TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT

The tools and techniques for quality management are grouped into three

categories.

1. Tools for Data Collection and Interpretation

i. Customer records

ii. Data on Complaints

iii. Survey data

iv. Benchmarking

v. Transaction data

2. Tools for Planning

i. Quality Function Deployment

ii. Simultaneous (Concurrent ) Engineering

iii. Seven New Management Tools

a) Affinity Diagram

b) Interrelationship diagram

c) Tree diagram

d) Prioritization matrix

e) Matrix diagram

f) Process decision program chart

g) Activity network diagram

3. Tools for Continuous Improvement

i. Checklist

ii. Histogram

iii. Pareto Chart

iv. Cause and Effect diagram

v. Scatter diagram

vi. Control Chart

vii. Flow Chart

TOOLS FOR DATA COLLECTION & INTERPRETATION

1. Customer Records

Customer record of purchase history, warranty claim and credit information

are a valuable source of intelligence. It is important that the organizations has

systems in place to collect information relating to quality of product or service,

and to ensure that it reaches decision makers.

2. Data on Complaints

Complaints are often rich source of ideas for continuous improvement in

products or services. Some organization have found very innovative ways to

capture complaints from customers while they are fresh and current. For

example, British Airways has installed video kiosks in several airports to

receive and record customer comments. Customers with complaints are

encouraged to record them with the assurance that they will be received by

management of the company. This approach has a benefit of capturing the

urgency and emotion attached to complaints, something which is difficult to

capture on surveys or customer response cards filled in later.

3. Survey Data

Survey are used by many companies, especially when exploring new

products and services, or new features for existing products and services.

Quality improvement is the key aspect of any survey system, and question

about quality of products and services should be part of any survey of

customers and potential customers.

Various types of survey are commonly used: mail surveys, telephone surveys,

interviews and focus groups. Each type has its advantages and disadvantages

with respect o reliability and validity of data, with respect to cost and with

respect to the kinds of opinions and attitudes which can be probed.

4. Benchmarking

“Benchmarking is the continuous process of comparing products, services

and practices against the best in that particular activity”

“Benchmarking is the process of continuously searching for new ideas and

innovations in methods, practices, procedures and implementing them to

achieve improvement”

The term “Benchmarking” emerged when the idea took ground in US during

1980’s when Xerox, Ford and Motorola became the pioneers of benchmarking

in USA. Robert Camp, the Logistics engineers who initiated Xerox’s

benchmarking program and who is generally regarded as the guru of

benchmarking movement defines it “ benchmarking is the search for industry’s

best practices that lead to superior performance”.

Benchmarking is not the examination of entire process, it is the process of

examining very narrow activities and determining how other organizations

both within the industry and outside of it, are performing the task.

Benchmarking can be done by looking for the companies who are doing their

businesses extremely well regardless of their size. This can be done by

examining the 1). Internal operations, 2). Competitor’s procedures, 3) methods

used by other companies for example lot of companies benchmark General

Electric as they are the pioneer of Six Sigma.

The Process of Benchmarking

i). Identifying the portion of the process that is to be examined (what to

benchmark)

ii). Determining how the process is measured and what difficulties are being

experienced.

iii). Planning the benchmarking project and resource allocation.

iv). Finding the organization that do the function extremely well i.e. defining

benchmarking partners.

v). Collect data from benchmarking partner and Comparing one’s own

procedures with those whose data is collected.

vi). Making recommendation and implementing the ideas.

Levels of Benchmarking

There are three levels of benchmarking

i. Internal benchmarking (within the company)

ii. Competitive or strategic benchmarking (industry and competitors)

iii. Benchmarking outside the industry.

5. Transaction Data

Organizations have much data regarding transactions with their customers,

and they need to be conscious of the improvement opportunities presented by

these data. Information about frequency and volume of purchases by a

customer over time will possibly signal changes in the customer’s satisfaction

with products. Such patterns must be tracked and monitored.

