Examine The Business Concepts Of Quality Management And Lean Systems

Quality Management and Lean Systems
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Quality Management and Lean Systems
Introduction
Total Quality Management (TQM) and Lean Manufacturing (LM) are management optimization approaches which enclose many ideas. While TQM entails managing quality at every stage of the manufacturing process, including planning and design, inspection and monitoring, LM targets elimination of wasteful resources with an aim of creating value for the customer. Through continuous improvement, TQM aims to increase customer satisfaction by taking a participatory approach. Lean Management comprises of two sets of components. On one hand are the manpower and the internal processes that are organization specific while on the other are external elements that relate to the customers and suppliers.
Quality Management Concepts
TQM’s overall objective is to promote continuous customer satisfaction while at the same time reducing the cost of production. In the wake of growing global competition, both efficiency and effectiveness should be emphasized hence an organization’s productivity must be evaluated from the customer perspective (Hackman & Wageman, 1995). The organization’s top management holds a philosophy that is universally acceptable which then is used together with different tools and systems to facilitate a company culture whose basis is the philosophy.
TQM as a management approach revolves around quality, through the participation of all members with a long term objective of success through customer satisfaction. Quality can therefore be defined as the entirety of characteristics that give a product or service the ability to satisfy its intended needs. Quality has two implications; first, it implies that the product or service is free of deficiencies, and secondly, the characteristics must satisfy the required need. Quality Management entails a set of tools and techniques used to improve comprehensive organization wide performance through a system that incorporates values, collaboration and empowerment. Quality Assurance ensures strict adherence to set processes and laid down procedures and service delivery to reduce defects or variations in production. The Standard Operating Procedures define, guide, assess, monitor and improve the quality of the system. Quality Control entails checks and balances that ensure a review of the end product or service through interviews, surveys, testing and sampling. Quality Audit is an examination of a quality system by auditors as an important element of the ISO standards. Quality Improvement is an approach that aims to reduce waste in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness (Hackman & Wageman, 1995).
Resources must be managed prudently and one reliable tool for evaluating efficiency and effectiveness of financial systems is quality costing. It determines decision making for quality promotion. Costs of quality include failure costs, appraisal and prevention costs. ISO is a set of international standards that guides quality management and quality assurance for international business. ISO requires organizations to document their quality control systems to enable them to identify and correct errors for effective and efficient product or service quality. ISO principles gives a systematic approach to management and encourages continuous improvement, it is also a basis for factual decision making. Quality tools are used to solve problems and improve processes. They are also used for data collection, interpretation and more importantly as a basis for decision making. Quality tools include flow charts, histograms, pareto charts, scatter diagrams, control charts, cause and effect diagrams and run char...