Question 1

Quality Movement in India The quality Movement was consolidated in the 1980s in the Indian industries to bring about a synergy of

resources by the pioneering efforts of confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

Walter Shewart, the father of statistical quality control, visited India for a short period of three months

during 1947-48 and initiated the SQC Movement through visits to factories, personal discussions and

lectures.

Dr.Edward Deming who taught the Japanese the means of applying the Plan-do-Check-Act cycle (known

as Deming Cycle) came to India in the early 1950s. While the Japanese attribute their success to the

learnings from two American Gurus, Dr.Deming and Dr.Juran, the rest of the world was lagging behind

until the 1970s when the effect began to hurt businesses.

The formal launch of TQM movement in US in the early 1980s triggered a movement for quality in India

and in 1982, the quality control circle was born. Some of the companies launching quality control circles

first were public sector undertakings-Bharat Electronics and Bharat Heavy electricals.

A movement also began in Nasik with the umbrella of CII when a small group of companies began to

practice some of the quality circle techniques and showed some results. Later, CII provided a focus and an

impetus to the quality movement by forming the TQM division in 1987. By then the focus has shifted from

quality circles to Quality Management.

The movement on Quality circles was consolidated by the Quality Circles Forum in India (QCFI). Prof.

Ishikawa, founder of quality Movement in Japan was invited by CII to come to India to address the Indian

Industry in 1986. Also, some companies began to set up “Quality Improvement Teams” for setting the path

of continuous improvement. CII organised its first major seminar with Juran in 1987. The mid 80s also

began the process of socio-economic reforms, setting a trend for competition and liberalisation. CII set up

the TQM division with the help of 21 companies who agreed to support the cause by pooling in resources

and pledging to start the journey of TQM. The chief executives of these companies formed the National

Committee on Quality, which brought into focus the need to build awareness and the “Quality Month” was

declared to be an annual event to reinforce the message and spread it wider each year. CII also launched the

first newsletter on Quality.

The year 1987 brought the ISO 9000 standards into reality and visible strategies emerged from the

European market to set a global trend towards standardizing and certifying Quality systems. Since, the

European Market was a big market for Indian industries, CII organised training courses for ISO 9000.

From there onwards, the movement has gathered momentum and today more than 500 companies have

secured ISO 9000 certification. The TQM movement today encompasses not only engineering industries,

but also servicing and information technology industries. Many chief executives and senior management

personnel visited Japan and started serious effort with enthusiasm to become the market leaders. CII

organised domestic study missions to prove the applicability of TQM concepts in India. Sharing

experiences, building each other‟s strengths became essential ingredients towards the Indianisation of the

TQM concepts as accepted universally. CII developed through application research a set of nine modules

for training on TQM.

CII worked with the Government of India to initiate a drive to create an awareness on quality and customer

orientation in State and Central government Departments, financial Institutions and Banks, Indian

Railways, Textile corporations, Leather Institutions and Educational Institutions including IITs and IIMs.

Also, “National Quality Council of India” was promoted and integrated into an overall thrust for a National

Movement. CII organised the launch of a National Quality Campaign in 1992, led by the Prime Minister of

India and the “Quality Summit” organised by CII has now become an annual feature across the country.

The companies practicing TQM have implemented some common features such as “People Movement”

through quality control circles, quality improvement teams, suggestion schemes, Kaizen and JIT), Quality

Assurance Systems (ISO 9000), Vendor Development, Statistical Process Control and other tools and

techniques such as Quality Function Deployment, Reliability and Design of Experiments.

The future thrust of the quality movement in India would be in the following areas:

a) Application Research this requires a depth of the understanding and will be possible through synergy of

industry and academics.

b) Grooming of facilitators through local people being trained as facilitators of TQM/ISO 9000 in every

organization willing to implement TQM

c) ISO 9000 certification for small-scale industries who are exporters or potential exporters.

d) Environmental protection, safety and consumer protection by the industrial organizations through highly

focused effort on quality enhancement.

