The Insight about Quality Management

"You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make a dream a reality" ~Walt Disney

Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent. It has four main components: quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality but also the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. (Wikipedia). 

About "international standards" of quality:
In Germany, quality means precision and perfection. 
In France, it is a luxury. 
In Italy, it is technology. 
In Asia, it is a simplification. 
In the US, it is innovation.

When leadership is combined with knowledge, there is quality management. Quality management is determined by the human resource, production process/service delivery, and output. 'Quality Leadership' is the capacity to understand and utilize the information, and incorporate that information in ways that inform and enlighten the management teams. Further,  'Quality Management' is the capacity to approach the change of system or process creatively and inspire support to develop and achieve milestones and goals across teams. The highly functional HR teams bring forward leadership training and enrichment to all the departments of an organization, thereby raising the performance and the confidence of the staff and the leadership.

As a degree of quality is in everything people do and experience: What is required is clarifying the purpose and engaging all the people involved working together as a team to excel in the delivery of product/service, as quality management is to help them in doing what they are doing better, easier and so on. If the people aspect is taken out, and compliance (policing) becomes paramount, it usually fails. People/ human experience are what define quality management. Some organizations have turned the very essence of "HR" into something of a contrast from its very purpose and intent. For without human interaction, there is no quality. Having that stated, the principles of quality depend on the people employing them. People as the actors in the quality process determine the extent to which we desire to achieve quality. Unfortunately, money is often the driving force rather than the desire for quality. Hence, quality needs to be established at the onset rather than checking for it later. The bottom line is that HR needs to be focused more on "Human Investment" than acting as the organizational pendulum of desire. In order to get quality out of anything whether it is people or process, you need to provide investment, dedication, and commitment. Organizations need to employ leadership and cultivate a climate that is conducive to growth rather than using catch-phrases that make things look good.

Quality is not one specific department's job, it's the digital principle and a holistic management discipline: "Quality management" is like "change management" in that both appear to be an oxymoron; in which quality and change =process-in motion and management = stabilize and control; the process data is meaningless without theory and knowledge to understand how it applies to people in the process, explain it and continuously improve upon it. There are about 12 specific management functions in any organization. For instance, ~ Quality and HR sit on either side of Change Management in the 12 Sector Management Wheel. Quality tools such as PDCA, Continuous Innovation and Five Why's and so on, are ideal for identifying problems in procedures. These tools, however, have no use in dealing with quality in human systems.

Look at the measurements that are already captured; employee satisfaction/engagement, customer satisfaction, employee sick time being used/not used, injury on the job, customer complaints, turnaround (not all in any order rather the big picture), and the vine/energy of the people who make the company/organization run. Quality management means that finding someone who is not doing her/his job correctly. That does not mean that these individuals are lazy or any other negative characteristics. Then, the quality team checks how far this individual from doing his/her job correctly. The results can specify if training is needed (re-alignment) or this person is just not fit for the job. To win the heart for people who need quality change is to confront them with their fears in a careful and emphatic manner.

Quality Management is basically the fundamental purpose of serving the customer and meeting/exceeding their expectations. The rest of them are the tools, which can be used as the situation warrants. All the factors raised in the discussion are to address some of the aspects, which eventually influence the customer's satisfaction. The tools that are used by people in control (top management, middle management or supervisors etc) depends on how they perceive the problem, what they feel they are hired to produce (implying their KPIs) and so on. This can be the basic quality of the product/service, attracting new customers, retaining customers and so on. For example, the marketing people influence the customers’ thinking/beliefs in the product/ service. 

The obstacles to Quality Management: "A Lesser Category of Obstacles" to Quality includes: 
(1).Neglecting long-range planning 
(2).Relying on technology to solve problems 
(3).Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions 
(4).Excuses, such as "our problems are different" 
(5).Obsolescence in school that management skill can be taught in classes
(6).Reliance on quality control departments rather than management, supervisors, managers of purchasing, and production workers 
(7).Placing blame on workforce who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences 
(8).Relying on quality inspection rather than improving product quality

Therefore, without human interaction, quality is not possible. How quality is defined and measured is crucial. Improvising a definition of quality management as the process through which certain characteristics of an object (product/service or a process) are achieved or attempted to being achieved. What does define it? The togetherness of theories, profound knowledge, processes and tools actually used put into action and delivered it, and the most important thing is you need to define quality as management and quality as leadership.

 

Posted in: Change Management,KPIs,Principle/Practice,Project Management,Quality