INSPECTION

  

Definition
Critical appraisal involving examination, measurement, testing, gauging, and comparison of
materials or items. An inspection determines if the material or item is in proper quantity and
condition, and if it conforms to the applicable or specified requirements. Inspection is generally
divided into three categories: (1) Receiving inspection, (2) In-process inspection, and (3) Final
inspection. In quality control (which is guided by the principle that "Quality cannot be inspected
into a product") the role of inspection is to verify and validate the variance data; it does not
involve separating the good from the bad.

Introduction to quality

In its broadest sense, quality is a degree of excellence: the extent to which something is fit for its
purpose. In the narrow sense, product or service quality is defined as conformance with
requirement, freedom from defects or contamination, or simply a degree of customer satisfaction.
In quality management, quality is defined as the totality of characteristics of a product or service
that bears on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs. Quality is also rapidly embracing the
nature or degree of impact an organisation has on its stakeholders, environment and society.

Meeting requirements

Specifications are an imprecise means of conveying subjective aspects - not everything can be
reduced to figures or measurable characteristics. For instance, the characteristics of friendliness
or courtesy in a service industry are difficult to measure reliably and repeatedly. Therefore,
conformance to requirements is not necessarily all there is to achieving quality.

Quality is a result

Quality is the result of a comparison between what was required and what was provided. It is
judged not by the producer but by the receiver. The judgement can be made of an intention, as is
the case when selecting suppliers, or an output, as is the case when purchasing a product or
service.

Customer satisfaction

The only true measure of acceptable quality is customer satisfaction, which takes into account
both objective and subjective interpretations of the needs and expectations of customers. If
customers are satisfied with the products and services offered, the organisation has not only
correctly interpreted customer needs and expectations but it is also providing products and
services of acceptable quality.

Changing customer perceptions

Customer needs and expectations are constantly changing. Awareness of new technology,
legislation, problems, competitor products or services creates new wants for customers. Wants
turn into demands when these customers begin their next purchase. Therefore, it is vital for
organisations to constantly improve quality so that satisfied customers are retained as well as
created.

Quality and value

Value is not a price tag but a measure of the benefits derived from a product or service for what
is given in return. A product may well meet physical and functional requirements but be
overpriced when compared to others of the same class and grade. Alternatively, the same product
may be on offer at another store for 50 per cent less, indicating exceedingly good value for
money.

In an effort to reduce costs, some organisations have forgotten that it is the quality of the
complete transaction that counts. Getting product quality right while ignoring the human
relationship between customer and supplier will not lead to satisfied customers.

What quality is not

Quality is not perfection, a standard, a procedure, a measure or an adjective. No amount of

inspection changes the quality of a product or service. Quality does not exist in isolation - there
has to be an entity, the quality of which is being discussed. Quality is not a specific characteristic
of an entity but the extent to which that characteristic meets certain needs. The value of the
characteristic is unimportant - it is how its value compares with customer needs that signifies its
quality.

Why should an organisation be interested in quality?

Every business exists not to make a profit, as many would have us believe, but to create and
retain satisfied customers. A business would have no profits if it failed to create and retain
satisfied customers. Providing products and services which meet customer needs and
expectations creates satisfied customers. Anticipating future needs and expectations retains
satisfied customers. Therefore, quality is vital to the survival of every enterprise.

What does quality apply to?

Every product, service, process, task, action, decision can either be acceptable or unacceptable.
Hence, there is an intrinsic quality in everything that an organisation does. Everyone must pay
attention to quality, from the chief executive to the shopfloor across all functions in an
enterprise. It is as important for support staff to pay attention to quality as production staff.

Who is responsible for quality?

One can only be responsible for doing something relative to quality. Hence a person can be
responsible for:

 specifying quality requirements

 achieving quality requirements
 determining the quality of something

Assigning responsibility means giving a person the right to cause things to happen and
with this right should be delegated the authority to control the processes which deliver the
output the quality of which the person is responsible for.

