Understanding What a Quality Culture is

To understand what a quality culture is, one must first un­derstand the concept of organizational culture. Every orga­nization has one. An organization’s culture is the everyday manifestation of its underlying values and traditions. It shows up in how employees behave at work, what their ex­pectations are of the organization and each other, and what

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Quality Culture Versus Traditional Cultures

Organizations that develop and maintain a quality culture will differ significantly from those with a traditional culture. The differences will be most noticeable in the following areas: Operating philosophy Objectives Management approach Attitude toward customers Problem-solving approach Supplier relationships Performance-improvement approach 1. Operating Philosophy In an organization with a traditional culture, the primary focus

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Activating Cultural Change

To attempt the implementation of total quality without creating a quality culture is to invite failure. Organizations in which the prevailing culture is based on traditional management practices are not likely to succeed in the implementation of total qual­ity. Successful total quality requires cultural change. Several primary reasons cultural change must either precede or

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Changing Leaders to Activate Change

Cultural change is one of the most difficult challenges an or­ganization will ever face. It is hard to achieve under even the best of circumstances. Leadership from the top is essential. Consequently, sometimes an organization’s culture simply cannot be changed without a change in leadership. This possibility arises when the staunchest defenders of the

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Laying the Foundation for a Quality Culture

Establishing a quality culture is a lot like constructing a building. The process begins with laying a solid foundation. Like a building, without a solid foundation an organization’s corporate culture will quickly crumble. What follows is a ten-step model that quality professionals can use to establish a solid foundation for a quality culture in

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Learning What a Quality Culture Looks Like

Part of laying the groundwork for a quality culture is under­standing what one looks like. This is a lot like a person who wants to lose weight where an effective strategy is to tape a picture of a slender person to the mirror. The picture serves not only as a constant reminder of the

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Countering Resistance to Cultural Change

Change is resisted in any organization. Resistance to change is normal organizational behavior. In this regard, an orga­nization is similar to a biological organism. From the per­spective of organizational culture, the alien is change, and the organism is the organization to be changed. Continual improvement means continual change. To ensure contin­ual improvement, one must

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Establishing a Quality Culture

Establishing a quality culture involves specific planning and activities for every business or department. This sec­tion identifies the steps involved, but first it outlines the emotional processes employees go through as the steps are being taken. Managers need to recognize and accommodate the emotional transition required not only of employees, but also of themselves

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Maintaining a Quality Culture

Establishing a quality culture is a challenging undertaking for any organization. It is even more challenging to maintain a quality culture over time. The easiest thing in the world is to become complacent and let the organization’s culture begin to slip back into its old mold. In order to maintain a quality culture, organizations

ISO 9000 and Total Quality

1. ISO 9000: the international standard for quality management systems ISO 9000 is a family of standards and guidelines related to the quality management system (QMS). It sets the require­ments for the assurance of quality and for management’s involvement. The thrust of ISO 9000 is for organizations to implement a QMS conforming to the

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Total Quality Tools Defined

Carpenters use a kit of tools designed for very specific func­tions. Their hammers, for example, are used for the driving of nails and their saws for the cutting of wood. These and others enable a carpenter to build houses. They are physi­cal tools. Total quality tools also enable today’s employees, whether engineers, technologists, production

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Pareto Charts as Total Quality Tool

The Pareto (pah-ray-toe) chart (see Figure 15.1) is a very useful tool wherever one needs to separate the important from the trivial. The chart, first promoted by Dr. Joseph Juran, is named after Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). He had the insight to recog­nize that in the real world a minority of

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Cause-and-Effect Diagrams as Total Quality Tool

A team typically uses a cause-and-effect diagram (see Figure 15.8) to identify and isolate causes of a problem. The technique was developed by the late Dr. Ishikawa, a noted Japanese quality expert, so sometimes the diagram is called an Ishikawa diagram. It is also often called a fishbone diagram because that is what it

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Check Sheets as Total Quality Tool

The check sheet (see Figure 15.12) is introduced here as the third of the seven tools. The fuel that powers the total quality tools is data. In many companies, elaborate systems of people, machines, and procedures exist for the sole purpose of col­lecting data. At times, this quest for data has become zealous to

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Histograms as Total Quality Tool

Histograms are used to chart frequency of occurrence. How often does something happen? Any discussion of histograms must begin with an understanding of the two kinds of data commonly associated with processes: attributes and variables data. Although they were not introduced as such, both kinds of data have been used in the illustrations of

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Scatter Diagrams as Total Quality Tool

The fifth of the seven tools is the scatter diagram. It is the simplest of the seven and one of the most useful. The scatter diagram is used to determine the correlation (relationship) between two characteristics (variables). Suppose you have an idea that there is a relationship between automobile fuel consumption and the rate

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Run Charts and Control Charts as Total Quality Tool

The run chart is straightforward, and the control chart is a much more sophisticated outgrowth of it. Therefore, the two are usually thought of together as a single tool. Both can be very powerful and effective for the tracking and control of processes, and they are fundamental to the improvement of processes. 1. Run

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Stratification as Total Quality Tool

Stratification is a simple tool in spite of its name. It involves investigating the cause of a problem by grouping data into categories. This grouping is called stratification. The groups might include data relative to the environment, the people involved, the machine(s) used in the process, materials, and so on. Grouping data by common

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Some Other Important Total Quality Tools Introduced

The preceding sections have discussed the statistical tools that have come to be known as “the seven tools.” One should not conclude, however, that these seven are the only tools needed for pursuing world-class performance. These seven are the ones that have been found most useful for the broad­est spectrum of users. Ishikawa referred

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Management’s Role in Quality Tool Deployment

Management’s role is changing from one of directing to one of facilitating. Since the Industrial Revolution, management has supplied the place of work, the machinery and tools, and the work instructions. The concept has been that management knows what the job is and needs only to hire the muscle power to get it accomplished.