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Revision as of 21:40, 1 February 2008 by Hanvanloon (talk | contribs) (→Quality improvement)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Quality management is a method for ensuring that all the activities necessary to design, develop and implement a product or service are effective and efficient with respect to the system and its performance.
W. Edwards Deming is best known for his management philosophy establishing quality, productivity, and competitive position. He has formulated 14 points of attention for managers, some of these points are more appropriate for service management:
- Break down barriers between departments
- Management should learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership
- Improve constantly
- Institute a programme of education and self-improvement
Quality improvement
Quality management can be considered to have three main components: quality control,quality assurance and quality improvement.
There are many methods for quality improvement. These cover product improvement, process improvement and people based improvement, including: ISO9004:2000 - Guidelines for performance improvement. ISO15504-4: 2005 - Information technology -- Process assessment -- Part 4: Guidance on use for process improvement and process capability determination. QFD - Quality Function Deployment, also known as the House of Quality approach. Kaizen - 改善, Japanese for change for the better; the common English usage is continual improvement. PDCA - Plan Do Check Act cycle for quality control purposes. Six Sigma - specifically the DMAIC method (Design, Measure,Analyze, Improve, Control), which is a variant based upon Statistical Process Control Quality Circle - a group approach to improvement Taguchi methods - statistical oriented methods including Quality robustness, Quality loss function and Target specifications. The Toyota Production System reworked in the west into Lean Management. Kanzei Engineering, an approach that focuses on capturing customer emotional feedback about products to drive improvement. Total Quality Management is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. First promoted in Japan with the Deming prize which was adopted and adapted in USA as the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and in Europe as the European Foundation for Quality Management award (each with their own variations). Business process reengineering, a management approach aiming at improvements ignoring existing practices (clean slate). Each of these approaches and methods has met with some success but also with failures. Some of the common differentiators between success and failure include commitment, knowledge and expertise to guide improvement, scope of change/improvement desired (Big Bang type changes tend to fail more often compared to smaller changes) and adaption to enterprise cultures. For example, quality circles do not work well in every enterprise, and relatively few TQM participating enterprises have won the national quality awards. Enterprises therefore need to consider carefully which quality improvement methods to adopt, and certainly should not adopt all those listed here.
Quality standards
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created the Quality Management System (QMS) standards in 1987. These were the ISO 9000:1987 series of standards comprising ISO 9001:1987, ISO 9002:1987 and ISO 9003:1987; which were applicable in different types of industries, based on the type of activity or process: designing, production or service delivery. The standards have been regularly reviewed every few years by the International Organization for Standardization. The version in 1994 and was called the ISO 9000:1994 series; comprising of the ISO 9001:1994, 9002:1994 and 9003:1994 versions. The last revision was in the year 2000 and the series was called ISO 9000:2000 series. However the ISO 9002 and 9003 standards were integrated and one single certifiable standard was created under ISO 9001:2000. Since December 2003, ISO 9002 and 9003 standards are not valid, and the organizations previously holding these standards need to do a transition from the old to the new standards. The ISO 9004:2000 document gives guidelines for performance improvement over and above the basic standard (i.e. ISO 9001:2000). This standard provides a measurement framework for improved quality management, similar to and based upon the measurement framework for process assessment.
The Quality Management System standards created by ISO are meant to certify the processes and the system of an organization and not the product or service itself. ISO 9000 standards do not certify the quality of the product or service.
Recently the International Organization released a new standard, ISO 22000, meant for the food industry. This standard covers the values and principles of ISO 9000 and the HACCP standards. It gives one single integrated standard for the food industry and is expected to become more popular in the coming years in such industry.
ISO has a number of standards that support quality management, one group describes processes (including ISO 12207, ISO 15288)and another describes process assessment ISO 15504.
The most elaborated and accepted concept of quality management is the model of the EFQM Excellence Model.
Quality terms
Quality Improvement can be distinguished from Quality Control in that Quality Improvement is the purposeful change of a process to improve the reliability of achieving an outcome. Quality Control is the ongoing effort to maintain the integrity of a process to maintain the reliability of achieving an outcome.
Academic resources
- International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, ISSN 1746-6474, Inderscience
- International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, ISSN: 0265-671X, Emerald Publishing Group
See also
- Quality assurance
- Quality audit
- Quality control
- Quality management system
- ISO 15504
- Systems thinking - Applications
- Total Quality Management
- Hoshin Kanri
- Health care
External links
References
- Pyzdek, T, "Quality Engineering Handbook", 2003, ISBN 0824746147
- Godfrey, A. B., "Juran's Quality Handbook", 1999, ISBN 007034003
- Process Assessment and Improvement ISBN 0-387-23182-X