One manager cannot be made responsible for quality within an organisation unless that
manager is the CEO. All a specialist manager such as a Quality Manager can do it is to
enable others to achieve quality by providing encouragement, leadership, training, tools,
techniques and performance data. However, it is important for someone in the business to
give leadership and results on quality performance and this person needs special
knowledge and skills.

How can quality be achieved?

Several methods have evolved to achieve, sustain and improve quality. They are known as
quality control, quality improvement and quality assurance - collectively known as quality
management. Quality management is not the preserve of one manager but of all managers.
Quality is achieved through a chain of processes, each of which has to be under control and
subject to continual improvement. The chain starts with top management expressing a firm
commitment to quality, then:

 establishing customer needs and expectations

 developing and maintaining a management system that will enable achievement of
customer needs and expectations - reliably, repeatedly and economically
 designing products and services with features which reflect customer needs
 building products and services so as to reproduce faithfully the design
 verifying before delivery that products and services possess the features required
 preventing the supply of products and services which possess features which dissatisfy
customers
 discovering and eliminating undesirable features in products and services
 finding less expensive solutions to customer needs
 making operations more efficient and effective
 discovering what will delight customers and providing it
  most importantly, honouring commitments

A variety of standards, philosophies, methodologies, tools, techniques and measures have been
developed to help organisations meet these goals:

 management systems - ISO 9001, ISO 14001, BS OHSAS 18001, ISO/IEC 27001
 philosophies - total quality management
 methodologies - business process management, continual improvement
 tools and techniques - process charts, failure mode and effects analysis, statistical process
control, quality function deployment
 measures - quality awards, best value, ISO 9000 and Investors in People

Total quality management (TQM)

Total quality management is a management approach centred on quality, based on the

participation of an organisation's people and aiming at long term success (ISO 8402:1994). This
is achieved through customer satisfaction and benefits all members of the organisation and
society.

 In other words, TQM is a philosophy for managing an organisation in a way which enables it to
meet stakeholder needs and expectations efficiently and effectively, without compromising
ethical values.

TQM is a way of thinking about goals, organisations, processes and people to ensure that the
right things are done right first time. This thought process can change attitudes, behaviour and
hence results for the better.

What TQM is not

TQM is not a system, a tool or even a process. Systems, tools and processes are employed to
achieve the various principles of TQM.

What does TQM cover?

The total in TQM applies to the whole organisation. Therefore, unlike an ISO 9000 initiative
which may be limited to the processes producing deliverable products, TQM applies to every
activity in the organisation. Also, unlike ISO 9000, TQM covers the soft issues such as ethics,
attitude and culture.

What is the TQM philosophy?

There are several ways of expressing this philosophy. There are also several gurus whose
influence on management thought in this area has been considerable, for example Deming, Juran,
Crosby, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa and Imai. The wisdom of these gurus has been distilled into eight
principles defined in ISO 9000:2000.
The principles of quality management:

There are eight principles of quality management:

 customer-focused organisation - organisations depend on their customers and therefore should

understand current and future customer needs, meet customer requirements and strive to
exceed customer expectations
 leadership - leaders establish unity of purpose, direction and the internal environment of the
organisation. They create the environment in which people can become fully involved in
achieving the organisation's objectives
 involvement of people - people at all levels are the essence of an organisation and their full
involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organisation's benefit
 process approach - a desired result is achieved more efficiently when related resources and
activities are managed as a process
 system approach to management - identifying, understanding and managing a system of
interrelated processes for a given objective contributes to the effectiveness and efficiency of the
organisation
 continual improvement - continual improvement is a permanent objective of an organisation
 factual approach to decision making - effective decisions are based on the logical and intuitive
analysis of data and information
 mutually beneficial supplier relationships - mutually beneficial relationships between the
organisation and its suppliers enhance the ability of both organisations to create value

How does TQM differ from the EQA model?