Question 2

Hoshin Kanri

Overview

Hoshin Kanri is an organising framework for strategic management,

which is concerned with the following four primary tasks.7

_ To provide a focus on corporate direction by setting, annually,

a few strategic priorities;

_ To align the strategic priorities with local plans and programmes;

_ To integrate the strategic priorities with daily management;

_ To provide a structured review of the progress of the strategic

priorities.

QUes 3

To ensure perfect quality, it is necessary to develop inspection and testing methods that re quick and

effective so that all products are subjected to 100 percent inspection and testing. This means that every

product shipped to customer is inspected and tested to determine whether it meets customer specifications.

(i.e., design specification)/ But there are situations where it is either impossible or uneconomical to inspect

and test each and every product, when destructive tests are called for or the quantity to be inspected or

tested is quite large where 100 percent inspection or testing are uneconomical, impractical or impossible. In

such situations, sampling inspection based on acceptance plans is the only sensible basis for inspecting and

testing.

An acceptance plan is the overall scheme for either accepting or rejecting a lot based on information gained

from samples, regarding the quality of the samples inspected. The acceptance plan identifies both the size

and type of samples and the criteria to be used to used to either accept or reject this lot.

Acceptance sampling is most likely to be useful in the following situations:

1. When testing is destructive.

2. When the cost of 100% inspection I extremely high.

3. When 100% inspection is not technological feasible or would require so much calendar time that

production scheduling would be seriously impacted.

4. When there are many items to be inspected and the inspection error rate is sufficiently high that 100%

inspection might cause a higher percentage of defective units to be passed than would occur with the use of

a sampling plan.

5. When the vendor has an excellent quality history, and some reduction in inspection from 100% is

desired, but the vendor‟s process capability is sufficiently low as to make no inspection an unsatisfactory

alternative.

6. When there are potentially serious product liability risks, and although the vendor‟s process is

satisfactory, a program for continuously monitoring the product is necessary.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Acceptance Sampling When acceptance sampling is contrasted with 100% inspection, it has the following advantages:

1. It is usually less expensive because there is less inspection.

2. There is less handling of the product, hence reduced damage.

3. It is applicable to destructive testing

4. Fewer personnel are involved

5. It often greatly reduces the amount of inspection error.

6. The rejection of entire lots as opposed to the simple return of defectives often provides a stronger

motivation to the vendor for quality improvements.

Acceptance sampling also has several disadvantages, however. These include the following:

1. There are risks of accepting “bad” lots and rejecting “good” lots.

2. Less information usually generated about the product or about the process that manufactured the product

3. Acceptance samples require planning and documentation of the acceptance sapling procedure whereas

100% inspection does not.

Description with example: one product –ref IS for sampling

Ques 4

Quality Improvement is a formal approach to the analysis of performance and systematic efforts to improve

it. There are numerous models used. Some commonly discussed include:

• FADE

There are 4 broad steps to the FADE QI model:

FOCUS: Define and verify the process to be improved

ANALYZE: Collect and analyze data to establish baselines, identify root causes and point toward possible

solutions

DEVELOP: Based on the data, develop action plans for improvement, including implementation,

communication, and measuring/monitoring

EXECUTE: Implement the action plans, on a pilot basis as indicated, and

EVALUATE: Install an ongoing measuring/monitoring (process control) system to ensure success.

• PDCA

PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative four-step management method used

in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products. It is also known as

the Deming circle/cycle/wheel, Shewhart cycle, control circle/cycle, or plan–do–study–act (PDSA)

PLAN

Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected

output (the target or goals). By establishing output expectations, the completeness and accuracy of

the spec is also a part of the targeted improvement. When possible start on a small scale to test

possible effects.

DO

Implement the plan, execute the process, make the product. Collect data for charting and analysis in

the following "CHECK" and "ACT" steps.

CHECK

Study the actual results (measured and collected in "DO" above) and compare against the expected

results (targets or goals from the "PLAN") to ascertain any differences. Look for deviation in

implementation from the plan and also look for the appropriateness and completeness of the plan to

enable the execution, i.e., "Do". Charting data can make this much easier to see trends over several

PDCA cycles and in order to convert the collected data into information. Information is what you

need for the next step "ACT".

