Module II: Quality Systems: Overviews

Quality Systems, IMS, Requirements and Benefits

WHAT IS A QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?

A quality management system (QMS) is a formalized system that defines and

documents an organization’s processes, procedures, and responsibilities for achieving
quality policies, practices, and objectives. It helps an organization coordinate and direct
its activities to meet customer and regulatory requirements, as well as continuously
improve its effectiveness and efficiency.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF A QMS?

Implementing a QMS affects every aspect of an organization's performance. Benefits of

a documented QMS include:

Meeting customer requirements, which helps instill confidence in the organization, in

turn leading to more customers, sales, and repeat business
Meeting the organization's requirements, which ensures compliance with applicable
regulations and provides products and services in the most cost and resource-efficient
manner, creating room for expansion, growth, and profit
These benefits offer additional advantages, including:

● Defining, improving, and controlling processes

● Reducing waste
● Preventing mistakes
● Lowering costs
● Facilitating and identifying training opportunities
● Engaging staff
● Setting organization wide direction
● Communicating a readiness to produce consistent results

WHAT ARE SOME QMS FRAMEWORKS?

Several frameworks exist to guide QMS development, including

● ISO 9001
● ISO 9000 series
● ISO 14000 series (environmental management systems)
● ISO 13485 (quality management systems for medical devices)
● ISO 19011 (auditing management systems)
● IATF 16949 (quality management systems for automotive-related products)
● AS 9100 (quality management systems for aviation, space, and defense)

Furthermore, several industries also have developed standards, built upon ISO 9001,
that offer specific direction regarding additional expectations that are uniquely
associated with their operations.
ISO 9001 is the most recognized and implemented quality management system
standard in the world. ISO 9001 specifies the requirements for a QMS that
organizations can use to develop their own programs.

The standard is structured around seven quality management principles. Quality

management principles are the guiding beliefs that, when used for organizational
decision-making, ensure long-term success from the perspective of customers,
employees, and other stakeholders. The quality management principles demonstrate
the depth of the organization’s commitment to quality. Well-formulated principles should
be timeless, not dependent on temporary circumstances.

The ISO 9001:2015 principles are:

1. Customer focus
2. Leadership
3. Engagement of people
4. Process approach
5. Continuous improvement
6. Evidence-based decision making
7. Relationship management

ELEMENTS AND REQUIREMENTS OF A QMS

Each element of a QMS helps achieve the overall goal of meeting customer and
organizational requirements. A QMS should address an organization’s unique needs,
but many of the QMS systems have common expectations, including:

Leadership
Planning, commitment, and review
The system spans the breadth of the organization
Metrics and feedback
Communication, education, and training
Risk management
Teamwork
Compliance to requirements
Continuous improvement

IMPLEMENTATION OF QMS

Every organization has its own culture, which influences which QMS methods are most
efficient and effective. Instead of developing a QMS by addressing each expectation
described in a selected model, organizations should outline the approaches currently in
use for managing quality and meeting customer expectations.

A basic model for gathering customer expectations can be structured in the following
four steps: plan your customer data system, gather customer data, understand the data,
and deploy (make use of) the data.
Next, map those approaches against the appropriate QMS framework or model. For
each identified gap, the organization should determine whether it would benefit from
addressing the opportunity, and must clearly understand the potential benefit before
implementing any changes.

The QMS design should be influenced by the organization’s objectives, needs,

products, and services. This structure is based largely on the plan-do-check-act cycle
and allows for continuous improvement to the product and QMS.

The basic steps to implementing a QMS are:

1. Design
2. Build
3. Deploy
4. Control
5. Measure
6. Review
7. Improve

Design and build

The design and build steps develop the QMS’s structure, processes, and
implementation plans. Top management should oversee these steps to ensure the
needs of the organization and its customers are a driving force behind the system’s
development.

Deploy

Deployment is best served granularly by breaking down each process into

subprocesses and educating staff on documentation, education, training tools, and
metrics. Organizational intranets are increasingly being used to help deploy QMSs.

Control and measure

The realization of these two areas is accomplished largely through implementing

routine, systematic audits of the QMS. The specifics vary from organization to
organization, depending on size, potential risk, and environmental impact.

Review and improve

These steps detail how the audit results are handled. The goals are to determine the
effectiveness and efficiency of each process toward its objectives, communicate these
findings to the employees, and develop the best new practices and processes based on
the data collected during the audits.

The improvement loop, shown below, indicates how a QMS provides the necessary
pathways for organizations to implement quality objectives via quality policies and
procedures. Opportunities for improvement are identified via quality audits, and
applicable corrective and preventive actions are developed and implemented. Proper
data analysis helps steer improvement efforts. The overall effectiveness of the
improvement loop is discussed in management reviews.

QMS development, establishment, implementation, and monitoring should be

accomplished under the approach of applying the Juran Trilogy. The Juran Trilogy
focuses on the three critical processes of quality management—namely quality
planning, quality control, and quality improvement. By taking this approach,
organizations can maximize their potential to operate in the most strategic, efficient, and
effective manner possible.

IMS:
To manage quality and overall business performance, a company needs an integrated
management system (IMS), the structure of which is linked to actual business
processes and documentation systems.
An Integrated Management System (or “IMS”) can benefit your organization through
increased efficiency and effectiveness, and cost reductions while minimizing the
disruption caused by several external audits. It also shows your commitment to
increased performance, employee and customer satisfaction, and continuous
improvement.
With an integrated management system, your management systems work together, with
each function aligned behind a single goal: improving the performance of the entire
organization. Instead of silos, you have a coordinated effort which is greater than the
sum of its parts and is not only more efficient but more effective. An integrated system
provides a clear, uniform image of your entire organization, how they impact each other,
and the associated risks. Efficiency is gained from less duplication, and it becomes
easier to adopt new systems in the future.

Benefits of an IMS

1. Improving Performance

Integrated management systems will have a positive impact on specific management

system components and outcomes such as improvements in quality, safety, risk, and
productivity.

2. Eliminating Redundancies

One of the top benefits of implementing multiple management system standards is

being able to align the standards to find common or single management system
components. These may include policies, objectives, processes or resources. For
example, you may be able to have a single procedure for training, document control,
management reviews, internal audits or improvements. When you implement more than
one standard at a time you are able to find these similarities which can save your
organization a great amount of time, and in return money.

3. Accountability

When you integrate multiple management systems at a time and establish cohesive
objectives, processes, and resources, with the alignment of the systems you will see
improvement in accountability.

4. Establishing Consistency
When you use an integrated approach, your organization can create better consistency
of the management systems. When you create consistency, the system will become
less complex and therefore is easier understood. Consistency will create an improved
focus on achieving a common set of objectives that are important to the organization.

5. Reducing Bureaucracy

Reducing bureaucracy stems from eliminating redundancy. Oftentimes when multiple

management standards are implemented and not integrated, dilemmas can arise by the
inability to streamline decisions because of the layers of hierarchy. When the
management systems are integrated, your organization can take a systematic
approach. The processes can better accommodate changes. When changes and
decisions are easily made, this will reduce bureaucracy. For an effective approach,
establishing process owners with a cross-functional team can be greatly beneficial.
These teams take on responsibility and accountability in an effective approach to
breaking down barriers to decision making and deployment. You may also want to
consider a SHEQ Manager who can be called upon to support and respond to all ISO
based issues.

6. Cost Reduction

Integrated Management Systems allows your organization to conduct integrated audits

and assessments, as well as optimize processes and resources. When you can
integrate these systems it can help reduce the time it takes to do certain activities,
eliminate the amount of time interrupted and therefore reduce costs.

7. Optimize Processes and Resources

When viewing standard requirements, do not consider them an added load or task to
the organization, rather remember that they are a way to implement expectations from
customers, interested parties and the organization, and create a smooth and effective
process. Resources can be optimized because they become focused on process
implementation and adding value rather than additional system maintenance.
8. Reducing Maintenance

Maintenance refers to the ongoing compliance checks and ensuring that you are
upholding the management system standard requirements. When you have an
integrated management system you can maintain the requirements concurrently,
streamlining the process and allowing the organization to focus on improvements rather
than maintaining multiple systems when that is unnecessary.

9. Integrated Audits

When you start with an integrated management system, you can then have integrated
audits. There are many great benefits to having integrated audits if you are interested in
learning more read: Integrated ISO Management System Audits

10. Facilitating Decision Making

Eliminating redundancy and creating consistency within the organization allows for a
more complete view of the functional needs and performance. This integrated approach
also allows the organization to analyze functional and department barriers and therefore
improve communication and decision making.

To ensure this is done effectively, the steps listed below should be followed:

● Define the Business Model and Primary Functions

● Analyse business processes using flow charts, standards and failure mode
analysis techniques
● Formulate operational policies which will govern the processes and their inter-
linkages
● Develop internal business procedures to control each business process which
define who does what and where, when and how
● Implement the new and improved practices, if required
● Identify optimum documentation needs by linkage to the control procedures
● Document the system
How should systems be integrated?

There are several approaches, which can be taken, depending on an organisation's

current position. However, all systems should eventually share the following processes:
 ● Management review
● Document development and control
● Monitoring, analysis and review
● Internal audit
● Training
● Continual improvement (Corrective and Preventive Actions)
What are Integrated Management Systems?

An integrated management system (IMS) is a management system, which integrates all

relevant components of a business into one coherent system so as to enable the
optimal achievement of its business objectives. The integrated approach requires
combining all the internal business management practices into one system. For the
different systems to be properly integrated, rather than simply being separate systems
joined together, there have to be effective linkages so that the boundaries between
processes are seamless. The fundamental components of the system include the
organisation, resources and processes. Therefore, people, equipment and business
culture are part of the system as well as the documented policies and practices.
What can be integrated?

Any system, which is required by the effective running of a business, can be integrated
either totally or partially under a unified management structure. In essence any system,
which has an impact on overall business performance should be part of the integrated
management system.
What is required to ensure effective integrated management systems?

To ensure effective systems, the following functions must be performed:

Risk Assessment- this should address customer perceptions, health & safety risks,
environmental concerns & impacts and process failure modes. By having a common
approach it will be easier to compare risks occurring in different parts of the business.

Norms & Regulations Management - to capture norms and regulations with respect to
product specifications, environment and health & safety and their impacts on the
business.
Continual Improvement Management - this should focus on specific improvement
programmes related to quality, health & safety and environment.

Stakeholders Awareness - this should address needs of both customers, staff and general
public with respect to quality, health & safety and environment
What is the best approach to take?

Whether an organisation has an existing formal system or not, it is best to adopt the
business process approach to management system development. The benefits are that
one coherent system can be built which serves business needs and does not tie the
organisation to a particular standard. The standards are used to assist identify tasks
and processes. This approach starts by looking at the business as a whole and
establishing its objectives, mission and core processes which deliver the objectives and
achieve this mission.
What types of systems can be integrated?

All systems relevant to the business, whether certifiable or otherwise, can be included.
These could include: Quality (ISO 9001); Environment (ISO 14001); Occupational
Health & Safety (ISO 45001 & BS 8800); Food Safety & Hazard Analysis Critical Control
Points (HACCP); Ethical Trading Practices (SA 8000); Social & Ethical Accounting,
Auditing and Reporting (AA 1000); Investor in People (IIP); Law Society Practice
Management Standard (LEXCEL), European Directives and CE Markings; Information
Security (BS 7799); Quality System Requirements for Automotive Industry Suppliers
(ISO/TS 16949 & QS 9000); Quality System Requirements for Telecommunications
Industry Suppliers (TL 9000); and Business Excellence Model (BEM).
Why should management systems be integrated?