TOOLS FOR PLANNING

1. Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Quality Function Deployment was developed by Yoji Akao in Japan in 1966.

Yoji Akao’s definition of QFD is

“QFD is a method for developing a design quality aimed at satisfying the

consumer and then translating the consumer’s demands into design targets

and major QA points to be used throughout the production phase”.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) also known as The House of Quality” is

one of the best devices created to tie product and services design decisions

directly to customer wants and needs. QFD is designed to deploy customers

input throughout the design, production, marketing and delievery stages of a

given product or service. In a typical QFD application, a cross functional team

creates and analyses a matrix linking customer wants and needs to a set of

product or service design metrics that the company can then measure and

control. This matrix is sometimes called The House of Quality, leading to the

close identification of the two similarly named tools.

The 3 main goals in implementing QFD are: 1. Prioritize spoken and unspoken customer wants and needs. 2. Translate these needs into technical characteristics and specifications. 3. Build and deliver a quality product or service by focusing everybody toward customer

satisfaction.

Phases of QFD

Comprehensive QFD may involve four phases:

1. Phase 1 -Product Planning: Building the House of Quality, led by the

marketing department, translate customer requirement into product

technical requirements to meet them.

2. Phase 2 – Product Design: This phase 2 is led by the engineering

department, translate technical requirements to key part characteristics

or systems

3. Phase 3 – Process Planning: Process planning comes next and is led by

manufacturing engineering, identify key process operations necessary to

achieve key part characteristics.

4. Phase 4 – Production Planning (Process Control): establish process

control plans, maintenance plans, training plans to control operations.

Linking these phases provides a mechanism to deploy the customer voice through to control of process operations. The House of Quality The first phase in the implementation of the Quality Function Deployment process involves putting together a "House of Quality" also known as production planning matrix or matrix diagram. Its an excellent quality planning tool. It consist of six major building blocks.

Customer requirements (WHAT’S)

Technical requirements (HOW’S)

Interrelationship matrix Technical correlation (roof) matrix Planning matrix Prioritized technical requirements

VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER- CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTS- WHAT’S The steps involved in identifying customer requirements are as follows:

Identify customers

Determine customer requirements/constraints

Prioritize requirements

Put them in house of quality

VOICE OF THE ORGANIZATION- TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS- HOW’S

Once the WHAT’S have been finalized, the QFD team has to identify how these requirements will be met.

HOW’S are the list of what the organization can measure and control in order to ensure that it is able to satisfy the customers requirements.

They have to identify one or more technical requirements which satisfy the customers.

Here again these can be organized as primary secondary or tertiary.

A tree diagram will help in this case.

INTER-RELATIONSHIP MATRIX BETWEEN WHAT’S AND HOW’S

The voice of the customer is arranged in rows and the voice of the organization is arranged in columns.

Process or product characteristics are to be entered in the inter relationship matrix.

There may be different level of relationship between each WHAT and HOW. TECHNICAL CORRELATION MATRIX- inter relationships between HOW’S

Each technical requirement should be compared with every other requirement.

Improving one may lead to Improvement in another Deterioration of another

The relationships between the HOW’S can be further classified as: Strong positive(++) Positive(+) Strong negative(--) Negative(-)

PLANNING MATRIX –CUSTOMER COMPETITIVE ASSESSMENT

Measurement of the current performance of one’s own products against each requirements.

Also known as competitive bench marking.

It involves the following steps: Identify competitors Carry out reverse engineering of the competitors products Finalize common set of customer requirements through bench

marking Measure performance of competitors products or services against

the same customer requirements. Rate competitors products against the same.

PRIORITIZED TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

This is below the inter relationship matrix.

Here the performance of ones own product is measured and that of the same competitors and a trend is plotted.

