In the modern world, businesses and individuals need to optimize their efforts to gain effectiveness and efficiency. Also, concepts of sustainability, continuous improvement, and processes that ensure increased value are considered to track operations management towards success.
Many of the terms of quality management and lean systems come from Japanese culture and language, due to Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s research occurring in Japan. Deming is often referred to as The Father of Quality due to his foundational role in the establishment of Quality Management.
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Examine the business concepts of quality management and lean systems:
- Quality Management
- Dimensions of Quality
- Cost of Quality
- Six Sigma
- ISO
- Quality tools
- Lean Systems
- JIT
- Lean Production
- Kanban
- Kaizen
- Poka-yoke
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Unit 2 – MT435:Operations Management
Then, select one concept from each of the lists above and compose your paper to include:
- One aspect of quality management
- One aspect of lean systems
Also, close your paper with the following observations from your research:
- the importance of Deming’s research to the foundation of quality, and what you could do now, to implement the concepts you selected, to your own life and work.
Edwards Deming and Quality Management Concepts – Sample Paper
Presently, many organizations are keen on TQM (Total Quality Management), which is an approach focusing on lasting organizational success via customer contentment (Logothetis, 1992). The early development of the approach is attributed to management experts like Edward Deming. Deming’s teachings brought about a significant shift in how American consumers and manufacturers approached quality-related matters (Deming, 1986). Generally, the teachings saw marked enhancement of product quality and popular customer contentment. In this paper, one of the quality management concepts that he helped develop, ISO standards, explored. As well, one of the lean systems concepts that he helped develop, Kanban, is discussed.
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Quality Management
ISO
ISO is an autonomous membership association, or organization, that operates free of government influence. It develops voluntary global standards regarding product quality. Presently, the organization has a membership of 163 nation-states. Each of its members is deemed to be the national implementer of standards within its jurisdiction. The ISO standards appear to have been informed by Deming’s call, or first principle, for the creation of reliability of rationale towards enhancement of services, as well as products, to ensure that their producers and providers remain competitive, profitable, and capable of providing jobs (Yates & Murphy, 2010).
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ISO standards provide first-rate specifications for services, systems, and products, ensuring efficiency, quality as well as safety. The standards are essential in the facilitation of global trade. To date, ISO has formulated over 19,500 standards relevant to almost all industries. In his first point, Deming called for a standards regime to ensure that organizations attain steadiness, or constancy, of purpose. ISO standards are geared towards making certain that organizations attain the steadiness as regards quality. Notably, one of the themes commonly utilized by Deming was that of constancy, or steadiness, of purpose (Deming, 1986). As a term, constancy refers to a quality, or condition, of having an unyielding affection, purpose, or mind.
ISO standards make certain that organizations steadfastly hold on to the preset quality standards as regards their services, systems, and products. That ensures that the services, systems, and products are of the recommended quality and are reliable as well as safe. As well, the standards assist organizations to enhance own productivity while reducing waste and errors (Yates & Murphy, 2010).Organizations that adopt the standards are instilled with steadfastness of purpose anchored on appreciating the quality contexts in which they operate and appraising the attendant threats.
Lean Systems
Kanban
The foundations of Kanban are in systems thinking approaches, especially the PSK (Profound Knowledge System) put forth by Deming. One of the well-known principles associated with Deming is that organizations should hold people in high esteem, respect them. Further, the principle has it that organizations ought to employ systems thinking in enhancing people’s working environments. He propounded that organizations should allow own people to facilitate the environments’ improvement since they are acutely aware of the required changes (Bendell, 1991).
Kanban is largely considered to be a pathway for organizations along with teams to reflect on their work, make out and get rid of extant bottlenecks, as well as attain operational enhancements, as regards their product quality and throughput. As a method, organizations adopt it to make certain that they improve product quality and throughput, and functions, gradually. They employ the method in enhancing functions such as software development, staffing, sales, recruitment, procurement, and marketing (Drummond, 1992). As regards the functions, organizations register lessened lead times, enhanced product quality, and enhanced throughput.
Conclusion
The research studies executed by Deming were of marked significance in laying the foundations of TQM and quality management in general. He offered businesses guidelines to help them plan, as well as persistently enhance, the quality of their services, systems, and products. The guidelines as well offered businesses and other organizations theoretical bases for planning, as well as persistently enhancing, the quality of their processes along with relationships (Deming, 1986). The studies continue to encourage organizations to ensure that the quality agrees with priory stated, or preset, characteristics, forms, or facts. Owing to the studies, TQM is now deemed caring as a management philosophy.
In an organizational context, there are predetermined ways via which one can employ the concepts of ISO and Kanban. To apply a given ISO standard in an organization, the organization’s management should make a proposal to the local ISO committee. The committee prepares the organization by outlining the quality standards it should meet as regards its services, systems, and products. The process then goes through the committee phase and enquiry phase before the approval of the organization to claim the standard. Lastly, the conferment of the organization with the standard is published.
To apply Kanban in a given work, one should start by visualizing the work as a series of smaller, well-defined tasks. The tasks should be viewed as constituting a workflow. Once any of the tasks is done, it exits the workflow. Limits should be put in place to ensure that the tasks flow seamlessly. Successive teams should pull the tasks at the opportune times rather than pushing them. Lastly, the flow and performance of the tasks should be monitored using a CFC (Cumulative Flow Chart).
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