Integration is designed to:

● Ensure focus on business goals & objectives

● Harmonise and optimise practices
● Reduce risks to the business and increase profitability
● Balance conflicting objectives
● Eliminate conflicting responsibilities and relationships
● Create consistency
● Reduce duplication and therefore costs
● Improve communications
● Facilitate training and development

Benchmarking: Process and Importance

Introduction
Benchmarking is a systematic method by which organizations can measure
themselves against the best industry practices. It promotes superior performance by
providing an organized framework through which organizations learn how the “best
in class” do things, understand how these best practices differ from their own, and
implement change to close the gap. The essence of benchmarking is the process of
borrowing ideas and adapting them to gain competitive advantage. It is a tool for
continuous improvement.
Benchmarking is an increasingly popular tool. It is used extensively by both
manufacturing and service organizations, including Xerox, AT&T, Motorola, Ford, and
Toyota. Benchmarking is a common element of quality standards, such as the
Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors Quality System Requirements. These standards
stipulate that quality goals and objectives be based on competitive products and
benchmarking, both inside and outside the automotive industry. The Malcolm
Baldrige National Quality Award similarly require that applicants benchmark external
organizations.
Benchmarking Defined
Benchmarking is the systematic search for best practices, innovative ideas, and
highly effective operating procedures. Benchmarking considers the experience of
others and uses it. Indeed,- it is the common-sense proposition to learn from others
what they do right and then imitate it to avoid reinventing the wheel. Benchmarking is
not new and indeed has been around for a long time. In fact, in the 1800s, Francis
Lowell, a New England colonist, studied British textile mills and imported many ideas
along with improvements he made for the burgeoning American textile mills.
As shown in Figure 7-1, benchmarking measures performance against that of best-in-
class organizations,determines how the best in class achieve those performance
levels, and uses the information as the basis for adaptive creativity and breakthrough
performance.1
Implicit in the definition of benchmarking are two key elements. First, measuring
performance requires some sort of units of measure. These are called metrics and
are usually expressed numerically. The numbers achieved by the best-in-class
benchmark are the target. An organization seeking improvement then plots its own
performance against the target. Second, benchmarking requires that managers
understand why their performance differs. Benchmarkers must develop a thorough
and in-depth knowledge of both their own processes and the processes of the best-
in-class organization. An understanding of the differences allows managers to
organize their improvement efforts to meet the goal. Benchmarking is about setting
goals and objectives and about meeting them by improving processes.
Reasons to Benchmark
Benchmarking is a tool to achieve business and competitive objectives. It is powerful
and extremely effective when used for the right reasons and aligned with organization
strategy. It is not a panacea that can replace all other quality efforts or management
processes. Organizations must still decide which markets to serve and determine the
strengths that will enable them to gain competitive advantage. Benchmarking is one
tool to help organizations develop those strengths and reduce weaknesses.
By definition, benchmarking requires an external orientation, which is critical in a
world where the competitor can easily be on the other side of the globe. An external
outlook greatly reduces the chance of being caught unaware by competition.
Benchmarking can notify the organization if it has fallen behind the competition or
failed to take advantage of important operating improvements developed elsewhere.
In short, benchmarking can inspire managers (and organizations) to compete.
In contrast to the traditional method of extrapolating next year’s goal from last year’s
performance, benchmarking allows goals to be set objectively, based on external
information. When personnel are aware of the external information, they are usually
much more motivated to attain the goals and objectives. Also, it is hard to argue that
an objective is impossible when it can be shown that another organization has
already achieved it.
Benchmarking is time and cost efficient because the process involves imitation and
adaptation rather than pure invention. Benchmarking partners provide a working
model of an improved process, which reduces some of the planning, testing, and
prototyping effort. As the old saying goes, Why reinvent the wheel?
The primary weakness of benchmarking, however, is the fact that best-in-class
performance is a moving target. For example, new technology can create quantum
leap performance improvements, such as the use of electronic data interchange
(EDI). Automobile makers no longer use paper to purchase parts from suppliers. A
computer tracks inventory and transmits orders directly to a supplier’s computers.
The supplier delivers the goods, and payment is electronically transmitted to the
supplier’s bank. Big Bazar in India runs SAP ERP system for their inventory
management. These applications of EDI save tens of thousands of worker hours
andwhole forests of trees, as well as helping to meet customer requirements.
For functions that are critical to the business mission, organizations must continue to
innovate as well as imitate. Benchmarking enhances innovation by requiring
organizations to constantly scan the external environment and to use the information
obtained to improve the process. Potentially useful technological breakthroughs can
be located and adopted early.
Process
Organizations that benchmark, adapt the process to best fit their own needs and
culture. Although the number of steps in the process may vary from organization to
organization, the following six steps contain the core techniques.
1. Decide what to benchmark.
2. Understand current performance.
3. Plan.
4. Study others.
5. Learn from the data.
6. Use the findings.
Pitfalls and Criticisms of Benchmarking
The basic idea of benchmarking can be summed up quite simply. Find someone who
executes a process better than you do and imitate what he or she does. The most
persistent criticism of benchmarking comes from the idea of copying others. How can
an organization be truly superior if it does not innovate to get ahead of
competitors? It is a good question, but one can also ask the reverse: How can an
organization even survive if it loses track of its external environment? Benchmarking
is not a panacea. It is not a strategy, nor is it intended to be a business philosophy. It
is an improvement tool. To be effective, it must be used properly. Benchmarking isn’t
very helpful if it is used for processes that don’t offer much opportunity for
improvement. It breaks down if process owners and managers feel threatened or do
not accept and act on the findings. Over time, things change, and what was state-of-
the-art yesterday may not be today. Some processes may have to be benchmarked
repeatedly.
Benchmarking is also not a substitute for innovation; however, it is a source of ideas
from outside the organization. Business success depends on setting and achieving
goals and objectives. Benchmarking forces an organization to set goals and
objectives based on external reality. Consumers don’t care if a process achieved a
20% year-to-year productivity gain. They care about quality, cost, and delivery, and
they vote with their checkbooks for the superior organization.
Types of Benchmarking
Benchmarking is a very versatile tool that can be applied in a variety of ways to meet
a range of requirements for improvement.
Different terms are used to distinguish the various ways of applying benchmarking.
The first word in each term relates to either the type of partner or the purpose for
benchmarking. At the outset of benchmarking projects, it is vital to be clear on exactly
what is to be achieved through benchmarking and apply an appropriate methodology.
Standard benchmarking terms include:
1. Strategic Benchmarking
2. Performance Benchmarking or Competitive Benchmarking
3. Process Benchmarking
4. Functional Benchmarking or Generic Benchmarking
5. Internal Benchmarking
6. External Benchmarking
7. International Benchmarking
1. Strategic Benchmarking is used where organisations seek to improve their overall
performance by examining the long-term strategies and general approaches that
have enabled high-performers to succeed. It involves considering high level aspects
such as core competencies, developing new products and services; changing the
balance of activities; and improving capabilities for dealing with changes in the
background environment. The changes resulting from this type of benchmarking may
be difficult to implement and the benefits are likely to take a long time to materialise.
2. Performance Benchmarking or Competitive Benchmarking is used where
organisations consider their positions in relation to performance characteristics of key
products and services. Benchmarking partners are drawn from the same sector.
However, in the commercial world, it is common for companies to undertake this type
of benchmarking through trade associations or third parties to protect confidentiality.
3. Process Benchmarking is used when the focus is on improving specific critical
processes and operations. Benchmarking partners are sought from best practice
organisations that perform similar work or deliver similar services. Process
benchmarking invariably involves producing process maps to facilitate comparison
and analysis. This type of benchmarking can result in benefits in the short term.
4. Functional Benchmarking or Generic Benchmarking is used when organisations
look to benchmark with partners drawn from different business sectors or areas of
activity to find ways of improving similar functions or work processes. This sort of
benchmarking can lead to innovation and dramatic improvements.
5. Internal Benchmarking involves seeking partners from within the same
organisation, for example, from business units located in different areas. The main
advantages of internal benchmarking are that access to sensitive data and
information are easier; standardised data is often readily available; and, usually less
time and resources are needed. There may be fewer barriers to implementation as
practises may be relatively easy to transfer across the same organisation. However,
real innovation may be lacking and best in class performance is more likely to be
found through external benchmarking.
6. External Benchmarking involves seeking outside organisations that are known to
be best in class. External benchmarking provides opportunities of learning from those
who are at the leading edge, although it must be remembered that not every best
practice solution can be transferred to others. In addition, this type of benchmarking
may take up more time and resource to ensure the comparability of data and
information, the credibility of the findings and the development of sound
recommendations. External learning is also often slower because of the ënot
invented hereí syndrome.
8. International Benchmarking is used where partners are sought from other countries
because best practitioners are located elsewhere in the world and/or there are too
few benchmarking partners within the same country to produce valid results.
Globalisation and advances in information technology are increasing opportunities for
international projects. However, these can take more time and resources to set up
and implement and the results may need careful analysis due to national differences.
Processes involved in Benchmarking
Irrespective of the model used and the type of benchmarking, the progression of
activity that generally goes on over the course of formal benchmarking projects and
the actions that are likely to be needed are summarised in the Benchmarking Process
Guide below.
The topics in this introduction to the process include:
● Planning
● Collecting data & information
● Analysing the findings
● Recommendations - making & doing
● Monitoring & reviewing
Actions and written outputs from each part of the benchmarking process follow.
Benefit from benchmarking
Successful benchmarking, in which gaps in performance are bridged by
improvements, results in significant tangible benefits that are needed in the public
sector, such as:
● step changes in performance and innovation;
● improving quality and productivity; and
● Improving performance measurement.
Benchmarking can also have a beneficial effect on aspects needed to support
continuous improvement, such as:
● raised awareness about performance and greater openness about relative
strengths and weaknesses;
● learning from others and greater confidence in developing and applying new
approaches;
● greater involvement and motivation of staff in change programmes;
● increase in willingness to share solutions to common problems and build
consensus about what is needed to accommodate changes;
● better understanding of the ëbig pictureí and gaining a broader perspective of