The European Quality Award model is used to assess business excellence. Business excellence is
the result of adopting a TQM philosophy and realigning the organisation towards satisfying all
stakeholders (customers, owners, shareholders, suppliers, employees and society). The quality
award criteria offers measures of performance rather than a methodology.

Why should a company adopt TQM?

Adopting the TQM philosophy will:

 make an organisation more competitive

 establish a new culture which will enable growth and longevity
 provide a working environment in which everyone can succeed
 reduce stress, waste and friction
 build teams, partnerships and co-operation

When should a company adopt TQM?

TQM can be adopted at any time after executive management has seen the error of its ways,
opened its mind and embraced the philosophy. It cannot be attempted if management perceives it
as a quick fix, or a tool to improve worker performance.
How should a company adopt TQM?
Before TQM is even contemplated

TQM will force change in culture, processes and practice. These changes will be more easily
facilitated and sustained if there is a formal management system in place. Such a system will
provide many of the facts on which to base change and will also enable changes to be
implemented more systematically and permanently.

The first steps

In order to focus all efforts in any TQM initiative and to yield permanent benefits, a company
must answer some fundamental questions:

 what is its purpose as a business?

 what is its vision for the business?
 what is its mission?
 what are the factors upon which achievement of its mission depends?
 what are its values?
 what are its objectives?

A good way to accomplish this is to take top management off site for a day or two for a
brainstorming session. Until management shares the same answers to these questions and has
communicated them to the workforce there can be no guarantee that the changes made will
propel the organisation in the right direction.

Methodology

There are a number of approaches to take towards adopting the TQM philosophy. The teachings
of Deming, Juran, Taguchi, Ishikawa, Imai, Oakland etc can all help an organisation realign
itself and embrace the TQM philosophy. However, there is no single methodology, only a bundle
of tools and techniques.

Examples of tools include:

 flowcharting
 statistical process control (SPC)
 Pareto analysis
 cause and effect diagrams
 employee and customer surveys

Examples of techniques include:

 benchmarking
 cost of quality
 quality function deployment
  failure mode effects analysis
 design of experiments

Measurements

After using the tools and techniques an organisation needs to establish the degree of
improvement. Any number of techniques can be used for this including self-assessment, audits
and SPC.

Pitfalls

TQM initiatives have been prone to failure because of common mistakes. These include:

 allowing external forces and events to drive a TQM initiative

 an overwhelming desire for quality awards and certificates
 organising and perceiving TQM activities as separate from day-to-day work responsibilities
 treating TQM as an add-on with little attention given to the required changes in organisation
and culture
 senior management underestimating the necessary commitment to TQM

What is continual improvement?

Continual improvement is a type of change that is focused on increasing the effectiveness

and/or efficiency of an organisation to fulfil its policy and objectives. It is not limited to quality
initiatives. Improvement in business strategy, business results, customer, employee and supplier
relationships can be subject to continual improvement. Put simply, it means 'getting better all the
time'.

What should be improved?

Continual improvement should focus on enablers such as leadership, communication, resources,

organisation architecture, people and processes - in other words, everything in the organisation,
in all functions at all levels.

Continual improvement should also lead to better results such as price, cost, productivity, time to
market, delivery, responsiveness, profit and customer and employee satisfaction. There has been
a tendency in total quality management (TQM) programmes to focus on departmental
improvement which does not improve business results overall. Departmental improvements may
merely move the constraints or problem somewhere else in the process chain.

What continual improvement is not

Improvement is not about using a set of tools and techniques. Improvement is not going through
the motions of organising improvement teams and training people. Improvement is a result, so it
can only be claimed after there has been a beneficial change in an organisation's performance.
Gradual, incremental or breakthrough

There are three types of improvement. Continuous improvement is gradual never-ending change,
whereas continual improvement is incremental change. Both types of improvements are what the
Japanese call Kaizen. Breakthroughs are improvements but in one giant leap - a step change.
However, the method of achievement is the same but breakthroughs tend to arise out of chance
discoveries and could take years before being made (see illustration).

