Planning for Quality

25 June - 8 July 1990 | Source: Business India
0 3 0.0/5

A total quality approach will be a prerequisite for the survival of most Indian companies by the year 2000.  Many companies will have reached levels of efficiency and quality unimagined till now.  Others will be scrambling to keep up.  Total quality will play a vital role in attaining leadership in the domestic and the international environment.  The situation will be further aggravated by the increasing tendency of countries to group together for trading purposes, to the detriment of other countries.

The total approach towards managing for quality includes: quality planning, quality control and quality improvement.  Indeed, all the three are important.  While quality planning deals with long term strategies, the other two focus on immediate problems.  The question raised by many managers is whether all three processes can work in tandem in an organization.  The answer is a conditional yes.  Conditional on top management taking the initiative and setting the goals for quality improvement.

Interrelated
In fact, all the three processes are interrelated.  This linkage has been described by the plight of the fabled manager who was up to his waist in alligators (problems).  Underlying this analogy each live alligator is a potential quality improvement project.  And each completed improvement project is a dead alligator.  If our fabled manager succeeds in exterminating all the alligators, quality improvement would be complete - for the moment.  However, the manager will not be finished with alligators because there will always be new alligators.  This is because the planning process remains unchanged.

In effect, the quality planning process is a dual hatchery.  A benign hatchery produces new useful quality plans, while a malignant hatchery produces new alligators.  Quality improvement can take care of existing alligators one by one.  However, to stop the production of new alligators requires shutting down the malignant hatchery.  This would help in curbing the problem at its very source.

Therefore, planning for quality is a long process that requires fundamental changes in the operations of the company - the damage done by deficient quality planning has far reaching consequences.  It results in lack of competitiveness which translates into reduced sales and income.  Another negative outcome is the cost of poor quality which will arise due to reworking.

One of the essential elements in planning for quality is product development.  Many companies suffer from an “over-the-wall” syndrome of product development.  That is, marketing hands the specifications of a product to engineering, which after completing the design throws it “over the wall” to manufacturing, which is responsible for putting the product together.  Perkin-Elmer, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of analytical instruments, suffered from this drawback.

Poor quality
Obviously, this technique of product development was very inefficient and in the process was producing costly, poor quality products.  In order to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive market the company decided to optimize its product development process.  By identifying the needs of its customers, many flaws in the old development process came to light.  These flaws were the direct result of unstated needs not being met, which in turn led to unacceptable low levels of quality in the finished products.

Caterpillar Inc of America, the giant earth moving equipment company, is a dominant force in that particular market segment.  However, success led to complacency and this in turn resulted in falling market share and profitability.  To head off competition, especially from Japan, the company decided on a total quality strategy which began with understanding customer needs and developing products to satisfy them.  With the systems that were set in motion, they found that they were responding to customer needs in about half the time taken earlier.  This and other improvements had a very positive impact on the operations of the company.

Therefore, providing product features, that meet customer needs, is very important.  If “Made in India” has to become world class, Indian manufacturers will have to address the issue of product development.  The Japanese are the acknowledged experts in the field and Indian companies that have collaborated with the Japanese have benefited because they were compelled to adopt this approach as a strategy.  Perfect Machine Tools, a small private company has done exceedingly well on the export front because it laid great emphasis on product development.  Swaraj Mazda on the other hand benefited from their Japanese collaborators by implementing what they learnt about product development in their other group companies.

Competitive edge
Timely delivery is another route to securing a competitive edge.  It’s not sufficient any more just to have an efficient organization; it’s also important to be effective.  The garment industry is a typical case of being efficient but not effective.  Delivery time schedules are seldom met.  And in an industry where the shelf life of a product is seasonal (mainly abroad) it is critical to be effective (timely delivery).

Processes should be developed to achieve product goals.  This assures minimum wasteful activities in manufacturing.  But do we have ownership of processes?  The absence of this generates functional inefficiency and creates an environment where the buck keeps passing endlessly.  A case in point is the famous McDonald’s hamburger.  Every aspect of the process of making a simple hamburger is so meticulously planned that the quality of the product is the same, irrespective of the city in which it is produced and sold - be it Philadelphia, Moscow or Singapore.

CREDITS: Suresh Lulla, Founder & Mentor, Qimpro Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
Rate this Article:

Comments

Post your comment