the interplay of the factors (or enablers) that facilitate the implementation of good
practice; and
 ● Increasing collaboration and understanding of the interactions within and
between organisations.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Cost of Quality
Dr. Mizuno, professor emeritus of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is credited with
initiating the quality function deployment (QFD) system. The first application of QFD
was at Mitsubishi, Heavy Industries, Ltd., in the Kobe Shipyard, Japan, in 1972. After
four years of case study development, refinement, and training. QFD was successfully
implemented in the production of mini-vans by Toyota. Using 1977 as a base, a 20%
reduction in startup costs was reported in the launch of the new van in October 1979, a
38% reduction by November 1982, and a cumulative 61% reduction by April 1984.
Quality function deployment was first introduced in the United States in 1984 by Dr.
Clausing of Xerox. QFD can be applied to practically any manufacturing or service
industry. It has become a standard practice by most leading organizations, who also
require it of their suppliers.
Introduction of Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
Making design decisions, concurrently rather than sequentially, requires superior
coordination among the parties involved. Consider the design of a new car. Even for the
best Japanese manufacturer, the design of an automobile can take several years and
involve hundreds of design engineers. The task of coordinating the design decisions of
that many individuals can be difficult. Bob King (1989) gives an interesting example.
Imagine that two engineers are working on two different components of a car sunroof
simultaneously but separately. The ‘insulation and sealing’ engineer develops a new
seal that will keep out rain, even during a blinding rainstorm. The ‘handles, knobs and
levers’ engineer is working on a simpler lever that will make the roof easier to open. The
new lever is tested and works well with the old seal. Neither engineer is aware of the
activities of the other. As it turns out, the combination of heavier roof (due to the
increased insulation) and lighter lever means that the driver can no longer open the
sunroof with one hand, thereby violating a quality characteristic expected by the
consumer. It is hoped that the problem will be detected in prototype testing before the
car is put into production. At that point, one or both component will need to be
redesigned. Otherwise, cars already produced will need to be reworked and cars
already sold, will have to be recalled. None of these alternatives is pleasant, they all
involve considerable costs.
This likely would not have happened if the engineers had worked in teams and shared
information. But there is no guarantee that all decisions would be coordinated. A formal
method is needed for making sure that everyone working on a design project knows the
design objectives and is aware of the inter-relationships of the various parts of the
design.
Similar communications are needed between the customer and marketing, between
marketing and engineers, between engineers and production, and between production
and the worker. in broader terms, then, a structured process is needed that will translate
the ‘voice of the customer’ to technical requirements at every stage of design and
manufacture. Such a process is called Quality Function Deployment (QFD).
Definition of QFD
Quality Function Deployment may be defined as a system for translating consumer
requirements into appropriated company requirements at every stage, from research
through product design and development, to manufacture, distribution, installation and
marketing, sales and service.
Objectives of QFD
This definition identifies the objective of QFD. However, it is best visualized as a
technique which identifies the true voice of the customer and ensures that this is the
common, continuous thread of information going through all stages of the product
lifecycle, from design concept, component, design, process and manufacture through to
the eventual user. QFD’s first application is traced back to Mistsubishi’s Kobe Shipyard
in 1972.
Process of QFD
QFD is a process which brings together the lifecycle of a product from its conception
through design, manufacture, distribution and use, until the product has, in the
customer’s opinion, served its expected life. The management of QFD ensures that vital
customer satisfaction and excitement attributes are recognized and developed so that
the company can achieve a competitive edge. It is equality, if not more, important that
this is achieved profitably, thereby providing increased security of the business and for
its employees
Benefits of QFD
In comparison to traditional design approaches. QFD forces management to spend
more time defining the new product changes and examining the ramification of those
changes. More time spent in the early stage of design means less time is required later
to revise the design and make it work. This reallocation of time shortens the design-
process considerably. Some experts suggest that QFD can produce better product
designs in half-the time as conventional design process. QFD is a communication and
planning tool that:
(i) Promotes better understanding of customer demands;
(ii) Promotes better understanding of design interactions;
(iii) Involves manufacturing in the design process;
(iv) Breaks down barriers between functions and departments;
(v) Focuses the design effort;
(vi) Fosters teamwork;
(vii) Improves documentation of the design and development process for product
improvement through technical benchmarking.
(viii) Increase customer satisfaction.
(ix) Reduces the number of engineering changes.
(x) Brings new design to the market faster.
(xi) Reduces the overall costs of design and manufacture.
The House of Quality (HOQ)
QFD uses a series of matrix diagrams (also called ‘quality tables’) that resemble
connected houses. The first matrix, dubbed the ‘house of quality’ converts customer
requirements into product design characteristics. The house of quality has six sections:
a customer requirements section, a competitive assessment section, a design
characteristics section, relationship matrix, a trade-off matrix and a technical
assessment target values section.
(i) Customer requirements: Customer requirements drive the entire QFD process.
This section lists, in customer terminology, the attribute of the product that are important
to the customer (as revealed by market research). These attributes can get quite
lengthy. So, they are grouped into bundles (e.g. an electric iron that irons well, easy and
safe to use) by consensus of the design team or by more formal nonparametric
statistics techniques (such as, factor analysis or cluster analysis). The ësmokestackí of
the house shows the importance the customer attaches to each attribute on a scale of 1
to 10. Larger numbers denote greater importance.
(ii) Competitive assessment: On the right side of the house is a perceptual map in which
customers rate the performance of our product, X, against competing products, A and
B, for each customer requirement. Larger numbers represent better performance. This
information is used to determine which customer-needs will yield a competitive
advantage and should be pursued. In case, our iron, already, excels in the customer-
requirements of ìpresses quicklyî, ìremoves wrinklesî, and ë ìdoesnít break when
droppedî, so, we do not need to improve those factors. However, it we are rated poorly
on ìdoesnít stickî, ìheats quicklyí, ëfast cool downî and ìlight-weightî, we may have
improve upon these characteristics. Also, we could gain some competitive advantages
with an iron that doesnít scorch clothî and doesnít burn when touchedî, if products A, B
and X have similar ratings and there is room for improvement.
(iii) Design characteristics: Product design characteristics, expressed in engineering
terms, are located on the top floor of the house (ìenergy needed to pressî, ìweight of
ironî, and so on). These characteristics are bundled just like the customer attributes
except that the terminology reflects more of an engineering orientation (ìforceî,
ìdimensions and materialî.
The objective-measures towards the bottom of the house provide the technical data as
regards customer perceptions. For example, customers may rate our iron poorly on ìfast
cool-downî. Fast cool-down may be measured by the time required to go say, from 400o
to 100o. Just suppose, our iron takes 8 minutes to cool down, while A and B take just 6
and 4 minutes, respectively. The customer is correct, if our iron does take longer to cool
down than our competitors.
(iv) Relationship matrix: The relationship matrix, located in the middle of the house, (4),
correlates customer requirements with product characteristics. A strong positive
relationship may exist between the customer requirement ìdoesnít break when droppedî
and the product characteristic, ìthickness of soleplateî, but a strong negative
relationship may exist between the requirement ìfast cool-downî and the characteristic,
ìthickness of soleplateî. This information is useful in coordinating design changes in
response to one customer requirement that may be in conflict with others.
(v) Trade-off matrix: The trade-off matrix looks at the impact of changing product
characteristics. For example, if the thickness of the soleplate is increased, the time
required to heat up and cool-down the iron will also increase, but the iron will press
better (ìenergy needed to pressî goes down and ìweight of ironî increases).
All these characteristics will need to be optimized as design changes are made in
soleplate thickness. This is not nor an easy task, but, at least, we are aware of the
potential problems.
(vi) Technical rankings and design targets: The bottom portion of the house contains
various factors important to management in determining design changes including cost.
The output of the house is in terms of measurable values of the product characteristics
that are to be achieved in the new design of the electric iron. These values are
determined by considering the information contained in the ëhouse of qualityí and may
not be calculated, directly, from the information.
The target-values are compared with the current objective measures for iron X. /the last
row indicates with arrows the design characteristics that are targeted for change. The
‘house of quality’ is the most popular QFD matrix. However, to understand the full power
of QFD, we need to consider three other houses that can be linked to the house of
quality. In our example, suppose, we decide to meet the customer requirement of,
“heats quickly”, by reducing the thickness of the soleplate, the second house, parts
deployment, examines which component-parts are affected by reducing the thickness of
the soleplate. Obviously, the soleplate itself is affected but so are the fasteners used to
attach the soleplate to the iron as well as the depth of the holes and connectors that
provide steam. These new part-characteristics then become inputs to the third house of
process planning. To change the thickness of the soleplate, the dies used by the metal-
stamping machine to produce the plates will have to change and the stamping machine
will require adjustments. Given these changes, a fourth house, operating requirements,
prescribes how, the fixtures and gauges for the stamping machine will be set, what
additional training the operator of the machine needs and how process control and
preventive maintenance procedures need to be adjusted. Nothing is left to chance-all
aspects are covered from customer to design to manufacturing.
Constructing the House of Quality
Using an electric iron, as an example, the procedure used for the construction of the
house of quality chart is as follows. Similar example is provided by Burn, 1990.
(i) Establish full identification of customer wants. List all the wants, taking care to include
basic wants which are often taken for granted. Ensure that customer dislikes are
identifies as well as those items which, if included in the product, would cause
excitement and pleasure. Summarize these customer wants into a small number of
major (primary) wants, supported by a number of secondary and, if necessary, tertiary
wants. By using carefully chosen words, the full pattern of customer wants is obtained in
subjective terms.
● Aesthetic looks
● Not too heavy
● Will not scorch fabric
● Easy to operate
● Heats evenly
● Does not break when dropped
● Does not stick
● Fast to heat and cool
● Not expensive
● Does not give shock
(vi) The target-figure can be increased or decreased as improvement is made, using the
direction of the arrow to indicate that improvement is by raising or lowering the target-
value. This is important, particularly when considering the inter-relation between the
hows.
The customer-wants of the design are compared with those of the competitors and the
findings are ranked. This will establish whether the design is better or worse, with a
ranking of features. Preparation of this information will be assisted if specific customer
complaints or warranty-claims are known. The dotted line traces out the position of won-
product in relation to the competitorís -product in relation to the competitorís-product
and indicates where there is a competitive advantage or disadvantage.