ACT

Request corrective actions on significant differences between actual and planned results. Analyze

the differences to determine their root causes. Determine where to apply changes that will include

improvement of the process or product. When a pass through these four steps does not result in the

need to improve, the scope to which PDCA is applied may be refined to plan and improve with

more detail in the next iteration of the cycle, or attention needs to be placed in a different stage of

the process.

• Six Sigma (DMAIC)

Six Sigma is another model for improvement. The term comes from the use in statistics of the Greek Letter

(sigma) to denote Standard Deviation from the mean. 6 sigma is equivalent to 3.4 defects or errors per

million.

Six Sigma is a measurement-based strategy for process improvement and problem reduction completed

through the application of improvement projects. This is accomplished through the use of two Six Sigma

models: DMAIC and DMADV.

DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) is an improvement system for existing processes

falling below specification and looking for incremental improvement.

• Define: The process is selected for improvement and the project charter is specified.

Measure: Quality variables valued by the customer are measured and goals are set for improvement.

• Analyze: The root causes of the current defect levels are identified and alternatives are considered for

process changes.

• Improve: The process is changed and checked for improvement.

• Control: This step insures that the process improvement is not lost over time.

DMADV (define, measure, analyze, design, verify) is an improvement system used to develop new

processor products at Six Sigma quality levels.

The following table gives the comparison of the models

FADE PDSA DMAIC DMADV

Focus Define Define

Analyze Measure, Analyze Measure, Analyze

Develop Plan Design

Execute Do Improve

Evaluate Study Control Verify

Act

• CQI: Continuous Quality Improvement

• TQM: Total Quality Management

Ques 5

Quality Function Deployment (sometimes called the House of Quality). is another of those strangely named

methods that are literal translations of Japanese. In the product development process there is a sequence of

transformations, such as requirements to specification, specification to design, design to fabrication,

specification to tests, etc. It is easy for the customer requirements to become lost in these chains. Quality

Function Deployment (or QFD) addresses this problem by using a matrix at each transformation point to

map forwards what is often called the 'voice of the customer'.

The first matrix used typically maps customer needs (the 'what') to the function or process that provides the

need (the 'how'). Correlation between the 'how's adds a 'roof' to the matrix, which leads to the sometimes-

used name of the 'House of Quality'.

House of Quality Elements 1. Voice of the customer or Customer requirement list and relative prioritization (a What list)

• What do our customers need and want?

2. Competitive Analysis: Customer preference chart used to assess relative competitiveness

• In terms of our customers, how well are we doing relative to our competitors?

3. Voice of Engineer: Technical characteristic list or design characteristics (a How list)

• What technical measures relate to our customer‟s needs?

4. Relationship Matrix: Customer requirements-Technical characteristics interrelationships

• What are the relationships between the voice of the customer and voice of the engineer?

5. Trade-off Matrix or Technical characteristic interrelation matrix or correlation matrix (roof)

• What are the potential trade-offs

6. Technical Comparison: Technical and cost assessment used to allocate resource on elements (Target

values)

• How does our product or service performance compare to that of our competition?

The six steps mentioned above are described in detail in the following paragraphs.

Step 1: Identify customer requirements: The voice of the customer is the primary input to the QFD

process. The most difficult step of the process is to capture the essence of the customer's comments. The

customer's own words are vitally important in preventing misrepresentation by designers and engineers.

Listening to customers can open the door to creative opportunities.

Step 2: Identify product requirements (technical) necessary to meet the customer's requirements:

Product requirements are design characteristics that describe their requirements as expressed in the

language of the designer and engineer. They must be measurable, since the output is controlled and

compared to objective targets. Eventually, technical requirements are the "hows" by which the company

will respond to the "whats" - customer requirements. The roof of the House of Quality shows the inter-

relationships between any pair of technical requirements. Various symbols denote these relationships. For

example, the symbol ® denote a very strong relationship, O for a strong relationship and A to denote a

weak relationship. These relationships indicate answers to questions such as "How does one change of

product attributes affect others?" and assessment of trade-offs between attributes.

Step 3: Develop a relationship matrix between the customer requirements and the technical

requirements: Customer requirements are listed down left column, technical requirements are written

across the top. In the matrix itself, symbols indicate the degree of relationship in a manner similar to that

used in the roof of the House of Quality. The purpose of the relationship matrix is to show whether the

final technical requirements (receives a low evaluation on all competitor‟s) adequately

address customer requirements. This assessment is usually based on expert experience, customer responses

or controlled experiments.

