Quality In Business: Getting It Right First Time

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In the competitive world of business, the most successful companies will be more efficient, more
responsive, produce and support the better products. In short, the company which practices the best
quality control will be successful. To aid in the process of achieving better quality, the principle of
Total Quality Management (TQM) was invented.

Barriers To Quality

It may not be easy to adopt an active approach to quality improvement for a variety of reasons. Here
are a few of the most likely obstacles:

  • Apathy: Staff may feel there is no need for change, particularly if the business is already
    perceived as successful in the wider world. There may be room for improvement in a given
    process, but the employee attitude is ‘it isn’t broken, so why fix it?’.
  • Cynicism: Even if everyone involved with the business agrees with the need for change, the staff
    may see a structured approach as over-elaborate and excessive. Worse, they may see it simply as
    an excuse for managers to avoid dealing with problems immediately, on an ad hoc basis.
  • Lack of resources: Change is a big commitment, and there may not be enough time/staff/money
    to have people trained to administer quality initiatives, or even just to pause to review the business
    effectively. This is usually voiced as ‘we are too busy to make changes,’ which if true would not
    bode well for the future of the business.
  • Abuse: Middle managers in the business who have any of the attitudes outlined above may take
    the opportunity to assign staff or themselves to quality work to avoid what they regard as more
    difficult front-line activity. Also, staff may perceive benchmarking events (discussed later in this
    article) as avoidance of ‘genuine’ work.

These obstacles may be difficult to overcome, but not impossible. The key to successful change is
rigorous and enthusiastic management of the change process, and making sure every employee of the
business is involved in some way. Communicating with the whole business openly may even result in
some of those negative attitudes changing for the better.

Achieving Higher Quality

Once you have established that changes are necessary, how do you go about making those changes?
For that matter, what are the required changes? The simplest way to find out is by consulting staff and
customers. Ask if there is anything they can think of that would improve the business or the service it
provides. Are there any specific problems that need to be addressed? The method of consultation can
vary - it may be best to use a written survey, especially dealing with large workforces or customers
spread over a wide geographical area. Alternatively, a forum could be held with a representative cross-
section of employees or customers, which would allow development and discussion of any issues
arising.

Regardless of the way the data was gathered, the issues will have to be analysed and addressed
somehow. Below is a selection of techniques used by businesses to find and develop suggested
improvements and solutions to problems.

Brainstorming

The simplest method to generate ideas, ideally suited to the forum situation mentioned earlier.
Given a specific area to improve or problem to solve, the idea here is to come up with as many
ideas as possible to solve it, however silly those ideas may be. Don’t discuss or dismiss any
suggestions - this method encourages innovation, invention and creativity, and could produce
solutions that logical thought would not have produced. Once you are certain that the possibilities
have been exhausted, look through the list of suggestions and put them into broad categories if
possible (generally, you will find that groups of suggestions are variations on the same approach).
At this stage, each suggestion can be evaluated to see if it is a feasible solution as it stands, or if it
requires further thought. Hopefully at this point, brainstorming will have produced a number of
options with which to make improvements or solve the problems at hand.

Process Mapping

This technique involves the creation of flowcharts which illustrate the individual steps involved in
a given process, and hence to pinpoint where problems arise and areas that could be improved.
Mapping is particularly useful for spotting ‘bottlenecks’ - points in a process where delays may
occur. By taking a close look at the process in this way, it may even be possible to remove
unnecessary steps entirely. In its simplest form, a flowchart looks like this:

Step 1 -> Step 2 -> Step 3 -> Step 4, and so on.

Of course, not every process is as linear as this - subsequent steps may differ depending on the
result of a decision made during a previous step. This can be represented by multiple branches
from the decision step, one each for the different decision results. If the amount of branching is
becoming too complex to illustrate using a flowchart, the solution may be to create separate
flowcharts for smaller sections of the process.

Kaizen

As the name suggests, this is a Japanese set of techniques which promotes efficiency as a means to
higher quality. One aspect of Kaizen is the concept of a ‘blitz event,’ where a small team is
removed from normal duties for a week or so in order to concentrate on solving a major problem
with the business. Over the course of the week, the team will receive basic training in many of the
techniques described in this article, then apply them to the problem at hand. Any aspects of the
process concerned which are deemed to be wasteful of resources are removed, and the process is
refined. Towards the end of the week, they will perform tests to see if the changes they have made
are viable, and then create an action plan to implement the changes - a month is usually the
accepted period for the plan to be effective. During that month, the situation will be monitored by
the team to ensure that changes are being adhered to, and that the situation has indeed improved.

It should be stressed that this is only a selection of techniques - others include Pareto Analysis, Cause
and Effect Diagrams, Solution Effect Analysis, the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ method, and Force Field
Analysis. All of the techniques mentioned thus far work on the same general principle, that is take a
sampling of data from the staff or customers and break down the problems or suggestions into
manageable pieces which can be solved, implemented and later reviewed to test their effectiveness.

Benchmarking and Quality Organisations

Assume some of these improvement measures have been implemented, and that they have had a
measurable positive effect on your business. As a manager, how do you know whether the
improvement is enough to make your business competitive? The answer is to benchmark.

Benchmarking means comparing your business with others in relative terms. To make this easier,
various organisations have produced generic standards of quality which businesses can assess
themselves against, regardless of whether they are in the same field (i.e. service providers can therefore
compare quality with manufacturing companies, or research laboratories, etc.).

Example Organisation - EFQM

The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) was formed in 1988, and includes over
600 member businesses and organisations from the private and public sectors. The FFQM have
produced a Model consisting of nine categories corresponding to key business areas. The 9 categories
are divided into 2 groups, as follows:

The first five - Leadership, People (i.e. staff), Policy And Strategy, Partnerships And Resources, and
Processes - are known collectively as enablers. These are the factors which allow businesses to create
quality products.

The remaining four are the results which the business produces - People Satisfaction, Customer
Satisfaction, Impact on Society, and Key Performance Results.

EFQM assists businesses to train their staff to objectively identify strengths and weaknesses in their
business and assign a score in each of the nine categories. Data for the assessment is gathered and
analysed using the techniques discussed earlier in this article, especially staff and customer surveys.
This assessment then provides a starting point from which further improvements can be made and
measured, and the scores recorded can be verified by independent EFQM assessors and compared
against scores from other member businesses.

If the verified scores are sufficiently high, and have shown a significant improvement over a short
period, the business may enter itself into competition for the European Quality Award administered by
the EFQM. The competition is run every 2 years, and includes categories divided by size of business
and public / private sector concerns. Achievement of the EQA would boost the profile of any business,
to such an extent that it would be a role model to other companies and organisations wishing to raise
the quality of their business.

Other Quality Organisations

The EFQM is not alone in providing these types of services. In fact, there are many such organisations
at national and regional levels — a good example of this is the British Quality Foundation (BQF) and
Quality Scotland Foundation.

Conclusions

While this article is not an exhaustive overview of issues related to quality, the main principles have
been covered: active promotion of improvement; good communication between management, staff and
customers; benchmarking against other businesses (perhaps with the help of a dedicated quality
organisation); and continuous improvement through constant re-appraisal.

There is, however, one other point which is worth considering. That is simply to apply a common sense
approach whenever and wherever improvements are being made. There are very few, if any
organisations that can afford not to make changes in order to remain at their most effective. On the
other hand, lack of resources may hinder the use of structured quality initiatives. Common sense will
tell just how far a business needs to go, and in many cases it will indicate just what changes are needed
to improve quality.

The fact is, once the decision to make changes has been made, it is already one step closer to getting it
right first time, every time.


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