Compare each ëhowí against a technical competitive benchmark. In the example

shown, there is a correlation between these two competitive ratings. What is seen as
better in the customer want-rating should correlate with technically better. If this is not
so, then, it is necessary to check both assessments. The ranking of technical difficulty 1
- 5 is an assessment of the relative technical difficulty of improving the target-value.
(x) Regulatory or company-control items are included at the bottom of the chart.

By assigning figures to the ëwhat/howí relationship, an overall assessment can be

made of the relative importance of each customer-want. Ranking these assessments
will indicate, which items are of most importance in the opinion of the customer and,
which must, consequently, be given careful attention by consideration at the next stage:
The calculation is as follows. For each column, multiply the customer-rating for each
want, where there is a relationship-entry, by the figure assigned for the entry, using the
code strong, 9, medium, 3, and weak, 1. The total for each column gives the absolute
value; the relative value is the ranking of absolute valued. Hypothetical figures are
tabulated in table
Cost of Quality
Cost of quality is the amount of money a business loses because its product or service
was not done right in the first place. From fixing a warped piece on the assembly line to
having to deal with a lawsuit because of a malfunctioning machine or a badly performed
service, businesses lose money every day due to poor quality. For most businesses,
this can run from 15 to 30 percent of their total costs. A quality cost is considered to be
any cost that the company would not have incurred if the quality of the product or
service were perfect.
As defined by Philip Crosby, Cost of Quality (COQ) has two main components:
1. Cost of Conformance and
2. Cost of Non-Conformance
Quality costs are defined as those costs associated with the non achievement of
product or service quality as defined by requirements established by the organization
and its contracts with customers and society. In simple terms, quality cost is the cost of
poor products or services.
Total quality costs are the sum of prevention costs, appraisal costs, failure costs and
intangible costs. The value of quality must be based on its ability to contribute to profits.
The goal of most organizations is to make money; therefore, decisions are based on
evaluating alternatives and the effect each alternative will have on the expense and
income of the entity.
The efficiency of the business is measured in terms of rupees. The cost of poor quality
can add to the other costs used in decision making, such as maintenance, production,
design, inspection, sales and other activities. The cost of quality is no different than
other costs. It can be programmed, budgeted, measured and analyzed to help in
attaining the objectives for better quality and customer satisfaction at less cost. A
reduction in quality cost leads to increased profit.
The cost of quality influences all activities of the organization like marketing, purchasing,
design, manufacturing and service. There are failures costs associated with lost sales
and customer goodwill, which may be impossible to measure and must be estimated.
Quality Cost Increased Over Time
Time when failure found All organizations make use of the concept of identifying the
costs needed to carry out the various functions – product development, marketing,
personnel, production etc.,
Until the 1950’s this cost concept had not been extended to quality function, except for
the departmental activities of inspection and testing. During the 1950’s the concept of
“Quality Cost” emerged. Different people assigned-different meanings to the term.
Some people equated quality cost with the cost of attaining quality; some people
equated the term with the extra incurred due to poor quality. But, the widely accepted
thing is “Quality cost is the extra cost incurred due to poor or bad quality of the product
or service”.
Categories of Quality Cost
Many companies summarize quality costs into four broad categories. They are :
a) Internal failure costs - The cost associated with defects that are found prior to transfer
of the product to the customer.
b) External failure costs - The cost associated with defects that are found after product
is shipped to the customer.
c) Appraisal costs - The cost incurred in determining the degree of conformance to
quality requirement.
d) Prevention costs - The cost incurred in keeping failure and appraisal costs to a
minimum.
Some times we can also include the hidden costs i.e., implicit costs. The companies
estimate quality costs for the following reasons:
a) To quantifying the size of the quality problem in the language of money improves
communication between middle managers and upper managers.
b) To identify major opportunities for cost reduction.
c) To identify the opportunities for reducing customer dissatisfaction and associated
threats to product salability.
Zero Defects and Continuous Improvement
Total Safety Systems seek to achieve a zero risk objective by the implementation of a
harmonious, healthy, productive and creative work environment. The systems are,
therefore, people-centered and the contribution of the worker in raising safety standards
of his/her work environment through continuous improvement activities is considered to
be essential. Safety under TQM follows an innovative approach taking incremental
steps to improve, modify or change existing arrangements with task simplification, task
integration for organisational objectives and with a value-added approach towards the
fulfillment of organisational objectives. TSS also present a case of behaviour
modification for interaction between technical system and people system. Human
factors of engineering and safety technology have been discussed by Stranks (1994).
Weinstein (1997) has extensively analysed total quality safety management and
auditing guidelines.
TSS introduce the concept of Zero Risk which is so essential for the pursual of Zero
Defect (ZD), right from first-time strategies. It is also to be emphasised that Zero
Defects (ZD cannot be obtained in isolation. It has to depend on the contribution of
other practices such as Total Preventative Maintenance (TPM) and Total Safety
Systems.
Continuos Improvement:
Quality-based organizations should strive to achieve perfection by continuously
improving the business and production processes. Of course, perfection is impossible
because the race is never over; however, we must continually strive for its attainment.
 Improvement is made by
• Viewing all work as a process, whether it is associated with production or business
activities.
• Making all processes effective, efficient, and adaptable.
• Anticipating changing customer needs.
• Controlling in-process performance using measures such as scrap reduction, cycle
time, control charts, and so forth.
• Maintaining constructive dissatisfaction with the present level of performance.
• Eliminating waste and rework wherever it occurs.
• Investigating activities that do not add value to the product or service, with the aim
of eliminating those activities.
• Eliminating nonconformities in all phases of everyone’s work, even if the increment
of improvement i small.
• Using benchmarking to improve competitive advantage.
• Innovating to achieve breakthroughs.
• Incorporating lessons learned into future activities.
• Using technical tools such as statistical process control (SPC), experimental
design, benchmarking, quality function deployment (QFD), and so forth.
Continuous process improvement is designed to utilize the resources of the
organization to achieve a quality-driven culture. Individuals must think, act, and speak
quality. An organization attempts to reach a single-minded link between quality and
work execution by educating its constituents to “continuously” analyze and improve their
own work, the processes, and their work group.
Process
Process refers to business and production activities of an organization. Business
processes such as purchasing, engineering, accounting, and marketing are areas
where nonconformance can represent an opportunity for substantial improvement.
Figure 5-1 shows a process model.
Inputs may be materials, money, information, data, etc. Outputs may be information,
data, products, service, etc. The output of one process also can be the input to another
process. Outputs usually require performance
measures. They are designed to achieve certain desirable outcomes such as customer
satisfaction. Feedback is provided in order to improve the process.
The process is the interaction of some combination of people, materials, equipment,
method, measurement, and the environment to produce an outcome such as a product,
a service, or an input to another process.
In addition to having measurable input and output, a process must have value-added
activities and repeatability. It must be effective, efficient, under control, and adaptable.
In addition, it must adhere to certain conditions imposed by policies and constraints or
regulations. Examples of such conditions may include constraints related to union-
based job descriptions of employees, state and federal regulations related to storage of
environmental waste, or bio-ethical policies related to patient care.
Process definition begins with defining the internal and/or external customers. The
customer defines the purpose of the organization and every process within it. Because
the organization exists to serve the customer, process improvements must be defined in
terms of increased customer satisfaction as a result of higher quality products and
services.
All processes have at least one owner. In some cases, the owner is obvious, because
there is only one person performing the activity. However, frequently the process will
cross multiple organizational boundaries, and supporting sub-processes will be owned
by individuals within each of the organizations. Thus, ownership should be part of the
process improvement initiatives.
At this point it is important to define an improvement. There are five basic ways to
improve: (1) reduce resources, (2) reduce errors, (3) meet or exceed expectations of
downstream customers, (4) make the process safer, and (5) make the process more
satisfying to the person doing it.
First, a process that uses more resources than necessary is wasteful. Reports that are
distributed to more people than necessary wastes copying and distribution time,
material, user read time, and, eventually, file space.
Second, for the most part, errors are a sign of poor workmanship and require rework.
Typing errors that are detected after the computer printout require opening the file,
making the correction, and printing the revised document.
Third, by meeting or exceeding expectations of downstream customers, the process is
improved. For example, the better the weld, the less grinding required, making the
appearance of a finish paint more Pleasing. The fourth way a process can be improved
is by making it safer. A safer workplace is a more productive one with fewer lost-time
accidents and less workers’ compensation claims.
The fifth way to improve a process is to increase the satisfaction of the individual
performing the process. Sometimes a little change, such as an ergonomically correct
chair, can make a substantial change in a person’s attitude toward their work.
This chapter presents several different approaches towards continuous process
improvement. The first, Juran’s Trilogy, approaches quality improvement from a cost-
oriented perspective. The second is Shewhart’s Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. This
approach is basically the engineering scientific method applied to continuous
improvement and quality. A more in-depth description of the problem solving method is
provided to further explain how to carry out the approach. The third is Kaizen, the
Japanese approach to improvement. The Kaizen approach focuses on making small
incremental improvements to the individual and the organization. It is actually more
behavioral in nature than the other two approaches describe, as it often focuses on
improving the individual and their individual job; thus, improvements to the organization
as a whole are realized. The chapter concludes with a short discussion of reengineering
and six-sigma concepts. These two approaches are becoming more popular in
business, and they provide many of the basic concepts presented in the chapter.
PDCA Cycle, Juran Trilogy, Crosby’s 10 points, Deming’s 14 Points
PDCA Cycle
The basic Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle was first developed by Shewhart and then
modified by Deming. It is an effective improvement technique.
The Plan-do-check-act cycle (Figure 1) is a four-step model for carrying out change.
Just as a circle has no end, the PDCA cycle should be repeated again and again for
continuous improvement. The PDCA cycle is considered a project planning tool.
Figure 1: Plan-do-check-act cycle

Use the PDCA cycle when:

● Starting a new improvement project

● Developing a new or improved design of a process, product, or service
● Defining a repetitive work process
● Planning data collection and analysis in order to verify and prioritize problems or
root causes
● Implementing any change
● Working toward continuous improvement

The Plan-do-check-act Procedure

1. Plan: Recognize an opportunity and plan a change.

2. Do: Test the change. Carry out a small-scale study.
3. Check: Review the test, analyze the results, and identify what you’ve learned.
4. Act: Take action based on what you learned in the study step. If the change did
not work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. If you were
successful, incorporate what you learned from the test into wider changes. Use
what you learned to plan new improvements, beginning the cycle again.

PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT EXAMPLE

The Pearl River, NY School District, a 2001 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award, used the PDCA cycle as a model for defining most of their work
processes, from the boardroom to the classroom.

The PDCA model was the basic structure for the district’s:

● Overall strategic planning

● Needs analysis
● Curriculum design and delivery
● Staff goal-setting and evaluation
● Provision of student services and support services
● Classroom instruction
Figure 2 shows their "A+ Approach to Classroom Success." This is a continuous cycle
of designing curriculum and delivering classroom instruction. Improvement is not a
separate activity—it is built into the work process.

Figure 2: Plan-do-check-act example

Plan

The A+ Approach begins with a "plan" step, which the school district calls "analyze." In
this step, students’ needs are analyzed by examining a range of data available in Pearl
River’s electronic data "warehouse." The data reviewed includes everything from grades
to performance on standardized tests. Data can be analyzed for individual students or
stratified by grade, gender, or any other subgroup. Because PDCA does not specify
how to analyze data, a separate data analysis process (Figure 3) is used here as well
as in other processes throughout the organization.

Figure 3: Pearl River Analysis Process

Do

The A+ Approach continues with two "do" steps:

1. The "align" step asks what the national and state standards require and how
they will be assessed. Teaching staff also plans curricula by looking at what is
taught at earlier and later grade levels and in other disciplines to ensure a clear
continuity of instruction throughout the student’s schooling. Teachers develop
 individual goals to improve their instruction where the "analyze" step showed
any gaps.
2. The "act" step is where instruction is provided, following the curriculum and
teaching goals. Within set parameters, teachers vary the delivery of instruction
based on each student’s learning rates and styles.

Check

Formal and informal assessments take place continually, from daily teacher
assessments to six-week progress reports to annual standardized tests. Teachers also
can access comparative data on the electronic database to identify trends. High-need
students are monitored by a special child study team.

Throughout the school year, if assessments show students are not learning as
expected, mid-course corrections are made (such as re-instruction, changing teaching
methods, and more direct teacher mentoring). Assessment data become input for the
next step in the cycle.

Act

In this example, the "act" step is "standardization." When goals are met, the curriculum
design and teaching methods are considered standardized. Teachers share best
practices in formal and informal settings. Results from this cycle become input for the
"analyze" phase of the next A+ Approach cycle.

