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Total Quality Management (TQM) is an enhancement to the traditional way of doing business. It
is proven technique to guarantee survival in world-class competition. Individuals differ radically
from one another in the degree to which they are willing and able to express their emotions. The
people belief TQM is too abstract with many definitions and a lack of hard requirements by
Coleman and Douglas (2003). Vouzas and Psyhogios (2007) who says that TQM definitions a
reference is made to its soft and hard side. The soft side is associated with management
concepts and principles such as leadership, employee empowerment and culture, while the
hard side refers to quality improvement tools and techniques.
Objective
1) To study the simultaneous impact of soft and hard TQM elements.
2) To study the result of soft and hard TQM elements.
3) To determine the relationship between soft and hard TQM elements.
Theoretical background
TQM state for typical quality elements substantial and will not accomplish in short period of
time. Small companies will be able to make the transformation in a much faster time period than
larger companies.
QUALITY ELEMENT`
TQM
Definition
Customer-oriented
Priorities
Decision
Long term
Emphasis
Prevention
Errors
System
Responsibility
Everyone
Problem solving
Teams
Procurement
Life-cycle costs
Quality and productivity are not mutually exclusive. Improvements in quality lead directly to
increased productivity and other benefits. TQM is not something that will occur overnight. There
are no quick remedies. It takes long time to build the appropriate emphasis and techniques into
the culture.
TQM
PRINCIPLE AND
PRACTICES (SOFT)
TOOLS AND
TECHNIQUES (HARD)
LEADERSHIP
QUANTITATIVE
NON QUANTITATIVE
CUSTOMER
SATISFACTION
STATISTICAL
PROCESS CONTROL
(SPC)
ISO 9000
EMPLOYEE
INVOLVEMENT
ACCEPTANCE
SAMPLING
ISO 14000
CONTINUOUS
IMPROVEMENT
RELIABILITY
BENCHMARKING
SUPPLIER
PARTNERSHIP
EXPERIMENTAL
DESIGN
TOTAL PRODUCTIVE
MAINTENANCE
PERFORMANCE
MEASURES
MANAGEMENT
TOOLS
QUALITY FUNCTION
DEPLOYMENT (QFD)
CONCURRENT
ENGINEERING
Lagrosen and Lagrosen (2005) found that the use of quality management models is related to
well functioning quality management and models such as ISO 9000, Swedish Quality Award and
European Quality Award were found to be the most important but Tari (2005) indicated that the
weaknesses in ISO 9000 certified firms were human aspects such as work teams, suggestions
schemes, recognition models and the use of quality techniques and tools. Ahmed et al. (2005)
concluded that the success of any quality management system depends greatly on the strong
commitment of top management and how customers are valued.
-SOFT TQMLEADERSHIP
- Senior management must recognize that the quality function is no more responsible for product
quality than the finance function is responsible for profit and loss. Quality, like cost and service,
is the responsibility of everyone in the corporation, especially the Chief Executive Officer
(CEO). When a commitment to quality is made, it becomes part of the corporations business
strategy and leads to enhanced profit and an improved competitive position.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
TQM implies an organization obsession with meeting or exceeding customer satisfactions, to the
point that customers are delighted. Understanding customers needs and expectations in essential
to winning new business and keeping existing business.
EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT
Involving people in a quality-improvement program is an effective technique to improve the
quality. Management commitment, annual quality improvement, education and training, project
teams, and so forth, are all effective in utilizing the human resources of an organization. People
must come to work not only to do their job, but also to think about how to improve their job.
People must be empowered to perform processes in an optimum manner at the lowest possible
level.
SUPPLIER PARTNERSHIP
The supplier should be treated as an extension of the production process. The supplier should
make positive contribution to design, production, and cost reduction. In order to reduce
inventories, many companies are using Just-In-Time (JIT). For JIT to be effective, the supplier
quality must be excellent, and the supplier must reduce the set-up time.
PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Effective management requires information obtained from the measurement of activities.
Performance measures are necessary as a baseline to identify potential projects, to justify project
resource allocation and to assess the improvement results.
-HARD TQMSTATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL (SPC)
SPC is comprised of seven tools: Pareto diagram, cause and effect diagram, check sheets,
process flow diagram, scatter diagram, histogram, and control charts.
ACCEPTANCE SAMPLING
With the increased emphasis on the use if SPC as evidence of conformance to quality
requirements, the need for acceptance sampling has declined.
RELIABILITY
Reliability is the probability that a product will perform its intended function satisfactorily for a
prescribed life under certain stated environment condition. Four factors associated with
reliability: numerical value, intended function, life and environmental condition.
ISO 9000
ISO 9000 is a standardized Quality Management System (QMS). The benefits of an effective
QMS are improved quality and productivity, reduction in customer audits, world-wide
recognition and credibility, increased access to domestic and world-wide markets, and reduced
risk of product liability litigation.
