which have generated high level of commitment of workers and finally helped Japan to become as world leader in the business. Quality circles are based on the fundamental principles of collaboration,
involvement & empowerment. HR has to facilitate the culture of team work either in the form of Quality Circles, Quality Teams, Task force, CFT, Suggestion schemes or any such others innovative employee involvement schemes for TQM activity.

Finally HR has to create TQM mindset by focusing following three main orientations:-

1) The customer orientation
2) The process orientation
3) The people orientation.

This can be made possible through an integrated & dedicated approach flowing from corporate value system built around the principle of " Do things right, the first time and every time"


References:

1) Gopal K. Kanji and Mike Asher(1996), 100 Methods of TQM, Response Books, Sage Publication.
2) International Trade Centre Report, UNCTAD/WTO, 1996, Applying ISO 9000 Quality Management System
3) V. Nilakant & S. Ramayan (1998), Managing Organisational Change, Response Books, Sage Publication
4) Fred Luthans (1995), Organisational Behaviour, McGrow-Hill International Editions, Management & Organisational Series.
5) Shiv Khera (1998), You Can Win, MacMillan India Ltd.
6) India Management, Vol. 36 No11 November 1997
7) Financial Express, dated 6/12/99
8) INSSAN Souvenir, Northern Chapter,1999
9) K. Ganapathy, B. Subramaniam, Prof. V. Narayan ( 1997), Cocept & Implementation, Quality Circle Forum of India.

Contributed by B. K. Das, Dy. Manager( Personnel), NTPC, Corporate Centre, New Delhi