Juran’s Trilogy:
Process improvement involves planning. One of the best approaches is the one
developed by Dr. Joseph Juran. It has three components: planning, control, and
improvement, and is referred to as the Juran Trilogy. It is based loosely on financial
processes such as bud-geting (planning), expense measurement (control), and cost
reduction (improvement).
Planning
The planning component begins with external customers. Once quality goals are
established, marketing determines the external customers, and all organizational
personnel (managers, members of multifunctional teams, or work groups) determine the
internal customers. External customers may be quite numerous, as is the case of a
bank supply organization, where they include tellers, financial planners, loan officers,
auditors, managers, and the bank’s customers. Where there are numerous customers,
a Pareto diagram might be useful to determine the vital few.
Once the customers are determined, their needs are discovered. This activity requires
the customers to state needs in their own words and from their own viewpoint; however,
real needs may differ from stated needs. For example, a stated need may be an
automobile, whereas the real need is transportation or a status symbol. In addition,
internal customers may not wish to voice real needs out of fear of the consequences.
One might discover these needs by (1) being a user of the product or service, (2)
communicating with customers through product or service satisfaction and
dissatisfaction information, or (3) simulation in the laboratory. Because customer needs
are stated from their viewpoint, they should be translated to requirements that are
understandable to the organization and its suppliers.
The next step in the planning process is to develop product and/or service features that
respond to customer needs, meet the needs of the organization and its suppliers, are
competitive, and optimize the costs of all stakeholders. This step typically is performed
by a multifunctional team. Quality function deployment (Chapter 10), Taguchi’s quality
engineering (Chapter 16), and quality by design (Chapter 11) are some of the
approaches that can be used. It is important that the design team, rather than a single
department, approve the final design and that the team be composed of all functional
areas within an organization as well as customers and suppliers.
The fourth step is to develop the processes able to produce the product and/or ser-vice
features. Some of this planning would have occurred during the previous step. This step
is also performed by a multifunctional team with a liaison to the design team. Activities
include determining the necessary facilities, training, and operation, control, and
maintenance of the facilities. Of particular concern will be the “scaling up” from the
laboratory or prototype environment to the real process environment. Additional
activities include process capability evaluation and process control type and location.
Transferring plans to operations is the final step of the planning process. Once again, a
multifunctional team with a liaison to the other teams is used. When training is
necessary, it should be performed by members of the process planning team. Process
validation is necessary to ensure, with a high degree of assurance, that a process will
consistently produce a product or service meeting requirements. Positrol and process
certification, discussed later in the chapter, are excellent techniques to use to help
validate the process.
Control
Control is used by operating forces to help meet the product, process, and service
requirements. It uses the feedback loop and consists of the following steps:
1. Determine items/subjects to be controlled and their units of measure.
2. Set goals for the controls and determine what sensors need to be put in place to
measure the product, process, or service.
3. Measure actual performance.
4. Compare actual performance to goals.
5. Act on the difference.
Statistical process control (see Chapter 15) is the primary technique for achieving
control. The basic statistical process control (SPC) tools are Pareto diagrams, flow
diagrams, cause-and-effect diagrams, check sheets, histograms, control charts, and
scatter diagrams. In addition, process capability information such a Cp and Cpk are
used to determine if the process is capable and is centered.
Improvement
The third part of the trilogy aims to attain levels of performance that are significantly
higher than current levels. Process improvements begin with the establishment of an
effective infrastructure such as the quality council (see Chapter 2). Two of the duties of
the council are to identify the improvement projects and establish the project teams with
a project owner. In addition, the quality council needs to provide the teams with the
resources to determine the causes, create solutions, and establish controls to hold the
gains (see Chapter 4). The problem-solving method described in a later section may be
applied to improve the process, while the quality council is the driver that ensures that
improvement is continuous and neverending. Process improvement can be incremental
or breakthrough.
Figure 5-2 provides an example of how the three continuous improvement
processes interrelate.

3 In the figure, Juran provides a distinction between sporadic waste and chronic waste.
The sporadic waste can be identified and corrected through quality control. The chronic
waste requires an improvement process. As a solution is found through the
improvement process, lessons learned are brought back to the quality planning process
so that new goals for the organization may be established.
Improvement Strategies4
There are four primary improvement strategies—repair, refinement, renovation, and
reinvention. Choosing the right strategy for the right situation is critical. It is also true
that proper integration of the strategies will produce never-ending improvement.
Repair
This strategy is simple—anything broken must be fixed so that it functions as designed.
There are two levels to this strategy. If a customer receives a damaged product, a quick
fix is required. This level is a temporary or short-term measure. Although short-term
measures shore up the problem, they should not become permanent. The second level
occurs when an individual or team identifies and eliminates the root cause(s) of the
problem and effects a permanent solution. It is important to note that the repair strategy
does not make the process better than the original design.
Refinement
This strategy involves activities that continually improve a process that is not broken.
Improvements to processes, products, and services are accomplished on an
incremental basis. Refinement improves efficiency and effectiveness. It should become
an integral part of every employee’s job. Both individuals and teams can use this
strategy. Typically it relies on doing things just a bit quicker, better, easier, or with less
waste. This is the concept behind Kaizen to be discussed later in the chapter. The
change may be so gradual that there is no appearance of change. The primary benefit
of gradual change is that it produces little resistance from employees. However,
because the change is so gradual, management may not recognize and reward the
affected employees. Also, minor changes may not be documented or properly
communicated.
Organizational programs—such as process improvement teams, suggestion systems,
and empowerment— are combinations of repair and refinement. They provide the
mechanisms for activities aimed at making these two strategies a part of the daily work
life.
Renovation
This strategy results in major or breakthrough improvements. Although the resulting
product, service, process, or activity might often appear to be different from the original,
it is basically the same. Innovation and technological advancements are key factors in
this approach. For example, the process of drilling a hole was originally done by hand
with a cranking mechanism; however, with the advent of the electric motor, the electric
drill was born. The electric drill has been continually refined by improved bits, chucks,
and materials.
More recently, another renovation occurred that was brought about by the development
of rechargeable batteries. The rechargeable electric drill is basically the same as the old
hand drill. Renovation is more costly than the previous strategies and is usually
undertaken by teams rather than individuals.
Reinvention
Reinvention is the most demanding improvement strategy. It is preceded by the feeling
that the current approach will never satisfy customer requirements. A new product, ser-
vice, process, or activity is developed using teams based on a complete understanding
of the customer’s requirements and expectations. Reinvention or reengineering begins
by imagining that the previous condition does not exist—in other words, a clean sheet of
paper. Then the team uses in-depth knowledge of the customer’s requirements and
expectations and invents a new product, service, process, or activity. For example, the
process of drilling holes using lasers or water jets was a reinvention.
Reinvention might also be desirable to maintain organization vitality or competitive
advantage. An organization should use this strategy sparingly because of resistance to
change and the fact that any new product, service, process, or activity will probably
need to have the “bugs” removed by repair, refinement, and renovation.
Crosby’s 10 POINTS
Check Hong Kong Professors ppt
Demings 14 points:
W. Edwards Deming, an American quality expert, became a Guru in Japan because he
preached the philosophical basis of quality and productivity, which was accepted,
absorbed and implemented with sustained positive results by the Japanese.
The Highest Award in the Japanese Industrial Circles is the Deming Prize for quality. Dr.
Deming introduced the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle to the Japanese decades ago. A
company plans a change, does it, checks the results and depending upon the results,
acts either to standardize the change or to begin the cycle of improvement again with
new information. Continuous or never-ending improvement requires such a circular
approach.
Dr. Deming pioneered a system of Statistical Quality Control (SQC), although his model
is not limited to just SQC. He focused on improvement of the process and the system, in
his Fourteen Points meant for the top brass; wherein according to him by the root cause
of quality fluctuation.
Deming’s Philosophy is given in his 14 points of quality management. Most of these
points were given in a seminar for 21 presidents of leading Japanese industry in 1950.
The rest were developed and the original ones modified over a period of three decades.
1. Create and publish the aims and purposes of the organization.
2. Learn the new philosophy.
3. Understand the purpose of inspection.
4. Stop awarding business based on price alone.
5. Improve constantly and forever.
6. Institute training.
7. Teach and institute leadership.
8. Drive out fear, create trust and create a climate for innovation.
9. Optimize the efforts of teams, groups and staff areas.
10. Eliminate exhortations for the work force.
11. a) Eliminate numerical quotas for the work force.
b) Eliminate Management by Objective.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship.
13. Encourage education and self-improvement of everyone.
14. Take action to accomplish the transformation.
The first of the 14 Points charges management with establishing continual improvement
through the redefinition of the company’s purposes. Quite simply, the company must
survive, compete well, and constantly replenish its resources for growth and
improvement through innovation and research.
In the fifth point, Dr. Deming states that only a commitment to a process of continual
improvement truly rewards. A company cannot expect to ignite and feed a quality
revolution from which it will prosper for all time. Instead, it must adopt an evolutionary
philosophy; such a philosophy that prevents stagnation and arms the company for the
uncertain future.
Point number four specifically warns against this scenario: the purchasing department of
a company consistently patronizes those vendors who offer the lowest prices. As a
result, the company often purchases low quality equipment. Dr. Deming urges
companies to establish loyal ties with suppliers of quality equipment.
Point three condemns mass inspection procedures as inefficient; a product should be
monitored by the workers throughout the assembly process, to meet a series of quality
standards. In the long term, the use of better equipment and a more intense worker-
oriented method of inspection will markedly improve productivity and lower the costs.
In order to accomplish these goals, a company must develop a consistent, active plan
that involves its entire labor force in the drive toward total quality. Dr. Deming based his
new business philosophy on an ideal of cooperation. In order to fulfill its own potential, a
company must harness the power of every worker in its employment; for that reason,
the third point bars shoddy workmanship, poor service, and negative attitudes from the
company.
In order to promote cooperation, Deming espouses his Theory of Profound Knowledge.
Profound knowledge involves expanded views and an understanding of the seemingly
individual yet truly interdependent elements that compose the larger system, the
company. Deming believed that every worker has nearly unlimited potential if placed in
an environment that adequately supports, educates, and nurtures senses of pride and
responsibility; he stated that the majority—85 percent—of a worker’s effectiveness is
determined by his environment and only minimally by his own skill.
A manager seeking to establish such an environment must:
● Employ an understanding of psychologyóof groups and individuals.
● Eliminate tools such as production quotas and sloganeering which only alienate
● workers from their supervisors and breed divisive competition between the
workers themselves.
● Form the company into a large team divided into sub-teams all working on
different aspects of the same goal; barriers between departments often give rise
to conflicting objectives and create unnecessary competition.
● Spread profit to workers as teams, not individuals.
● Eliminate fear, envy, anger and revenge from the workplace.
● Employ sensible methods such as rigorous on-the-job training programs.
In the resulting company, workers better understand their jobs—the specific tasks and
techniques as well as their higher value; thus stimulated and empowered, they perform
better. The expense pays for itself.

Toyota Production System: Poka Yoke, Kanban, Kaizen, 5S

TPS: Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System
Toyota Production System (TPS), originally called “Just-in-Time production”, was
developed by Toyota to organize their manufacturing operations including logistics,
supplier management, up to customer delivery. Its basic concept is the reduction of
cost through elimination of waste and optimization of machine and human capabilities.

Prior to TPS, problems such as imbalanced inventory levels coupled with surplus
equipment and workers were experienced by the automobile giant. Toyota decided to
put its efforts in the development of a production system that can shorten the time
between the initiation and completion of a production process, namely from the entry of
materials to the completion of the vehicle. In this type of production, only the necessary
products, at the necessary time, in necessary quantities are manufactured. This way the
stock on-hand is held down to a minimum.

Equally important, Toyota has built up a system of respect for people ingrained in the
TPS concept. It puts emphasis on the points as follows:

1. Elimination of waste movements by workers

2. Consideration for workers safety and
3. Self-display of workers capabilities by entrusting them with greater responsibility
and authority

Apart from the JIT concept, another essential feature of the TPS is Jidoka. The term
Jidoka means to make the equipment or operation stop whenever an abnormal or
defective condition arises. In short, its distinctive feature lies in the fact that when an
equipment problem or machine defect happens, the equipment or entire line stops, and
any line with workers can be stopped by them.

Just-in-Time and Jidoka are the main pillars of the Toyota Production System. The main
objectives of the TPS are to design out overload and inconsistency and to eliminate
waste. The most significant effects on process value delivery are achieved by designing
a process capable of delivering the required results smoothly, by minimizing
inconsistency. It is also crucial to ensure that the process is as flexible as necessary
without stress or overburden since this generates waste (e.g. waste of overproduction,
waste of transportation, waste of making defective products etc.).