Again 5 denotes the best performance and one worst. BENEFITS OF QFD Reduces product development time up to 50% Design cycle time shortened by30% to 50% Startup and engineering costs reduce by 20% to 60% Reduce time to market. Focuses the organization on customer needs. Design quality improves. Reduction of quality costs. Enables concurrent engineering. Reduces rework.

2. Concurrent Engineering

A systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products

and related processes, including manufacturing and support. This approach is

intended to cause the developers to consider all elements of the product life

cycle, from concept through delivery, including quality, cost, schedule and user

requirements.

Concurrent Engineering, also called parallel or simultaneous engineering,

is a new philosophy, viewed by most corporations as a means to competitive,

world class manufacturing. It strives to do the right job the first time. It results

from the synthesizing the two fundamental observations which are given

below:

1. The changes become more costly , and these changes are

incorporated in the project later.

2. Performing different steps of a project in parallel, would complete the project more quickly than executing the steps sequentially, one after the another.

Importance of Concurrent Engineering

The goal of Concurrent Engineering is the interactive work of different

disciplines that affect a product to make it better.

1. Minimize the product life cycle - eliminate the redesign

procedure.

2. Decrease production cost - results from the minimization of the

product life cycle.

3. Maximize product quality - By spending more time and money

initially in the design cycle and ensuring that the concept selection

is optimized, the company can increase the prospect of delivering

a quality product to the customer.

4. Team Work - Human Resources are working together for a

common product.

3. Seven New Management Tools

Affinity Diagram

This tool takes large amounts of disorganized data and information and enables one to organize it into groupings based on natural relationships. It was created in the 1960s by Japanese anthropologist Jiro Kawakita.

Interrelationship Diagraph

This tool displays all the interrelated cause-and-effect relationships and factors involved in a complex problem and describes desired outcomes. The process of creating an interrelationship diagraph helps a group analyze the natural links between different aspects of a complex situation.

Tree Diagram

This tool is used to break down broad categories into finer and finer levels of detail. It can map levels of details of tasks that are required to accomplish a goal or task. It can be used to break down broad general subjects into finer and finer levels of detail. Developing the tree diagram helps one move their thinking from generalities to specifics.

Prioritization Matrix

This tool is used to prioritize items and describe them in terms of weighted criteria. It uses a combination of tree and matrix diagramming techniques to do a pair-wise evaluation of items and to narrow down options to the most desired or most effective.

Matrix Diagram

This tool shows the relationship between items. At each intersection a relationship is either absent or present. It then gives information about the relationship, such as its strength, the roles played by various individuals or measurements. Six differently shaped matrices are possible: L, T, Y, X, C, R and roof-shaped, depending on how many groups must be compared.

Process Decision Program Chart (PDPC)

A useful way of planning is to break down tasks into a hierarchy, using a Tree Diagram. The PDPC extends the tree diagram a couple of levels to identify risks and countermeasures for the bottom level tasks. Different shaped boxes are used to highlight risks and identify possible countermeasures (often shown as 'clouds' to indicate their uncertain nature). The PDPC is similar to the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) in that both identify risks, consequences of failure, and contingency actions; the FMEA also rates relative risk levels for each potential failure point.

Activity Network Diagram

This tool is used to plan the appropriate sequence or schedule for a set of tasks and related subtasks. It is used when subtasks must occur in parallel. The diagram enables one to determine the critical path (longest sequence of tasks).

TOOLS FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

1. Check Sheet

A check sheet is a table or a form used to systematically register data as it is collected. Check sheets help organize data by category. They show how many times each particular value occurs, and their information is increasingly helpful as more data are collected. Main applications of a check sheet include registering how often different problems occur and registering the frequency of incidents that are believed to cause problems. REASON WEEK I WEEK II WEEK III Total

Illness III II I 6

Vacation IIII IIII III 11

Family Reasons I II II 5

Total 8 8 6 22

2. Histogram A histogram is a vertical bar chart representing a tabulation of data arranged according to size. It is also known as frequency distribution. This frequency distribution can take a number of shapes. A normal or bell shaped curve indicates that most of the data collected are centered on an average value. A skewed or off-center shape indicates that most data are not centered on an average value.

