OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT IN TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT

Module 5

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN THE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY SERVICES

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:

1. Develop an appreciation for the insight, wisdom contributions, and forward

thinking of Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa, and Taguchi -- the
pioneering "gurus" of quality.
2. Investigate how Juran's philosophy seeks to provide change within the current
American management system. Juran defined quality is defined as fitness for use,
and developed the Quality Trilogy-planning, control, and improvement-to
provide a direction for quality assurance in organizations.
3. Appreciate how Crosby's approach to quality is summarized in the "Absolutes of
Quality Management" that emphasize behavioral change rather than
improvements through the use of statistical techniques.
4. Develop reasons for why managers must understand the similarities and
differences in leading quality philosophies and must develop a quality
management approach tailored to their organizations.

This lesson refers to a quality emphasis that encompasses the entire

organization, from supplier to customer. TQM stresses a commitment by management
to have a continuing companywide drive toward excellence in all aspects of products
and services that are important to the customer.

Let’s Try!

Describe Total Quality Management in your own ways. Create your own
principles that you think would be beneficial in maintaining total quality in
tourism and hospitality industry.

Quality expert W. Edwards Deming's 14 Points for implementing Quality

Improvement

1. Create consistency of purpose.

2. Lead to promote change.
3. Build quality into the product, stop depending on inspections to catch problems.
4. Build long-term relationships based on performance instead awarding business
on the basis of price.
5. Continuously improve product, quality, and service.
6. Start training

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7. Emphasize leadership
8. Drive out fear.
9. Break down barriers between departments.
10. Stop haranguing (lecturing) workers.
11. Support, help, and improve
12. Remove barriers to pride in work.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work on the transformation.

SEVEN CONCEPTS FOR AN EFFECTIVE TQM

1. Continuous Improvement. Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Process. Walter Shewhart,

developed this as his version of continuous improvement. Kaizen to describe the
ongoing process of unending improvement-the setting and achieving of ever-
higher goals. In the U.S., TOM and zero defects are also used to describe
continuous improvement efforts. But whether if's ADCA, kaizen, TQM or zero
defects, the operations manager is a key player in building a work culture that
endorses continuous improvement.
2. Six Sigma. This popularized by Motorola (developed in the 1980's in response to
customer complaints about its products and to stiff competition), Honeywell, and
General Electric expanded later into services, including human resources, sales,
customer services, and financial/credit services), has two meanings in TQM:
a. In the statistical sense it describes a process, product, or service with an
extremely high capability (99.9997% or 3-4 ppm accuracy).
b. It is a program designed to reduce defects to help lower costs, save time,
and improve customer satisfaction. Six Sigma is a comprehensive system-
a strategy, a discipline and a set of tools-for achieving-and sustaining
business success.
i. It is a strategy because it focuses on total customer satisfaction.
ii. It is a discipline because it follows the formal Six Sigma
Improvement Model known as DMAIC five-step process.
1. Defines critical outputs and identifies gaps for
improvement
2. Measures the work and collects data for processes that can
help close the gaps
3. Analyzes the data.
4. Improves by modifying or redesigning existing procedures.
5. Controls the new process to make sure performance levels
are maintained.

Implementing Six Sigma is a big commitment. "We're asking our executives to

spend upward of 15% of their time on Six Sigma. If you don't spend the time you don't
get the results."

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3. Employee Empowerment. Enlarging employee jobs so that the added

responsibility is moved to the lowest level possible in the organization.
a. Building communication networks that include employees.
b. Developing open, supportive supervisors.
c. Moving responsibility from both managers and staff to production
employees.
d. Building high-moral organizations
e. Creating such formal organizational structures as teams and quality
circles.
4. Bench marking. This involves selecting a demonstrated standard of products,
services, costs, or products that represent the very best performance for
processes or activities very similar to your own. Compare yourselr against nem.
ne idea is to develop a target at which to shoot and then to develop a standard or
benchmark against them to compare your performance.
The steps are:
a. Determine what to benchmark.
b. Form a benchmark team.
c. Identify benchmarking partners.
d. Collect and analyze benchmarking information.
e. Take action to match or exceed the benchmark.

When an organization is large enough to have many divisions or business units a

natural approach is the internal benchmarking. Data are usually much more accessible
than from outside firms.

5. Just-in-Time (JIT). This system is designed to produce or deliver goods just as are
they needed. JIT related to quality in three ways:
a. JT cuts cost of quality. Less inventory on hand, costs are lower.
b. JIT improves quality. It creates an early warning system for problems,
both within the firm and with vendors
c. Better quality means less inventory and a better, easier-to-employ JIT
system. Often the purpose of keeping inventory is to protect against poor
production performance resulting from unreliable quality. If consistent
quality exists, JIT allows firms to reduce all the costs associated with
inventory.
6. Taguchi Concepts. Geniche Taguchi has provided three concepts aimed at
improving both product and process quality.
a. Quality robustness. Products that are consistently built to meet customer
needs inspite of adverse conditions in the production process. Taguchi's
idea is to remove the effects of adverse conditions instead of removing the
causes. He suggests that removing the effects is often cheaper than
removing the causes and more effective in producing a robust product.
b. Quality loss function. This identifies all costs connected with poor quality
and shows how these costs increase as the product moves away from

