Deming and Total Quality Management

On December 20, 1993, surrounded by his family, American W. Edwards Deming died in the comfort of his home. While if asked, he would simply list his occupation as Statistical Consultant, looking beyond this drab job classification reveals Deming¡¦s brainchild, Total Quality Management or TQM, a system that has revolutionized the way that international business and industry produces goods and services. Beginning in Japan and later spreading across the globe, TQM is a fascinating collection of priceless concepts and amazing success stories. This research will discuss TQM from its ¡§birth¡¨, move forward to discuss the concepts of TQM and present some TQM success stories from organizations that have used the system to set themselves apart from their competitors and not only survive, but also thrive in a business environment that claims victims like an epidemic. Upon conclusion of the research, the reader will have gained a better understanding-and appreciation- for TQM.

Japan- The Birthplace of TQM

In some ways, it can fairly be said that TQM was born out of the events of the world as much as it was from the standpoint of the improvement of processes and the end result of those processes. By the time that the United States had dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which led to the defeat of Japan and its surrender which ended that portion of World War II, Japan¡¦s industrial infrastructure lie in ruins. As the result of far too many American military bombing missions, once productive factories for all types of goods, located mostly in the urban areas of Japan, lay in ruins. From this blank canvas of sorts, the Empire of Japan, ironically with the help of American aid efforts, slowly began to rebuild its factories and workshops in an effort to return to some level of normalcy and to resurrect the nonexistence Japanese economy. By the late 1940s, what Japan saw was that while its industrial complex was in fact turning out massive quantities of goods, these goods had several fundamental flaws. First, it was clear that the biggest markets for these goods lie not in the relatively small and poverty-stricken provinces of Japan itself, but internationally. This was problematic not only because of the poor reputation of Japan as a whole in the aftermath of its loss of World War II, but also because the goods that were produced by Japanese manufacturers were essentially the laughing stock of the global economy because of their inferior quality in comparison to goods from other nations, keeping in mind that the viewpoint of the consumer during this time was that goods should have an ¡§essentially goodness¡¨ about them, and that low prices were of little concern compared to having products that were suitable for the standards of the consumers themselves. The point became clear by the late 1940s that if Japan were to be able to gain any reliable portion of international markets for their goods, it would in fact become necessary to institute methods of producing high quality goods consistently and also to have readily available the techniques that would allow this successful formula for quality to be repeated for other products, thereby creating a management system for quality itself. The men who would ultimately make this goal a reality for the Japanese, and later for the rest of the world, would not come from the laboratories or schools of Japan, but from the farm country of the United States of America.

W. Edward Deming and Joseph Juran came from America to Japan in 1949 and began to speak extensively on the concepts of sustainable, repeatable quality in the production of goods. These concepts were reinforced by Deming and Juran¡¦s extensive backgrounds in statistics and business, which they utilized as a means of validating and refining their theories. When the mathematics of the improvement of quality was introduced into the human elements of production, Deming, Juran and others came to a startling realization. Basically, the common denominator in any quality system was change; more precisely, the fact that human beings typically wish to enact positive change and for quality to be introduced and sustained, this type of change needed to take root in all organizations. This was exactly what the Japanese had been looking for- way to permanently change for the better, so that their goods could be viewed in the world marketplace as desirable in comparison to those from their competitors, that goods could be of a given quality, and that this would be a repeatable process that could be transferred to other products, and even the organizational culture itself, embracing the product as well as the people making it. Therefore, by the late 1940s, Japan had taken the first steps into what would be called TQM-Total Quality Management. Deming eventually overshadowed Juran and others, so much so that a quality award bore his name. The Deming Award is still used today to recognize organizations that exemplify the TQM principles that Deming started so many years ago.

Concepts of TQM

The magic of TQM is not only what it achieves for the organizations that embrace it, but also its versatility to a multitude of industries and processes and its repeatability. All of this is due to the highly effective concepts of TQM, which are as follows:

PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION- Early on, it became apparent that the key to the ultimate TQM system is the ability to detect and resolve problems before they result in poor quality, lost productivity and the like. Therefore, early identification of problems to be solved is essential.

ESTABLISHMENT OF GOALS- Without knowing what an organization is trying to achieve through TQM, it is extremely difficult to obtain any meaningful results or to determine the effectiveness of the process, which makes the establishment of the goals to be reached very important early on in the TQM journey.

PROBLEM SOLVING PLAN- With problems and goals firmly in place, the plan to solve problems before they ignite is essential. Without a plan, chaos will likely result.

CURRENT STATE/VALUE STREAM MAPPING- Before the actual TQM journey begins, the state of affairs at the current time, referred to as the current state, is important so that improvements or additional problems can be seen immediately upon their beginnings; in addition, those processes or products that provide the best return on investment of money or resources, referred to as value streams, need to be pinpointed so they can be protected and/or enhanced.

ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS- The root of problems needs to be found before they can in fact be solved.

SOLUTIONS/SOLUTIONS INTO PRACTICE- When solutions to the quality problems are decided upon, they need to be put into action for results.

CONFIRMATION OF RESULTS- For better or worse, the results of the actions previously mentioned must be confirmed.

SELECTION OF FINAL METHODS OF SOLUTION- If the results are desirable, the final method of solution may very well have been found then and there. If not, however, new methods must be found by repeating the previous steps.

WRITE-UP OF RESULTS- Successful and unsuccessful results need to be documented in report form for future reference, not only to repeat successes but to avoid failures.

REPORT-OUT- The results of the TQM program need to be shared with all relevant members of the organization, so that a culture of quality and improvement takes shape, which is a critical ingredient of successful TQM.

TQM Success Stories

Beginning in the 1950s, TQM took root in Japan with some levels of success; however, one of the greatest success stories for TQM, starting in Japan and spreading worldwide to this day is that of the development of what has come to be known as the Toyota Production System, obviously named for its creators at the Toyota Motor Company. Simply summarized, Toyota was faced with the classic view that their vehicles were of inferior quality, and indeed they were in some cases. Embracing TQM and enlisting the help of Deming and others, Toyota in time developed a system of production that resulted in high quality vehicles of lower cost than those of their competitors and the agility to switch to producing small, fuel efficient vehicles in the fuel crunch days of the 1970s, ending the dominance of the American automobile industry, which lacked Toyota¡¦s ability to swiftly move to provide what customers wanted, at the price and quality they desired. Another success story of TQM concerns
Conclusion

References

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