Tag Archives: TQM

Transforming a Management System – A Case Study From the Madison Wisconsin Police Department

This post in an excerpt from The Quality Leadership Workbook for Police by Chief David Couper and Captain Sabine Lobitz (buy via Amazon).

The New Quality Leadership Workbook for Police

Transformational Steps
A Case Study Madison, Wisconsin (1981-1993)

Step 1: Educate and inform everyone in the organization about the vision, the goals, and Quality Leadership. This step must be passionately led by the top leader.

Begin discussion with top management team and train them.
Discuss and ask employees; get feedback from them.
Share feedback with the chief and his management team.
Get buy-in from top department managers.
Survey external customers—citizens; those who live and work in the community.
Create an employee’s advisory council; ask, listen, inform, and keep them up to date on what’s going on.
The chief keeps on message; tells, sells, and persuades, newsletters, meetings and all available media.

Step 2: Prepare for the transformation. Before police services to the community can be improved, it is essential to prepare the inside first — to cast a bold vision and to have leaders that would “walk the talk.”

Appoint a top-level, full-time coordinator to train, coach, and assist in the transformation.
Form another employee council to work through problems and barriers encountered during implementation of the transformation and Quality Leadership.
Require anyone who seeks to be a leader to have the knowledge and ability to practice Quality Leadership.

Step 3: Teach Quality Leadership. This begins at the top with the chief and the chief’s management team.

Train all organizational leaders in Quality Leadership.
Train all employees as to what Quality Leadership is, why the transformation is necessary, and what it means for them.

Step 4: Start practicing Quality Leadership. If top managers within the organization are not authentically practicing Quality Leadership neither will anyone else.

Continue reading →

2009 Deming Prize

image of the Deming Prize medal

The Union Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) has awarded Niigata Diamond Electric (Japan) and Siam White Cement Company (Thailand) the Deming prize.

Organizations receiving the Deming Prize since 2000 by country (prior to that almost all winners were from Japan):

Country	Prizes
India	15
Thailand	9
Japan	5
USA	1
Singapore	1

The 2009 Deming Prize for Individuals went to Dr. Hiroshi Osada, Professor, Graduate School of Innovation Management, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Previous recipients include: Kaoru Ishikawa, Genichi Taguchi, Shoichiro Toyoda, Hitoshi Kume and Noriaki Kano.

The 2009 Deming Distinguished Service Award for Dissemination and Promotion went to Gregory H. Watson, Chairman and Managing Partner, Business Excellence Solutions

National Medal of Technology and Innovation

photo of 2007 Medals of Technology and Innovation Presentation at the White House

Armand V. Feigenbaum received the 2007 National Medal of and Technology and Innovation for his leadership in the development of the economic relationship of quality costs, productivity improvement, and profitability, and for his pioneering application of economics, general systems theory and technology, statistical methods, and management principles that define The Total Quality Management approach for achieving performance excellence and global competitiveness.

In 1987, Dr. W. Edwards Deming received the medal for his forceful promotion of statistical methodology, for his contributions to sampling theory and for his advocacy to corporations and nations of a general management philosophy that has resulted in improved product quality with consequent betterment of products available to users as well as more efficient corporate performance.

In 1992, Joseph M. Juran received the medal for his lifetime work of providing the key principles and methods by which enterprises manage the quality of their products and processes, enhancing their ability to compete in the global marketplace.

TQM for the Water Business

How dealers can put TQM to work [the broken link was removed] by Brian Cusimano

Deming did not like the term TQM. It was not defined, so each person using it meant something different. And the faddish nature of the term drew a large number of “hacks” (consultants who spoke with authority but without knowledge). Seeing the term TQM used now however, I find refreshing. To use the term TQM you must go against the temptation to talk only about the current fad (learning organizations, reengineering, balanced scorecard, six sigma, lean…). This author defines what he means by TQM:

Total quality management (TQM) is simply a customer-focused dedication to continually improving everything you do every day. TQM is disciplined thinking about organizational goals, processes, and people, to ensure that the correct activities are completed correctly the first time.