ISO 14000
ISO 14000 is the international standard for an Environment Management System (EMS). It
provides organization with the EMS elements which can be integrated into other management
systems to help achieve environmental and economic goals.
BENCHMARKING
Benchmarking forces constant testing of internal processes against industrys best practices. It
promotes teamwork by directing attention to business practices as well as production to remain
competitive.
CONCURRENT ENGINEERING
Concurrent engineering is the practice of using a multidisciplinary team to conduct product
conception, design and production planning at one time. The major benefits are faster product
development, shorter time to market, better quality, less work in process, and increased
productivity.
METHODOLOGY
Respondents
Empirical data were drawn from 370 Greek companies using the questionnaire method. Asked
questions are based on the impact of soft and hard TQM elements on quality management
results.
Method of studies
The model reliability and validity was examined through Confirmatory Factor Analysis, while
the relationships between soft and hard TQM elements and quality management results were
examined through Structural Equation Modelling.
the objective of confirmatory factor analysis is to test whether the data fit a hypothesized
measurement model. This hypothesized model is based on theory and/or previous analytic
research.
In confirmatory factor analysis, the researcher first develops a hypothesis about what factors s/he
believes are underlying the measures s/he has used and may impose constraints on the model
based on these a priori hypotheses. By imposing these constraints, the researcher is forcing the
model to be consistent with his/her theory. Model fit measures could then be obtained to assess
how well the proposed model captured the covariance between all the items or measures in the
model. If the constraints the researcher has imposed on the model are inconsistent with the
sample data, then the results of statistical tests of model fit will indicate a poor fit, and the model
will be rejected. If the fit is poor, it may be due to some items measuring multiple factors. It
might also be that some items within a factor are more related to each other than others.
Instruments
Questionnaires
A research was carried out in Greek companies through questionnaires. Based on the above
mentioned soft and hard TQM elements, a questionnaire was designed that was reviewed by
quality management academics and professionals and tested through a pilot study on 23 ISO
9001:2000 certified companies. The final questionnaire consisted of four parts. The first part
contained questions about the companies profile and the second part questions about soft
TQM elements. The questions of the third part concerned the results related to customers,
employees, society and the company itself (internal and external). Finally, the fourth part
contained questions using respective quality management tools and techniques. The answers
were given on a seven-point scale. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was applied to assess
measurement model reliability and validity. The relationships between latent constructs were
examined through Structural Equation Modeling. The SPSS 15 and AMOS six statistical
packages were used for data processing.
Sample
Given that the ISO 9001:2000 standard is much more in line with TQM than other quality
standards, the criterion for selecting the companies that would participate in the study was their
certification to this standard. The only available and formal source informing data about the ISO
9000 certified Greek companies was ICAP, the largest business information and consulting firm
in Greece. According to its database, the ISO 9001:2000 certified companies in Greece during
the research period were 1720. The questionnaire was sent to all these companies and was
addressed to the quality manager. In total, 370 questionnaires were returned fully completed.
Comparing the 370 companies that participated in the research with the 1350 companies that did
not, in terms of the number of employees, head office location and their sector (manufacturing,
commercial, service industry), no statistically significant differences were detected. From this it
is concluded that the responded companies were not different from the remaining ISO 9001:2000
certified companies (non-responded) with respect to their profile.
RESULT
Exploring the TQM literature, the following quality management results are referred: customer
satisfaction, employee satisfaction, impact on society and internal and external business results.
The study proved that quality improvement and the consolidation of the companys market
position are influenced mainly by adopting soft TQM elements and secondarily hard TQM
elements. Results also showed that both aspects of TQM play a significant role in gaining
benefits from the quality management system, both inside and outside the business environment.
Companies profile
The majority of the companies that participated in the research were small-medium enterprises
(250 employees), two or three of them were manufacturing having years of experience in quality
assurance, since most of them were certified to the standards of the ISO 9000:1994 series. The
selection of the certification body and the external quality consultant, on whose support 75 per
cent of the companies relied to become certified, was made using their reputation in the market
as the primary criterion and not so much on financial grounds. Finally, a rate of 62 per cent of
the companies expressed the wish to implement a quality management system in accordance
with TQM principles in the future.
From the collected data, it is obvious that soft and hard TQM elements have both a direct
and indirect impact on the quality management results. More specifically, quality improvement
is influenced mainly by soft TQM elements and secondarily by hard TQM elements.
Customer satisfaction is influenced mainly by quality improvement and secondarily by soft
TQM elements. Market benefits are influenced mainly by customer satisfaction and
secondarily by hard TQM elements.
Therefore, it can be concluded that quality management results are significantly influenced
mainly by soft TQM elements and secondarily by hard TQM elements. In other words, the
research hypothesis, that is soft and hard TQM elements affect the results of adopting a
quality management system, is not rejected.