Roots of the Toyota Production System

The Toyota Production System (TPS), which is based on the philosophy of the complete
elimination of waste in pursuit of the most efficient methods, has roots tracing back to
the automatic loom invented by Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the Toyota Group. TPS
has evolved through many years of trial and error to improve efficiency based on the
Just-in-Time concept developed by Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor
Corporation.

At the root of this is Sakichi Toyoda's idea of "doing things for others." As he sought
something he could do that would benefit the world, he focused on making things easier
for his mother, who worked late into the night operating a manual loom. The automatic
loom that he invented not only automated work that used to be performed by hand but
also built the capability to make judgments into the machine itself. By eliminating both
defective products and the associated wasteful practices, Sakichi succeeded in rapidly
improving both productivity and work efficiency. This is where the concept of jidoka was
born.

Kiichiro Toyoda advocated Just-in-Time based on this strong conviction: "A complete
car cannot be built if even one part is missing. Coordinating this is no small task.
However, without this control, we could have a mountain of parts and still not be able to
build a car. No amount of money will suffice if we don't think of a unique way to organize
these tens of thousands of parts."

Via the philosophies of Daily Improvements and Good Thinking, Good Products, TPS
has evolved into a world-renowned production system. Even today, all of Toyota is
implementing kaizen to TPS day and night to ensure its continued evolution.

We carry on TPS around the world with a strong desire to contribute to the enrichment
of society and the nation, which has continued since the days of Sakichi and Kiichiro.

Toyota Motor Corporation's Toyota Production System (TPS) is a way of making things
that have become known and studied worldwide.

It is based on the premise of making work easier for workers. The objective is to
thoroughly eliminate waste and shorten lead times to deliver vehicles to customers
quickly, at a low cost, and with high quality. This production system is pursued in all
areas of Toyota Motor Corporation, including vehicles and services, and all employees
implement daily incremental kaizen.

The Two Pillars of TPS

● The basic philosophy of the Toyota Production System is based on two pillars.
The first pillar is jidoka―which can be loosely translated as "automation with a
human touch"―based on the concepts of stopping immediately when
abnormalities are detected to prevent defective products from being produced
and improving productivity to eliminate the need for people to be simply watching
over machines. The second pillar is Just-in-Time, based on the concept of
synchronizing production processes―linking all plants and their production
processes in a continuous flow―by making only what is needed, when it is
needed, and in the amount needed.
● These two pillars enable the production of vehicles that satisfy customer
requirements quickly, at a low cost, and with high quality.

Jidoka
Jidoka in the TPS is "automation with a human touch," where human wisdom is added
to automation. Human wisdom means that when an abnormality occurs, such as a
machine or equipment abnormality, quality abnormality, or a work delay, the machine or
equipment can detect the abnormality and stop automatically, or the operator can stop
the line by pulling the stop cord themselves. This eliminates the outflow of defective
products while also making it possible to build quality into processes by clearly detecting
abnormalities and preventing them from recurring. Furthermore, having the ability to
stop when an abnormality is detected means that machines and equipment no longer
need to be watched over, saving labor by reducing working hours.
To create these kinds of machines, it is necessary to first be able to do the work
smoothly and correctly by hand, determine abnormalities in the work, and replace those
operations with machines. In other words, rather than starting with a machine from the
beginning, you must first try doing it thoroughly by hand, implement kaizen, eliminate
waste, inconsistencies, and unreasonable requirements―known respectively in
Japanese as muda, mura, muri―and make it possible for anyone to do the work. You
must then make it possible to detect abnormalities in the work and build that into the
actual machines. These incremental efforts lead to a production line that is high-quality,
low-cost, flexible, and easy to maintain.

This implementation of kaizen on work is the bedrock of jidoka. It doesn't matter how
much machines, robots, or IT excel; they can't evolve any further on their own. Only
humans can implement kaizen for the sake of evolution. In other words, craftsmanship
is achieved by discovering the basic principles of manufacturing through manual work
and then applying them on the production line to steadily implement kaizen. This cycle
of kaizen in both human skills and technologies is critical for taking on the challenge of
new technologies and construction methods. Human wisdom and ingenuity are
indispensable to delivering ever-better cars to customers. Going forward, we will
maintain our steadfast dedication to constantly developing human resources who can
think independently and implement kaizen.
Just-in-Time
● Making only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed
● Fulfilling orders from customers as quickly as possible

A car is made up of more than 30,000 parts. These parts are made not only by Toyota
but also at the plants of many of our business partners. All plants must work with
complete synchronization to make the vehicles quickly and without waste. All adhere to
the following principles of Just-in-Time to achieve synchronized production: 1) Only
make what is needed by the customer, when it is needed, and in the amount needed; 2)
Don't allow goods and information to be held up during production; 3) Make them at the
pace at which they're sold. It would take many months to fulfill a customer's order if all
the parts were made only after receiving it. To avoid that, the minimum number of parts
needed are stocked in advance on the vehicle assembly line so that a car can be built
as soon as the order is received. The preceding process has a store of finished
products from which the next process can pick up the parts that it needs. The preceding
process is also stocked in advance with the minimum number of parts needed to re-
make parts picked up by the next process before the next pick-up, allowing it to
immediately replenish whatever was picked up. Having all processes engaged in this
loop achieves wasteless production where we only make what is needed, when it is
needed, and in the amount needed to fulfill customer orders and ensure that only
sellable items are produced.
The continuous pursuit of these two pillars of the TPS are the wellsprings of Toyota's
competitive strength and unique advantages. We will develop human resources
throughout Toyota who put this philosophy into practice to make ever-better cars that
will be cherished by customers.
Poka Yoke
Poka Yoke is a Japanese term which was coined by a Japanese engineer named
Shingeo Shingo. This was originally called as Baka-Yoke during 1961 which means
“Fool proofing”. This was not liked by employees because of its negative connotation.
Hence, it was later changed in to Poka Yoke which means “Mistake Proofing”. The other
names for Poka Yoke are mistake proofing, error proofing and fail safe operation. It is
pronounced as pohkak yoh-kay and it translates in to English as “to avoid
(yokeru)”-”inadvertent errors (poka)”.Poka Yoke is a bunch of small devices like fixtures,
jigs, gadgets, warning signals, paper systems and like which are used to detect or
prevent defects from occurring in the first place before additional value is added to the
parts/products.
The Poka yoke devices are developed based on the answers to the following questions
pertaining to a defect on a product/part What is the defect? When is the defect
discovered? What are the standard elements involved in making the part or assembly?
What mistakes or errors are made? Why are the mistakes made?
Characteristics of Poka Yoke
1. It is capable of being used all the time by all workers
2. It is simple to install which means that it is not requiring continuous attention from
the operator and it is not burdensome for the operator. It should work even if the
operator is not aware of the necessity of its action to prevent defects.
3. It is usually installed with low implementation cost.
4. It provides instantaneous feedback, prevention or correction.
5. If a component is not having the correct shape or form, then the production
process should detect it before performing any operation on it.

Levels of Poka Yoke

The application of Poka Yoke can be viewed at three levels as listed below.
 1. Eliminating spills, leaks, and accidental losses at the source or prevention of a
mistake from being committed.
2. Detecting unintended loss that is in the process of occurring, but before it
becomes a problem.
3. Detecting loss after it has occurred but before the contingency indicator is
triggered.
Classification of Poka Yoke
Poka Yoke be classified in to prevention based poka yoke and detection based poka
yoke.
a) Prevention based Poka Yoke
The prevention based poka yoke uses control method and warning method. In the
control method, the problem is sensed and if necessary a product line or a process will
be stopped so that corrective action can take place immediately to avoid the occurrence
of serial defects. The warning method signals the occurrence of a deviation or trends of
deviation through as escalating series of buzzers, lights or other warning devices.
Unlike the previous method, this method will not stop the product line or the process on
every occurrence.
b) Detection based Poka Yoke
The detection based poka yoke uses contact method, fixed value method and motion
step method. The contact method defects any deviation in shape, dimensional
characteristics or other specific defects through mechanisms that are kept in direct
contact with the part.
Fixed value method is used in operations in which a set of steps is sequentially
performed. The fixed value method employs automatic counters or optical devices and it
controls the number of moves, rate and length of movement as well as other critical
operating parameters. Motion step method ensures that a process or operator does not
mistakenly perform a step that is not part of the normal process. An example of this way
“Out of Paper” condition. Another example may be preventing the raising of accelerator
in a four wheeler while applying break.
c) Places where Poka works well
● Manual operation where worker vigilance is needed.
● Where miss positioning and misalignment can occur.
● Where adjustment is required.
● Where team needs common sense tools.
● Where the application of statistical process control becomes difficult / ineffective.
● Where attributes are important.
● Where employees turn over and training cost are high.
Principles of Poka Yoke
 ● Build quality in to process by making it impossible to turn out defectives items if
an error is committed.
● All inadvertent errors and defects can be eliminated.
● Stop doing it wrong and start doing it right now.
● Donít tell excuses, instead think about how to do it right.
● A 51% chance of success is good enough for implementing your idea right
away.
● Mistakes and defects can be reduced to zero when everyone works together to
● eliminate them.
● Seek out the true cause(s) if a defect occurs.
Poka Yoke devices
As stated earlier, Poka yoke is a simple device or method to prevent mistakes at their
source. Some examples of poka yoke devices are stated below. An airplane pilot may
use a simple check list (Poka Yoke) to make sure everything is ready before the take off
of his plane.
A red alert, as long as the fuel level is below reserve level in automobile, which will force
the driver to refill fuel at the earliest. In an assembly station, if three screws are required
to fix a motor in a fan housing at a particular workstation. The operator should count and
keep three screws in front of him before the start of this fixing operation on every fan
housing and finally check for empty bin status after the completion of fixing of screws on
each fan housing at that work station.
A jig prevents a tool from being wrongly oriented during loading. Non symmetric screw
hole locations that would prevent a plate from being screwed down incorrectly on to
another part.
Steps of Poka Yoke
1. Select a pilot process or a trouble some area of the facility of interest.
2. Ask the workers to make a list of most common mistakes that result in the loss of
materials/unproductive time in these areas.
3. Workers should use Pareto analysis to rank order these errors according to their
frequency of occurrence.
4. Worker should rank the errors according to their importance and impact on the
process and the environment.
5. Workers should develop poka yoke devices in consultation with engineering and
design staff that eliminate the top ranked errors from both lists.
6. The implementation team should analyze the errors, frequency and their
respective cost before any poka yoke methods.
Benefits of Poka Yoke:
 1. Reduction in waste and associated machining as nonconforming material is
identified at each stage rather than an inspection stage between several pairs of
stages.
2. Reduction of waste in the system leads to reduction in Inventory holdings.
3. Extended life of machines is possible if the production is set for a specific
production rate since they always produce good quality products. This avoids
unnecessary run of the machines to cope up with the defective production of parts.
4. Improvement in customer satisfaction levels because better quality product is
delivered to them.
5. Improvement in employeeís relationship as it encourages more involvement of
operators and team members.
Limitations of Poka Yoke:
1. It increases the time of inspection that the operator would spend on his job.
2. Increased time of inspection does not mean reduced cost of scrap in the long run.
3. In short term, there will be a sharp increase in scrap materials cost.
Six Sigma and Lean Management
Six sigma is a statistical measure that translates into a target of no more than 3.4
defects per million products and includes customer service.
Motorola’s cycle-time reduction is even more ambitious; the clock starts ticking the
moment the product is conceived. This calls for an examination of the total system,
including design, manufacturing, marketing, and administration.

