We are all aware today of the need for quality in the products and services that we provide to the Intelligence Community. Lapses in quality can result in lost opportunities, reputation, contracts and revenue. On the other hand, consistent quality results in positive reputation and sales growth. Today there are entire organizations dedicated to improving quality. The American Society for Quality (ASQ.org), Six Sigma (process improvement techniques), ISO 9000 and 9001, and so on. Quality is important.
The History of Quality Focus
The focus on quality began in the early 1920’s during the Industrial Revolution. Before then, in the 1880’s, Scientific Management began to be used to analyze workflow for increased productivity. Think of assembly lines and efficiency savings via process analysis. W. Edwards Deming was born in 1900 and was a young man during this phase of world history. Deming is known for “TQM,” his formal approaches to quality, developed through ideas such as statistical quality control, the writings of Joseph Moses Juran (Engineer and Management consultant), and his own keen observations. TQM is Total Quality Management. As described by Six Sigma, TQM is “a management philosophy that seeks to integrate all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, and production, customer service, etc.) to focus on meeting customer needs and organizational objectives.”
Japan’s Quality Revolution
TQM came of age in the 1950’s and 1960’s, not in the U.S., but in Japan. The story goes that American businesses were just not that interested in focusing on quality, so they did not see any need to embrace a management philosophy that was built around the concept of continuous quality improvement. Deming took his ideas to Japan. At the time, Japan had significant issues with quality in their manufacturing processes. The thing was, they knew it, and were willing to embrace change and a management philosophy that was focused on quality. TQM represented the equivalent of a complete cultural change for the business environment. It introduced the idea that everyone in the organization had to be focused on quality, and that the entire organization, as a team, needed to identify and implement continuous process improvement. According to ASQ.org, in 1968, the Japanese named their approach to quality Company Wide Quality Control. This is what TQM really is – a focus on quality from every level of the organization.
Deming’s 14 Points of Quality Management
- Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.
- Adopt the new philosophy.
- Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
- End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimize total cost by working with a single supplier.
- Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.
- Institute training on the job.
- Adopt and institute leadership.
- Drive out fear.
- Break down barriers between staff areas.
- Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
- Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
- Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
- Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
- Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.
I first came aware of TQM in the early ‘90s when the U.S. Government introduced it to a site that I was helping to maintain. Some of the concepts introduced have stuck with me ever since then. Things like, “A person closest to the problem is the person most likely to come up with the best solution.” You may not realize it, but there are some foundational principles of quality management that you use all of the time that came straight from Edwards Deming. Here are some of his quotes on quality.
- “In God we trust. All others bring data.”
- “Without data, you are just another person with an opinion.”
- “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”
- “It is not enough to do your best. You must first know what you are doing, and then do your best.”
- “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, then you don’t know what you are doing.”
- “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
And then there are some hard-hitting quotes like these…
- “The pay and privilege of the captains of industry are now so closely linked to the quarterly dividend that they may find it personally unrewarding to do what is right for the company.”
- “As long as management is quick to take credit for a firm’s successes but equally swift to blame its workers for its failures, no surefire remedy for low productivity can be expected in American manufacturing and service industries.”
- “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
- “No one knows the cost of a defective product (or service!) – don’t tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.”
- “Any manager can do well in an expanding market.”
A Deming Story
I never met Deming. He died in 1993, shortly after I was introduced to his ideas on quality management. However, I do know someone who had a personal encounter with him, and I will tell his story as it was told to me. An engineer I know was assigned as a quality manager for a large firm in the early 1980’s. This engineer was very frustrated because he tried to introduce changes to improve quality, but he was being ignored at every turn. Because of their poor quality issues, the company was having to throw away many items that they were manufacturing. My engineer friend just happened to see Deming at an airport, introduced himself, and they chatted while waiting for their planes. The engineer brought up the quality problems that he was having and the fact that he was not being listened to. Deming gave some advice. “Take each item that was manufactured, but deemed to be of poor quality and add its value to an account that you will create and hold for this purpose. The overall value of this account will eventually get to the point where senior company decision makers will take notice and do something about it.”
Upon his return to work, this QA manager began doing just that. If an item was destroyed or written off, he would add it to his new account. About 6 months later, the QA manager was summoned to a senior leadership meeting and questioned on this account, as it was holding considerable value. Imagine their shock when senior leadership was informed that, “The account represents the dollar value of the junk that this manufacturing center generates in six months.” The end result here is that senior company leadership suddenly became very interested in instituting quality improvements, and changes were quickly made. This is an interesting, true story. It also highlights something that we all need to understand in order to be more effective in our own roles. If you want senior leadership or anyone else to understand and buy-in to what you have to say, you need to speak in a language they understand. In the case of the QA manager, the language was budget figures.
TQM Lives On
To answer the question, “What happened to TQM?”, it still lives on in many ways. Think of the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle of continuous process improvement. Think also of the many ways and methods we have to enforce the idea of ensuring customer focus and satisfaction. You can also look to feedback mechanisms that we have in place to ensure both quality and process effectiveness. Quality, managing for quality, and continuous process improvement are here to stay and vital to the success of any organization.