Step 4: Add market evaluation and key selling points: This step identifies importance ratings for each

customer requirement and evaluates existing products for each of them. Customer importance ratings

represent the areas of greatest interest and highest expectations as expressed by the customer. Competitive

evaluation highlights the absolute strengths and weaknesses in competing products. By using this step,

designers can discover opportunities for improvement. It also links QFD to a company's strategic vision

and indicates priorities for the design process. For example, if a customer requirement receives a low

evaluation on all competitor's products, then by focusing on this need a company can gain a competitive

advantage. Such requirements become key selling points and the basis for formulating promotion

strategies.

Step 5: Evaluate technical requirements of competitive products and develop targets: This step is

usually accomplished through in-house testing and then translated into measurable terms. In-house

evaluations are composed with the competitive evaluation of customer requirements to determine

inconsistencies between customer requirements and technical requirements. If a competing product is

found to best satisfy a customer requirement but the evaluation of the related technical requirements

indicate otherwise, then either the measures used are faulty or else the product has an image difference

(either positive towards the competitor or negative towards the company product), which affects customer

perceptions. On the basis of customer's importance ratings and

Step 6: Select technical requirements to be deployed in the remainder of the process: The technical

requirements that have a strong relationship to customer needs, have poor competitive performance, or are

strong selling points are identified during this step. These characteristics have the highest priority and need

to be "deployed" throughout the remainder of the design and production process to maintain responsiveness

to the voice of the customer. Those characteristics not identified as critical do not need such rigorous

attention.

Ques 7

The following are the major reasons for the failure of TQM:

• TQM approaches must be customized to each company. Many a time it so happens that companies buy

solutions off the shelf, often sold by consultants.

• Managers sometimes become impatient with a short-time focus, they will not understand the importance

of long-term gains. Lack of this leads to implementation failure in several organizations.

• Managers may focus too much on tools and techniques and may not properly understand how to

transform themselves, their employees and the organization.

• Managers use TQM as „quick fix‟ to solve a variety of problems. These actions may be shortsighted and

the manager may become frustrated when there is no quick achievement. This may lead the programme to

be abandoned and all the efforts may be wasted.

• Culture plays an important role in the transformation. Inability to change the culture leads to failure of the

TQM programme.

• Lack of discipline requires transforming.

Issues of strategic concern to be addressed along with the issues related to the „quality of work life‟ for

employees. If the TQM efforts are mis-focussed and limited, it leads to failure.

• Inability to maintain momentum for the transportation.

• The advantages with TQM are that it will require its managers to concentrate immensely on internal

processes of the company. But a major drawback in that if managers concentrate too much on internal

processes, the external processes like keeping in touch with shifting perceptions and preferences of

customers will be ignored and the company is bound to take beating.

• In a lot of cases managers fail to understand the angles of relationship with suppliers and customers.

Mutual trust and support is the key to success.

• Achieving certifications like ISO 9001-2000 or ISO 14000 or QS 9000 or any other awards is not the end

to TQM but a beginning in the journey of quality. Managers often they have achieved quality by

certification or awards.

• Quality should be understood in the same spirit and language both by the management and the employees,

otherwise implementation becomes difficult.

Ques 8 WHAT IS ISO 9000?

After the Second World War pressure for quality came from the military. As a result, 05 series of Ministry

of Defence (MoD) quality standards and the Allied Quality Assurance Publication (AQAP) series of

NATO standards were developed in USA and Europe respectively. Major companies in the automotive

industry began to establish their own quality system standards and assess their suppliers. In order to control

the increase of different types of quality system standards and to reduce the multiple standards into the

BS5750 series (Part 1, 2 and 3: 1979) the ISO 9000 series of quality management and assurance standards

has been developed by a technical committee (TC 176) working under the International Organisation for

Standardisation (ISO) in Geneva. In 1987, the ISO adopted BS5750 as a full international standard, the ISO

9000 series, and as a European standard, the EN 29000 series.

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