Six Sigma is a method for disciplined quality improvement that provides the tools
organizations need to improve the capability of their business processes.

The goal of a Six Sigma program is to improve customer satisfaction through reducing
and eliminating variation in processes, products, and services that may lead to defects
and/or errors/mistakes. The numerical goal of a process operating at a 6-sigma level is
3.4 defects per million opportunities, while higher levels of defects are associated with
lower sigma levels.

This increase in performance and decrease in process variation leads to defect/error

reduction and improvement in profits, employee morale, customer satisfaction, and
product and service quality.

Six Sigma views all work as processes that can be defined, measured, analyzed,
improved, and controlled. Processes are a series of steps that take various inputs and
produce outputs such as a product or a service. Understanding the relationship between
the inputs and outputs is a key concept in Six Sigma. By controlling the inputs, you can
control the outputs.

DEFINITION OF SIX SIGMA

Six Sigma has been defined several ways including:

A fact-based, data-driven philosophy of improvement that values defect/error prevention

over defect/error detection. It drives customer satisfaction and bottom-line results by
reducing variation and waste, thereby promoting a competitive advantage. It applies
anywhere variation and waste exist, and every employee should be involved.

An organized and systematic method for process improvement that relies on statistical
methods and the scientific method to make dramatic reductions in customer-defined
defect/error rates.

An approach that allows organizations to drastically improve their bottom line by

monitoring and improving everyday business activities in ways that minimize waste and
resources while increasing customer satisfaction.

Regardless of the exact definition, these various definitions all include a few common
threads, including:
 ● The use of teams that are assigned well-defined projects that directly affect the
organization's bottom line.
● Training in statistical thinking at all levels.
● Emphasis on the define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC)
approach to problem solving.
● A management environment that supports these initiatives as a business
strategy.

Statistical Aspects:
According to James Harrington, “Six sigma was simply a TQM process that uses
process capability analysis (see Chapter 15) as a way of measuring progress.”18
Sigma, , is the Greek symbol for the statistical measurement of dispersion called
standard deviation. It is the best measurement of process variability, because the
smaller the deviation value, the less variability in the process. Figure 5-5 shows a
process that is normally distributed and centered with the upper and lower specification
limits (USL and LSL) established at 6 . For this situation, 99.9999998% of the product
or service will be between specifications, and the nonconformance rate will be 0.002
parts per million, or 2.0 per billion. The situation diagrammed represents a process
capability index (Cp) of 2.0. A Cp of 1.33 has been a defacto standard. Table 5-4 shows
the percent between specifications, the nonconformance rate, and process capability for
different specification limit locations.
According to the six-sigma philosophy, processes rarely stay centered—the center
tends to “shift” above and below the target, μ. Figure 5-6 shows a process that is
normally distributed, but has shifted within a range of 1.5 above and 1.5 below the
target. For the diagrammed situation, 99.9996600% of the product or service will be
between specifications and the nonconformance rate will be 3.4 ppm. This off-center
situation gives a process capability index (Cpk) of 1.5 with 1.0 being the defacto
standard.
Note that index is calculated differently and, therefore, has a different symbol (Cp vs.
Cpk). Table 5-5 shows the percent between specifications, the nonconformance rate,
and process capability for different specification limit locations. The magnitude and type
of shift is a matter of discovery and should not be assumed ahead of time. None of the
case studies in the literature have indicated a shift as great as 1.5. The automotive
industry recognized the concept in the mid-1980’s, evaluated it and deemed it
unacceptable.19 In fact, the original work of six sigma was based on only a few
empirical studies of a single process.20
The statistical aspects of six-sigma tell us that we should reduce the process
variability, , and try to keep the process centered on the target, μ;. These concepts are
not new. They have been long advocated by Shewhart, Deming, and Taguchi
WHAT IS LEAN SIX SIGMA?

While Six Sigma focuses on reducing process variation and enhancing process control,
lean drives out waste (nonvalue-added processes and procedures) and promotes work
standardization and flow. The distinction between Six Sigma and lean has blurred, with
the term lean Six Sigma (LSS) being used more often because process improvement
often requires aspects of both approaches to attain positive results.

Lean and Six Sigma both provide customers with the best possible quality, cost, and
delivery. There is a great deal of overlap between the two disciplines, but they approach
their common purpose from slightly different angles:

Lean focuses on waste reduction, whereas Six Sigma emphasizes variation reduction.

Lean achieves its goals using less-technical tools such as kaizen, workplace
organization, and visual controls, whereas Six Sigma tends to use statistical data
analysis, design of experiments, and statistical process control.

Successful implementation often begins with the lean approach, making the workplace
as efficient and effective as possible by reducing waste and using value stream maps to
improve understanding and throughput. If process problems remain, more technical Six
Sigma statistical tools may be applied.

IMPLEMENTING SIX SIGMA

Six Sigma is a business system with many statistical aspects, and it naturally fits the
business systems of most organizations. It is an operational system that speeds up
improvement by getting the right projects conducted in the right way. It drives out fear
by making employees agents of change.

Six Sigma implementation often is top down. Usually, the CEO is the driving force, and
an executive management team provides the Champion for each project. The
Champion is responsible for the project’s success, providing necessary resources and
breaking down organizational barriers. Getting upper management Champions involved
in the project selection process helps guarantee the projects will have a large impact on
the business.

The project leader is called a Black Belt (BB), and all their time typically is dedicated to
completing process improvement projects. The projects likely will come from different
business areas, thereby giving the BB a broader view of the business.

The project team members are called Green Belts (GBs), and they do not typically
spend all their time on process improvement projects.
It is important to note Six Sigma project participants such as BBs and GBs tend to be
agents of change who thrive in the new business climate of constant change. They are
open to new ideas and are used to rigorously evaluating new ideas.

Master Black Belts (MBBs) are resources for the project teams. MBBs often are
experienced BBs who have worked on many projects. They generally have knowledge
of advanced tools, business and leadership training, and teaching experience. A
primary MBB responsibility is training and mentoring new BBs in the organization.

For more information on different Six Sigma Belts, visit the Six Sigma Belts Learn About
Quality page.

Six Sigma Projects

A Six Sigma project is completed using five clearly defined steps: define, measure,
analyze, improve, and control. These steps constitute the cycle Six Sigma practitioners
use to manage problem-solving projects. The steps help practitioners ensure that data-
driven decisions are made, root causes are identified, improvements are vetted, and
controls are implemented within the process.

The improvement projects must be integrated with the overall goals of the organization.
Top-level support for and overview of project planning, implementation, and evaluation
are important aspects of this integration.

The major components of a typical Six Sigma program are shown in the image
“Components of a Six Sigma quality program.” Improvement process and quality
measurement are fundamental to Six Sigma. Although the distinction between quality
initiatives and improvement tools is somewhat arbitrary, initiatives are viewed as
ongoing management processes, while tools are analytical techniques used to support
the improvement process.

At the managerial level, Six Sigma relies on an improvement process that is used by all
employees to improve product, service, and process quality. The following is a brief
description of each step in the Six Sigma improvement process:

1. Define products and services. Describe the products and support services,
including information, consulting, and follow up, that are provided to external
and internal customers.
2. Identify customer requirements. Identify internal and external customers, and
determine their requirements for each product or service. These requirements
should be stated in measurable terms.
3. Compare the product with customer requirements. Identify gaps between what
the customer expects and what he or she is receiving. This step also should
provide some basis for prioritizing needed improvements.
4. Describe the process. Provide a detailed description of each process.
Flowcharts and other improvement tools often are used in this step.
 5. Improve the process. Evaluate each process in terms of its value and
relationship to other processes. Changing how the process flows can involve
simplification, mistake proofing and/or eliminating or combining process steps.
6. Measure quality and productivity. Establish baseline values for quality and
productivity, and track improvement. This can include benchmarking best-in-
class organizations to provide targets for quality and productivity improvement.

KANBAN

In the simplest terms, Kanban is a way to visually manage the work flow at an
organization. Using kanban makes it easier to stay efficient and it helps to quickly
identify (and solve) problems in the work flow.

The basic idea of kanban is that the flow of work is represented on a large board with
different columns. Work is represented by a card or ticket on the board, and the board is
separated into different columns. Each column on the board represents a different
phase of the work process, and as the work continues, the card (representing a job) is
moved from one column to the next to the next to track progress and eventual
completion.
Traditional kanban boards are separated into three columns named something like:
To do
Doing
Done
Different workplaces may use different numbers of columns or use different names for
the columns, but the general idea of moving the kanban card from column to column as
work is completed remains the same. In some instances, the board can also include
rows, called “swim lanes,” that denote work by different teams. Traditionally, the kanban
method uses something like a bulletin board posted in the work area. That’s still true
today sometimes, but today there is often software to manage kanban and to create
kanban boards online.

The Origins of Kanban

Kanban originated with the Toyota Production System (TPS) and lean manufacturing.
Toyota’s production system was based on a pull system, not a push system. This
means their production was based on the “pull” created by consumer demand, not the
“push” of production planning to create inventory. The desire to create a push system
created what is known as “just-in-time” manufacturing, in which a product was created
as close as possible to the time a consumer wanted it (and not sitting in a warehouse).
Likewise, as a product was being assembled, downstream processes “pulled” the
product further through the production process, and upstream processing areas
endeavored to get materials to their downstream counterparts just in time.
Kanban, with its practice of visually mapping progress through production phases, was
a helpful way to visually manage workflow in a workplace that emphasized pull and just-
in-time.
Kanban went on to be a standard part of the lean manufacturing tool kit and to be used
by many manufacturing companies. However, it’s not just for manufacturing, and in fact
was picked up by the software industry for agile development.

Four Principles of Kanban

Kanban has four principles. These are:

1. Start with what you do now
2. Pursue incremental, evolutionary change
3. Respect the existing process, roles, and responsibilities
4. Encourage acts of leadership at all levels
Let’s look at each in a little more detail:

Start with what you do now

When you’re implementing kanban, don’t change your production processes at the
same time. Instead, use kanban to visually manage what you’re doing now. This way,
you’ll avoid creating culture shock and risk losing buy-in at work. Plus, using kanban
with your existing processes will help you identify areas for improvement.

Pursue incremental, evolutionary change. Once you’ve implemented kanban, use it to

make a series of small changes in a question for continuous improvement. This
matches the typical emphasis of lean on small, incremental improvements, as illustrated
in kaizen as well.

Respect the existing processes, roles, and responsibilities

Remember to see that the processes, roles, and responsibilities that exist currently exist
for a reason and have value. In general, they’re worth keeping. You’re not prohibited
from making change, but you also shouldn’t embrace change for change’s sake or
make wild, sweeping, radical changes.

Encourage acts of leadership at all levels

People often mistakenly believe that leadership comes only from “above” in the
organizational hierarchy. But to really create a culture of organizational learning and
continuous improvement, employees at all levels must adopt kanban and the process of
making increment changes for continuous improvement, and in many cases employees
will be doing the leading.

Six Practices of Kanban

To make kanban work, follow these six practices:
1. Visualize your workflow using kanban
2. Limit the work in progress
3. Manage the workflow to reduce bottlenecks and create flow
4. Define and share work policies explicitly
5. Use feedback loops to ease information flow, learn continually, and improve
processes and your product (value for customers)
6. Be collaborative and experimental to always push for improvement
Visualize your workflow using kanban
Kanban helps you visualize your workflow. This will help you better understand it, in
general, but it will also help you better identify problems such as bottlenecks and other
inefficiencies as you continue to use kanban at work. In this sense, helping you
visualize and improve your work processes, kanban has something in common with
value stream mapping.