3. Pareto Chart It is also known as the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of all problem occurrences are due to only 20% of the types of problems encountered. Another variant of this rule states that for any problem, 80% of its occurrences are due to only 20% of all the causes. The Pareto Chart is basically a descending bar graph that shows the frequencies of occurrences or relative sizes of either: 1) the various categories of all problems encountered, in order to determine which of the existing problems occur most frequently; or 2) the various causes of a particular problem, in order to determine which of the causes of a particular problem arise most frequently. The problem categories or causes are shown on the x-axis of the bar graph.

4. Cause and Effect Diagram (Fishbone or Ishikawa diagram)

The cause and effect diagram consist of a long horizontal arrow with a

description of problem. Causes of the problem are depicted as radial lines

from this arrow. Causes for the “causes” are then depicted as horizontal lines

from the radial lines. Additional “causes for the causes” are depicted as

additional radial lines and so forth. The completed diagram looks like a

skeleton and so is also referred to as fishbone diagram.

5. Scatter Diagram

The Scatter Diagram is a tool for determining the potential correlation between two different sets of variables, i.e., how one variable changes with the other variable. This diagram simply plots pairs of corresponding data from two variables, which are usually two variables in a process being studied. The scatter diagram does not determine the exact relationship between the two variables, but it does indicate whether they are correlated or not. It, by itself, also does not predict cause and effect relationships between these variables. The scatter diagram is used to: 1) quickly confirm a hypothesis that two variables are correlated; 2) provide a graphical representation of the strength of the relationship between two variables; and 3) serve as a follow-up step to a cause-effect analysis to establish whether a change in an identified cause can indeed produce a change in its identified effect.

Figure. A Scatter Diagram showing no correlation

6. Control Chart

A control chart shows the variability of a process by plotting sample

measurements of a key characteristic of the product (such as diameter of a

shaft) over time. A control chart includes a central line representing the

average value, and lines representing upper and lower limits. A

manufacturing process is considered under control if the recorded readings

are within the upper and lower control limits on the chart.

7. Flow Chart

A flow chart is a picture or map of a process, showing the steps in

sequence for completion of a operation. Drawing a flow chart is often a useful

tool to assist team members in understanding their role in operation. Using

well developed symbols and tools, a flow chart can depict key relationship,

decision points, resources and responsibilities of members and can play a

powerful role in understanding, communication and diagnosis of problems.

The P.D.C.A Cycle

A fundamental element of total quality management is continuous improvement,

particularly as applied to people, product, processes, services and all related

learning. A quality tool that embodies this concept is the Shewart Cycle Learning

and improvement commonly known as P.D.C.A cycle. Shewart was a prominent

statistician who is considered by many as the “father” of quality control.

The original Shewart Cycle consists of a simple circle or wheel divided into four

quadrants: one for each of Plan, Do, Check and Act. This a way to achieve the

outcomes you desire through a increased quality awareness. The complete cycle

can be used to determine the detail of each quadrant. It is a virtual, never ending

process and is key to achieving transformation.

PLAN: Design or revise business process components to improve results.

what we are going to do. In this step we assess where we are, where we

need to be, why this is important, and plan how to close the gap. Identify

some potential solutions.

DO: Implement the plan and measure its performance on a small scale i.e.

test the solutions.

CHECK/STUDY: Assess the results and report to decision makers.

ACT: Decide on changes needed to improve the process.

Use of the P.D.C/S.A cycle by quality people will simulate learning and continuous

improvement of techniques, processes, services and systems. The decisions and

judgments we make must be supported by facts.

BENEFITS OF P.D.C.A Cycle:

daily routine management-for the individual and/or the team, problem-solving process, project management, continuous development, vendor development, human resources development, new product development, and process trials