Let’s say the dealer’s historic (benchmark) USC ratio is 1 percent. Recent USC ratios have been in the 3-4 percent range, so the problem is growing.

There are many TQM tools that can be used to solve such problems, including Pareto, fishbone diagrams, control charting, and cause-and-effect diagrams. In this case we will use the methods of ppm-defective and Pareto. Pareto simply uses bar charts to analyze the proportion of different defects.

Management Improvement Flavors

Lean Manufacturing Visionary Jim Womack On Frontiers Of Lean Thinking [broken link has been removed], webcast and additional questions and answers:

Question: For a firm seeking to improve — what comes first? Six Sigma quality or lean implementation?

James Womack: Agh! These are all the same thing. You need to start with the value stream for every product, draw a map of its current state, and ask about each step: Is it valuable? Is it capable? Is it available? Is it adequate? Is it flexible? Then ask whether each step flows smoothly to the next but only at the pull of the customer as the process approaches perfection. Doing this simple exercise wraps together everything you need to know about TQM, TPM, TPS, Six Sigma, TOC, etc

I believe while they are similar to varying degree they are not the same thing. They may have similar goals – they are largely focused at improving performance of the organization (but even how they would measure success is different). And when implemented well each of these methods have value. However what is done in an organization focused on six sigma is different than one focused on lean thinking.
Continue reading →

Who Influences Your Thinking?

Comments on Who Influences Your Thinking? [broken link removed] – Survey results [broken link removed]

> 1. Are people getting most of their information
> from other sources?
That would be my guess.

Similar to the phenomenon of “the long tail” which is an interesting topic in its own right. We tend to focus on the popular few (books, musicians, movies, authors, computer programs…) but often the sum of the less popular many is more significant. See:

The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, Wired, Oct 2004 “The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are”
Continued discussion of the Amazon figures in a Chiris Anderson’s blog. “I’ve now spoken to Jeff Bezos (and others) about this. He doesn’t have a hard figure for the percentage of sales of products not available offline, but reckons that it’s closer to 25-30%.”
The long tail – a secret sauce for companies like Amazon.com, Netflix and Apple Computer, Motley Fool, NPR Audio Recording

Getting back to the question raised by the “Who Influences Your Thinking” post; More importantly I believe they (we) are just failing to get all we should.
Continue reading →

Management Improvement History

Originally posted to the Deming Electronic Network, 22 Sep 1999, in response to this message (link removed because it was broken).

I would like to say that I think it is good that we have disagreements on the DEN. I think it is a strength of the DEN, not a weakness. However, I think we sometimes get to personal with no real purpose. One example of this, for me, is: “Well, I guess we knew different Demings. Mine was a teacher named Dr. W. Edwards Deming.” I doubt this statement is meant to be taken literally, and if it is not I do not see what it adds to the discussion. I point this out not because I think this is some bad act that should be punished but that I think we need to continue to develop a sense of how we wish to express our disagreements and I think that we should try to do so more constructively.

For the past 60 years we’ve been looking for the magic bullet that will improve the quality of our products, services and lives. In the 1940s, we applied statistics through sampling, SPC and design of experiments to improve our products. In the 1950s, we used quality cost and total quality control to bring about quality improvement. In the 1960s, zero defects and MIL-Q-9858A drove the quality improvement process. In the 1970s, quality circles, process qualification and supplier qualification became key quality issues. In the 1980s, employee training in problem solving, team activities and just-in-time inventory were the things to do.”

I find this statement so far from the truth that it would seriously damage any PDSA with this as an accepted assessment of history. I do not believe Deming had such an inaccurate view (of course I may be wrong). I do believe we need to improve our practice of Quality (and to do that we need to understand what happened in the past and why it was not more successful). The idea that Design of Experiments (DoE) was at the core of some Quality Movement to me is not at all accurate.

Continue reading →