Once you’ve developed that understanding, you can more productively create
improvements.

In kanban, visualization of the work process(es) occurs on the kanban board. Cards
represent work items, and columns represent different steps in the workflow. You move
the card from column to column as a work item moves from step to step.
One thing that’s important to remember is that the kanban board should be visible to all
workers, not just managers and supervisors. Don’t squirrel away your kanban board in
your office; put it in the production area so all can see, be updated, and learn together.

Limit the work in progress

Don’t try to push too much work through the system at once, don’t switch teams on and
off projects mid-stream, and don’t expect workers to multi-task. Limit the number of
active items being worked on (and represented on the kanban board) to a manageable,
reasonable level.

Remember, your goal is a “pull” system, with customer demand driving production
through the phases. Consider setting a maximum number of kanban cards (and
therefore work items) for each stage and only allowing cards to be pulled into the next
stage when there’s capacity in that second stage.

Manage the workflow to reduce bottlenecks and create flow.

The whole idea of implementing a Kanban system is to create a smooth healthy flow. By
flow, we mean the movement of work items through the production process. We are
interested in the speed and the smoothness of movement. So, managing the flow is
about managing the work but not the people. So instead of micro-managing people and
trying to keep them busy all the time, we should focus on managing the work processes
and understanding how to get that work through the system faster.

Ideally, we want fast and smooth flow. This would mean that our system is creating
value quickly. This way we can minimize the average cycle time for production and
avoiding the cost of delay but in a predictable fashion.

Define and share work policies explicitly

Nobody in your company–you, managers, supervisors, or workers–can improve your
work processes if you don’t understand them. Likewise, kanban can’t be used effective
for your continuous improvement efforts if there’s not a single, shared understanding of
work processes and how they’re represented on a kanban board.

Be sure to create and share documentation of your work processes and make sure all
employees understand them and understand how they’re represented on the kanban
board.

And make sure everyone knows the ultimate goal that you’re headed for (creating more
value for the customer and decreasing waste) so everyone’s rowing the boat in the
same direction.

Use feedback loops to ease information flow, learn continually, and improve processes
and your product (value for customers)

The free flow of information, knowledge sharing, and organizational learning are all key
aspects of lean manufacturing. That’s true in the kanban method as well.

One way to facilitate that exchange of information, in particular from workers to

managers and supervisors, is to have recurrent team meetings in which supervisors ask
employees about and study normal work or work as performed. That can include talking
about what people did the previous day and what they’ll do today.

These meetings don’t have to be long, but they should happen on a regular basis and
employees should see evidence that their input is valued and their insights are
implemented. Having meetings like these and never implementing new ideas will kill
buy-in from employees quickly.

Be collaborative and experimental to always push for improvement

Remember, kanban and lean work through collaboration and experimentation.
Everyone at your organization needs to know your business goals; understand work,
the work flow, and work processes; and must all be continually engaged in a culture of
learning and experimentation (with verification, such as through the PDCA Cycle) with
the ultimate goal of continuous improvement.

Conclusion: Kanban is an Essential & Helpful Lean Tool

Kanban is an important part of lean manufacturing, and it can also be used even if your
organization hasn’t adopted lean. We hope this introduction to kanban has been helpful
to you and we wish you luck on your lean manufacturing and/or process improvement
journey.

KAIZEN:

When Masaki Imai, Founder and President of Kaizen Institute threw the word ‘Kaizen’ at
the corporate world through his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success
in 1986, it was swallowed hungrily by a world in the throes of transition. Translated in
fourteen languages, Kaizen became a fad the world over.
Kaizen refers to “continuous or On-going Improvement” in Japanese, is an inseparable
aspect of Total Quality Management. Continuous improvement is required in all
activities of the organization, be it Productive development or Labor Management
Relations or Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) or Just-In-Production and Delivery
System or Customer Orientation.

Kaizen has to basically do with small, step-by-step continuous improvement, smaller

and continuous improvements are more realizable, predictable, controllable and
acceptable. Kaizen philosophy believes that people at all levels, including the lowermost
levels in the organizational hierarchy, can contribute to improvement. This is possible
because Kaizen asks for only small improvements. A point to be noted is that Kaizen is
to be performed at all levels, from the top management to the lower level employees.

Toyota, the outstandingly successful Japanese carmaker, became one of his most
committed followers. However, Imai, the founder of a leading international management
and executive recruiting firm and consultant to over two hundred companies, realized
that the concept had neither been digested nor well implemented.

He introduced an evolved form of Kaizen in 1997 in his book Gemba Kaizen: A

Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management, to reassert the importance of the
shop floor in bringing about continual improvement in an organization. Today, the father
of ‘Kaizen’ and ‘Gemba Kaizen’ is convinced that to survive in an increasingly
competitive world, top management must adopt a just-in-time (JIT) approach and drive
change down the hierarchy without yielding to resistance.

Forget forecasting, concentrate instead on crashing the time taken to execute orders.
According to Imai, 90 per cent of all corporate problems can be solved using common
sense and improving quality while reducing cost through the elimination of waste is the
only option for survival.

Kaizen is a Japanese word for the philosophy that defines management’s role in
continuously encouraging and implementing small improvements involving everyone. It
is the process of continuous improvement in small increments that make the process
more—efficient, effective, under control, and adaptable. Improvements are usually
accomplished at little or no expense, without sophisticated techniques or expensive
equipment. It focuses on simplification by breaking down complex processes into their
sub-processes and then improving them.

The Kaizen improvement focuses on the use of:13

1. Value-added and non-value-added work activities.

2. Muda, which refers to the seven classes of waste—over-production, delay,

transportation, processing, inventory, wasted motion, and defective parts.

3. Principles of motion study and the use of cell technology.

4. Principles of materials handling and use of one-piece flow.

5. Documentation of standard operating procedures.

6. The five S’s for workplace organization, which are five Japanese words that mean
proper arrangement (seiko), orderliness (seiton), personal cleanliness (seiketso),
cleanup (seiso), and discipline (shitsuke).

7. Visual management by means of visual displays that everyone in the plant can use
for better communications.

8. Just-in-time principles to produce only the units in the right quantities, at the right
time, and with the right resources.

9. Poka-yoke to prevent or detect errors.

10. Team dynamics, which include problem solving, communication skills, and conflict
resolution.

Kaizen relies heavily on a culture that encourages suggestions by operators who

continually try to incrementally improve their job or process. An example of a Kaizen-
type improvement would be the change in color of a welding booth from black to white
to improve operator visibility. This change results in a small improvement in weld quality
and a substantial improvement in operator satisfaction. The PDSA cycle described
earlier may be used to help implement Kaizen concepts.

Kaizen traditionally involves slow incremental improvements; however, with the

influence of Toyota and the now-infamous Toyota Production System that incorporates
lean manufacturing principles, many of the concepts of Kaizen can be implemented in a
more rapid fashion.

An example, of such concepts being implemented is Zydus Cadila India, which is a

pharmaceutical company with its headquarters at Ahmedabad. The company with the
help of their Kaizen consultants identified “muda” in the forms of overproduction,
unnecessary transportation, excess inventory, waiting for parts or machines,
overprocessing, rework and failure to fully utilize the time and talents of the people.
Their new plant was planned and based on the Kaizen principles to minimize wastes
involving the shop-floor managers and workers. The new plant was based on cellular
flow concepts, continuous material movement and no in-process storage with full
visibility of operations from the same floor. Each process was based on pull system
instead of the conventional push system. With the Kaizen overhaul of the plant,

• the capacity improved five times

• cycle time improved to 80 from 600 i.e. 1/5th of original and

• the distance travelled by the batch of tablets reduced to 73 from 220 meters.
Later, the Kaizen initiative was extended further to the vaccine packing and injectables
manufacturing units. The new practice resulted in 30% productivity improvement in
vaccine division and 50% reduction in cycle time in the injectables unit

KAIZEN refers to improvement AND ongoing or continuity. Just carrying out business as
usual contains the element of continuity but lacks the idea of improvement.
Breakthrough refers to change or improvement but lacks continuity. Breakthrough with
its strong innovative meaning is often preferred way to carry out changes,
improvements. Yet the Kaizen way and Breakthrough are very different, the kaizen
approach is to make better use of existing resources.

While Kaizen uses small steps, conventional know-how and a lot common sense,
innovation comes in big steps and pursues technological breakthroughs. Kaizen is
effort-based, while innovation is investment-based. Kaizen constantly reviews the
process to check results consistency with targets, while innovation looks for results only.

5S:
Efficient work and quality require clean environment, safety and discipline. The
Japanese 5S are simple, effective rules for tidiness. The 5S are prerequisites for any
improvement program. As waste is potential gain, so eliminating waste is a gain. 5S
Philosophy focuses on effective workplace organization, simplifies work environment,
reduces waste while improving quality and safety. There is no hope for efficiency or
quality improvement with dirty workplace, waste of time and scrap.

The 5Ss stand for the five first letters of these Japanese words, Seiri, Seiton, Seiso,
Seiketsu and Shitsuke.

Seiri (Sorting Out)

Sorting, keep the necessary in work area, dispose or keep in a distant storage area less
frequently used items, unneeded items are discarded. Seiri fights the habit to keep
things because they may be useful someday. Seiri helps to keep work area tidy,
improves searching and fetching efficiency and generally clears much space. Seiri is
also excellent way to gain valuable floor space and eliminate old broken tools, obsolete
jigs and fixtures, scrap and excess raw material.

Seiton (Systematic Arrangement

Systematic arrangement for the most efficient and effective retrieval. A good example of
Seiton is the tool panel. Effective Seiton can be achieved by painting floors to visualize
the dirt, outlining work areas and locations, shadow tool boards. For improving
changeover time with Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) or reduce machine
downtime through Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) it is necessary to have tools at
hand. So a specific mobile tool cart was designed.

Another example of Seiton is “broom carts”. As cleaning is a major part of 5S we use

custom made carts to hold brooms, mops and buckets. Several carts have specific
locations and all employees can find them. Seiton saying would be: ”A place for
everything and everything on its place.”

Seiso (Spick and Span)

Cleaning. After the first thorough cleaning when implementing 5S, daily follow-up
cleaning is necessary in order to sustain this improvement. Cleanliness is also helpful to
notice damages on equipment such as leaks, breakage and misalignment. These minor
damages, if left unattended, could lead to equipment failure and loss of production.
Regular cleaning is a type of inspection. Seiso is an important part of basic TPM; Total
Productive Maintenance and Safety matter through cleanliness is obvious.

Seiketsu (Standar Dizing)

Standardizing. Once the first three Ss have been implemented, it should be set as a
standard so to keep these for good practice work area. Without it, the situation will
deteriorate right back to old habits. Have an easy-to-follow standards and develop a
structure to support it. Allow employees to join the development of such standards. The
3 first Ss are often executed by order. Seiketsu helps to turn it into natural, standard
behavior.

Shitsuke (Self Discipline)

Finally, to keep first 4 Ss alive, it is necessary to keep educating people about

maintaining standards. By setting up a formal system; with display of results, follow-up,
the now complete 5S get insured to live and be expanded beyond their initial limits, in
an ongoing improvement way; the Kaizen way. The effect of continuous improvement
leads to less waste, better quality and faster lead times.