Kevin Dooley
Associate Professor, University of Minnesota
Farzad Mahmoodi
Associate Professor, Clarkson University
The principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) have received widespread attention over the last decade. TQM initiatives can be found in almost any type of organization, large or small, profit or non-profit, commercial or government, manufacturing or service. TQM has even been touted as being a transformational paradigm for schools and churches! Many stories exist of extraordinary turnarounds that TQM has wrought, in places as diverse as Xerox, the U.S. Navy, Globe Metallurgical, and Mt. Edgecomb High School.
President Clinton, in the preamble of the 1994 Baldrige National Quality Award documentation, writes, "to meet the challenges of the global economy... our most successful companies have been ... becoming more responsive to customers and seeking to constantly improve the products they make, the services they provide, and the people they employ." TQM and business process reengineering have been the cornerstones of the Clinton administration's "reinventing government" initiative.
Yet organizational frustration has arisen when TQM efforts have not produced "change" as rapidly as leaders and other change agents might have wished. Reengineering authors were quick to distance themselves from TQM (e.g., Michael Hammer stated, "Nor is reengineering the same as quality improvement, TQM, or any other manifestation of the quality movement"), even though the concepts of reengineering are usually considered a subset of TQM. Many companies have moved away from the TQM moniker, choosing instead to label their initiative "continuous improvement," "process management," or "service excellence." Numerous authors have written about the "evils" of TQM bureaucracy, the ineffectiveness of the Baldrige Award criteria, the inappropriateness of statistical methodology, the unethical nature of variance reduction in social systems, and TQM's lack of perspective. Many have also begun to question the bottom-line impact of TQM-does TQM pay?
We firmly believe that the perceived failures of TQM stem from incorrect implementation of the principles; TQM principles, if adopted intelligently and thoughtfully, will put a company in a superior business position. They will not guarantee business success, just as lack of a quality system will not guarantee business failure-but TQM does significantly increase the probability of business success.
Dr. Deming's system of profound knowledge points out that TQM concepts are embedded in theories from such disparate fields as psychology, statistics, organizational behavior, and systems theory. It takes a significant amount of learning, time, and practice to comprehend the notions of TQM in a holistic way, and to understand how to customize the concepts to the realities of one's own organization. What we have attempted to do in this issue in put together a collection of articles that, if read and contemplated, will form a solid basis in understanding the principles of TQM. We have attempted to select articles that walk the fine line between theoretical and practical viewpoints.
Most people have come to learn of quality through the teachings of one (or more) of the "quality gurus": Phillip Crosby, W. Edwards Deming, Armand Feigenbaum, Kaoru Ishikawa, Joseph Juran, and Genichi Taguchi. The article "A Note on Quality: The Views of Deming, Juran, and Crosby" nicely out- lines the differences in quality philosophy of three of these gurus.
What does quality have to do with business success? "Competing on the Eight Dimensions of Quality" demonstrates that companies select particular market niches according to what element of product quality they choose to emphasize. Given a desire to create new products that will meet customer needs, quality must be built into the design of the product. "The House of Quality" outlines the method of Quality Function Deployment, which systematically aligns customer needs with technical product requirements. Additionally, the environment in which the product is used and made must also be considered during design.
The vanguard of quality has historically been the manufacturing system, where quality means producing items that conform to design specifications. Statistical methods playa dominant role in helping workers and engineers better understand the mechanics of their processes; such knowledge is prerequisite to improvement. "The Scientific Context of Quality Improvement" outlines the general application of the scientific method, and "Quality Engineering" includes specific details about the tools of quality improvement. Two of the most popular and effective statistical methods, statistical process control and designed experimentation, are described in "Understanding Variation" and "A Systematic Approach to Planning for a Designed Industrial Experiment."
The quality system must be subject to improvement itself. Companies have flocked toward the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as a means to assess themselves against the de facto definition of TQM. "Bashing the Baldrige" reviews the purpose and process of the Baldrige Award, and discusses some of the shortcomings with the approach. It should be noted that the Award criteria have undergone massive changes in the last two years, and that the new criteria have gone a long way in addressing previous shortcomings.
Some people believe that TQM concepts by themselves will not go far enough because they represent a view that is too steeped in reductionism. As an alternative, "Building Learning Organizations" discusses the notions of systems thinking as applied to organizational understanding and improvement. Finally, "Ten Ways to Kill a Quality Program" summarizes the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful TQM implementation.
We have also put together a listing of professional societies, journals and periodicals, books and video catalogs, books on quality-related topics, electronic sources, and software. We hope that this will help you in learning more about the theory and practice of TQM. Good luck in your quality journey!
Kevin Dooley is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is currently director of the University's industrial engineering program. He received a B.S. and M.S. in industrial engineering and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dooley has research interests in quality management, statistical process control, organizational behavior; and complex systems. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Operations Management, the International Journal of Production Research, the Journal of Engineering for Industry, /IE 1ransactions, and Human Systems Management; he is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Operations Management. He has been a board member of the Deming Management Forum and is on the board of the Chaos Network. He was a Minnesota Quality Award senior examiner in 1991, and is certified in ISO 9000 examination. He is helping implement quality improvement at the University of Minnesota, and has worked with Honeywell SSEC, Allina Health Systems, Johnson Filtration, 3M; Pharmacia-Deltec, Ford, Citibank, Vaughn Communications, Minnesota School District 287; and Optical Sensors.
Farzad Mahmoodi is an associate professor of operations management at the Clarkson University School of Business. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Minnesota. Mahmoodis areas of interest are production planning and scheduling of manufacturing systems, implementation and management of cellular and flexible manufacturing systems, quality management, and systems modeling and simulation. He has published several articles in a variety of journals, including Decision Sciences, International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Computers and Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Production Planning and Control, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, and Logistics and 1ransportation Review. He has presented papers at a variety of national and international conferences, and has performed consulting projects in the U.S., Canada, and the Middle East. Mahmoodi is the recipient of the 1995 Clarkson University John I-V: Graham Jr. Faculty Research Award, the 1995 School of Business Faculty Leadership Award, the 1994 Tau Delta Kappa Teachers Excellence Award, and 1990 Clarkson University Computer Curriculum Award. He is a member of DSL INFORMS, POMS, ISA, and ASQC.