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being exactly what the customer wants. These costs include not only
customer dissatisfaction but also warranty and service costs, internal
inspection, repair, an scrap costs; and costs that can best be described as
costs to society.
c. Target-oriented quality. A philosophy of continuous improvements to
bring the product exactly on target. I strives to keep the product at
desired specification, producing more (and better) units near the target.
7. Knowledge of TQM Tools
a. Check sheets. Forms designed for recording data.
b. Scatter diagrams. These show the relationship between two
measurements.
c. Cause-and-Effect Diagrams. Also known as lshikawa diagram or fish-bone
chart. This a schematic technique used to discover possible locations of
quality problems.
d. Pareto charts. These are a method of organizing errors, problems, or
defects to help focus on problem-solving efforts. They are based on the
work of Vilfredo Pareto, a nineteenth-century economist. Joseph M. Juran
popularized Pareto's work when he suggested that 80% a firm's problems
are a result of only 20% of the causes.
e. Flow charts. These are block diagrams that graphically describe a process
or system. They are a simple, but great tool for trying to make sense of a
process or explain a process.
f. Histograms or Stem-and-Leaf Plot. These show the range of values of a
measurement and the frequency with which each value occurs. They
show the most frequently occurring readings as well as the variations in
the measurements.
g. Statistical Process Control (SPC). This monitors standards, makes and
takes corrective actions as a product or service is being produced.
Samples o process outputs are examined; if they are within acceptable
limits, the process permitted to continue. If they fall outside certain
specific ranges, the process is stopped and typically, the assignable cause
located and removed. Causes of variations are measurements,
i. Common causes (Chance).
1. Refer to chance variations in a process that are in control.
2. We usually do nothing about them.
3. They are continuously active in the process and are built in
as part of the process.
4. The output of the process with only common causes of
variation is stable over time and is predictable.
ii. Assignable causes (Special).
1. Assignable causes (special) are those we can do something
about.

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2. Because they are not always active in a process, they can be

detected and corrected.
3. When assignable causes are present, the distribution curve
will be distorted loses its normal bell shape.

Control charts are graphic presentations of data over time that show upper and lower
limits for the process we want to control.

TQM IN SERVICE

The personal component of services is more difficult to measure than the quality
of the tangible component. Generally, the user of a service, like the user of a good, has
features in mind that form a basis for comparison among alternatives. Lack of any one
feature may eliminate the service from further consideration. Quality also may be
perceived as a bundle of attributes in which many lesser characteristics are superior to
those of competitors. This approach to product comparison differs little between goods
and services. However, what is very different about the selection of services is the poor
definition of the:

1. intangible differences between products, and

2. the intangible expectations customers have of those products.

Indeed, the intangible attributes may not be defined at all. They are often is
images in the purchaser's mind. This is why all of those marketing issues such as
advertising, image, and promotion can make a difference. The operations manager plays
a significant role in addressing several major aspects of service quality.

1. Tangible component of many services is important.

2. Another aspect of service and service quality is the process.
3. The operations manager should realize that the Customer's expectations are
the standard against which the service is judged. Don't promise more than
you must can deliver.
4. The manager must expect exceptions.

DETERMINANTS OF SERVICE QUALITY

1. Reliability. This involves consistency of performance and dependability. It

means that the firm performs the service right the first time and that the firm
honors its promises.
2. Responsiveness. In concerns the willingness or readiness of employees to
provide service. It involves timeliness of service.
3. Competence means possess ion of the required skills and knowledge to
perform the service.
4. Access involves approachability and east of contact.
5. Courtesy involves politeness, respect, consideration, and friendliness of
contact personnel (including receptionists, telephone operators, etc.).

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6. Communication means keeping Customers informed in language they

understand and listening to them. It may mean that the company has to
adjust its language for different consumers-increasing the level of
sophistication with a well-educated customer and speaking simply and
plainly with a novice.
7. Credibility involves trustworthiness, believability, and honesty. It involves
having the customer's best interest at heart
8. Security is the freedom from danger, risk, or doubt.
9. Understanding/knowing the customer involves making the effort to
understand the Customer's needs.
10. Tangibles include the physical evidence of the service.

PHILOSOPHY AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF TQM LEADERS

1. W. Edwards Deming. He insisted management accept responsibility for

building good systems. The employee cannot produce products that on
average exceed the quality of what the process is capable of producing.
2. Joseph M. Juran. A pioneer in teaching the Japanese how to improve quality,
Juran believes strongly in top-management commitment, support, and
involvement in the quality effort. He is also a believer in teams that
continually seek to raise quality standards. Juran varies from Deming
somewhat in focusing on the customer and defining quality as fitness for use,
not necessarily the written specification.
3. Armand Feigenbaum. His 1961 book, Total Quality Control, laid out 40 steps
to quality improvement processes. He viewed quality not as a set of tools but
as a total field that integrated the processes of a company. His work in how
people learn from each other's successes led to the field of cross-functional
teamwork.
4. Phillip B. Crosby. Quality is free was Crosby's attention-getting book
published in 1979. Crosby believed that the traditional trade-off between the
cost of improving quality and the cost of poor quality, the cost of poor quality
is understated. The cost of poor quality should include all of the things that
are involved in not doing the job right the first time. Crosby coined the term
zero defects and stated, "There is absolutely no reason for having errors or
defects in any product or service"

Evaluation/Assessment

Prepare a documentary report about the key contributions of

Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa and Taguchi as the
pioneering “gurus” of quality. Select one of them that you think has
effective and big contributions to total quality management (TQM).

Note: Post it to our Google classroom classwork.

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