Relationship with TQM and ISO 9000

Continual improvement is one aspect of a TQM philosophy. It can also be an element of an ISO
9000 quality system. ISO 9000:2000 will in fact include requirements for continual improvement

Why is continual improvement important to an

organisation?
All managerial activity is either directed at control or improvement. Managers are either
devoting their efforts at maintaining performance, preventing change or creating change,
breakthrough or improvement. If businesses stand still they will loose their competitive edge, so
improvements must be made to keep pace and stay in business.

When should continual improvement be started?

Every system, programme or project should have provision for an improvement cycle. Therefore
when an objective has been achieved, work should commence on identifying better ways of
doing it.

How should continual improvement be undertaken?

Measurement

There is no improvement without measurement. An organisation must establish current

performance before embarking on any improvement. If it does not, it will have no baseline from
which to determine if its efforts have yielded any improvement.
A ten step sequence

There are ten steps to undertaking continual improvement:

1. determine current performance

2. establish a need to improve
3. obtain commitment and define the improvement objective
4. organise the diagnostic resources
5. carry out research and analysis to discover the cause of current performance
6. define and test solutions that will accomplish the improvement objective
7. produce improvement plans which specify how and by whom the changes will be implemented
8. identify and overcome any resistance to the change
9. implement the change
10. put in place controls to hold new levels of performance and repeat step one

Where do the ideas come from?

If the organisation has identified its critical success factors (that handful of things at which it
must be supremely good in order to succeed), then to focus the attention of the continual
improvement process onto one or more of these for a defined period might give rise to major
improvements.

Whose responsibility is it?

No one in the organisation, from top to bottom, is exempt from the responsibility for
improvement. It is a normal component of all employees' jobs to search out ways of improving
performance. Furthermore, no one is expected to do this without help and support from others.

How does a company organise for improvement?

Most continual improvement programmes are executed by teams that either diagnose problems,
search for solutions or implement changes. These teams may be within departments or cross-
functional. However, there needs to be a steering group of managers which directs the teams
towards their goal, and above all provides the environment for success.

What tools should be used?

The portfolio of tools used for continual improvement should be those which enable an
organisation to execute the ten steps above. These include:

 Ishikawa fishbone diagram to examine cause and effect

 failure mode and effects analysis to predict failure and prevent its occurrence
 Pareto analysis to identify the few influences on a situation which have the biggest impact
 forcefield diagram to display the forces for and against change
 charting techniques to demonstrate whether improvement is being achieved
Changing the culture

Continual improvement is far more than a set of techniques. For many organisations, it involves
a radical change in attitudes. The defence of the status quo, and resistance to innovation, cannot
be treated as normal management behaviour. A fear of reprisals for reporting problems has to be
replaced by congratulating people for identifying an opportunity to improve. Hoarding of good
ideas within departmental walls must be a thing of the past as people share their knowledge and
experience in the search for greater collective success.

The importance of commitment

Continual improvement is about the entire organisation and everything it does. It has to be a
prime concern of executive management and its success depends upon commitment from the top.
The commitment must also be highly visible. It is not enough to have a quality policy signed by
the chief executive. If executive management does not demonstrate its commitment by doing
what it says it will do it cannot expect others to be committed to the policy.

Reward success

The encouragement of people who have initiated improvements, however small, is an important
component. This can be done in many ways, from displays on special improvement notice boards
to the awarding of prizes. This is an area in which the culture and style of the organisation has to
be considered. The sudden introduction of a showbusiness style into a staid environment may
lead to cynicism rather than effective promotion of improvement. Rewards may, but need not,
have a financial component.

Dealing with failure

It is very common to find that about 12 to 18 months into a continual improvement programme it
is felt that it is not delivering what was expected. This is just the time to redouble efforts. It is a
long-term haul to change behaviour, therefore persistence and extra imaginative effort is the key.