Table of Contents >
Part K. Maintaining Quality and Rewarding Accomplishments... >
Chapter 40. Maintaining Quality Performance >
Section 1. Achieving and Maintaining Quality Performance >
Main Section - Introduction, what, why, when, who, and how. >
Achieving and Maintaining Quality Performance | |
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Main Section |
Contributed by Phil Rabinowitz and Marcelo Vilela Edited by Kate Nagy and Bill Berkowitz |
Why is quality important to you?
What are the basic principles of TQM?
What is TQM and its relevance to your organization?
How do you achieve quality performance, using TQM and other principles?
How do you maintaining quality performance?
In 1947, W. Edwards Deming, who had been influential in helping American industry astonish the world with the speed and quality of its production of ships, planes, vehicles, and other military equipment during World War II, went to Japan. The Japanese economy had been destroyed by the war, and the U.S. State Department had asked Deming, as a consultant, to help get the country back on its feet. He worked for several years with Japanese industry, teaching principles of quality-based management that he had taught for years in the U.S. The Japanese apparently listened more carefully than the Americans, and were able to generate and maintain extraordinary economic growth for more than forty years, based on the high quality and relatively low prices of their cars, electronic equipment, and other consumer goods. Today, Deming -- who died recently in his mid-90s, vigorous and continuing to work till the last -- is revered as the father of the modern Japanese economy.
The management principles Deming developed were based on quality: the development of a flexible, dynamic system which involved everyone in a company in the production of goods that exactly met the customer's needs, did precisely what they were supposed to do as effectively as possible every time at the best possible price, and were constantly being improved. His ideas are often referred to as Total Quality Management (TQM), and they have led to a number of similar theories of management and numerous innovations in businesses around the world. In the United States, such companies as Ford and IBM have adopted Deming's principles, at least in part, and have often experienced improvements in their customer satisfaction, sales, and profits as a result.
Although they were intended for business, you can use some of the principles of TQM to bring quality performance to your organization as well. Many of Deming's ideas, combined with common sense and your understanding of your issue and your target population, can help you accomplish your goals and achieve quality performance.
At the same time, not all of the elements of TQM are necessarily right for grass roots or community-based organizations. This section will help you sort out what you can use, what might be less helpful for you, and how to apply some of Deming's ideas in a non-business situation.
Why is quality important for you?
The idea of quality relates to your organization or initiative as much as it does to business. You want to deliver high-quality services or information, too, although your bottom line is probably not profit, but rather social change or an improvement in the quality of people's lives. Exactly what does quality mean in the context of advocacy, community development, health, or human service organizations or initiatives? A quality program
- Responds as effectively as possible to the needs it was designed to meet.
- Is totally consistent with the mission and philosophy of the organization or group carrying it out.
- Is sensitive to the needs and culture of the target population.
- Is a model of ethical behavior.
But why is quality important for your organization or initiative? For a business, it should mean more profit and growth, or at least a more secure future. What does it mean for a grass roots organization?
1. Quality makes a group more effective at meeting the needs it's concerned with. The more quality-oriented the program, the more clearly it will be focused, and the better it will actually work.
2. Quality adds strength and credibility to your organization or initiative. Regardless of what people think of you, they can't accuse you of not doing your job.
3. Ethically, you're bound to provide the absolute best quality of service or advocacy you can. You owe that to your cause and to yourself, the target population, the community, funders, supporters, and others who believe in or can benefit from what you're doing.
4. Quality is always more economical in the long run. If you do the right job, and do it right the first time, you save time and resources. In the case of health and human service programs and initiatives, there may be major cost savings to the society at large.
5. Developing a "culture of quality" can have a number of positive effects on your organization itself:
- If staff members and volunteers know that they and the organization are doing the best job possible, it builds their morale and makes them proud of themselves and the organization.
- Striving for quality helps to develop organizational and individual competence, thus continually improving the organization.
- A quality program continually increases its performance level and improves its service delivery. This gives your organization credibility and ultimately benefits your target audience.
- Building in an ongoing commitment to quality and improvement and a process for achieving them assures that your program will always be known as one that delivers the goods.
What are the basic principles of TQM?
(Much of the following discussion is based on material contained in Introduction to Total Quality: Quality Management for Production, Processing, and Services, 2nd Edition. Full source citation can be found in Resources section.)
There are some basic assumptions that underlie the idea of TQM and all of Deming's thinking. These assumptions lead to some formulas that Deming used to help people understand how to apply TQM philosophy to business situations. In this section, we'll look at some of those basic assumptions that might relate to your organization or initiative, and then at one of Deming's formulas, which we'll explore in depth later on.
Some key elements of total quality, as it relates to grass roots and community -based organizations:
Customer Focus: Everything a business or organization does should have the needs and desires of the customer as its starting point. The customers Deming was talking about were the people and organizations that were interested in buying the product or service a business was offering. In your work, the customer is the target population or the community that will benefit from what you are offering or doing. What are the real needs to which you are responding? How can you meet those needs effectively, appropriately, and with respect for the people you're intending to serve?
Obsession with Quality: Quality has to be something that's considered from the very beginning and built into everything a business or organization does. Planning carefully, monitoring your work, and constant reevaluation and adjustment are all extremely important. In business terms, you don't ensure quality by catching mistakes before they reach the customer; you ensure it by setting up a system in which you don't make the mistakes to begin with. Everyone in the organization must understand and adopt this point of view if the idea of quality performance is to be part of what the organization is.
An example from business: One of the reasons Japanese car manufacturers gained a reputation for reliability was the standards they set for their suppliers. Most American car companies had a range of tolerance for the sizes of parts: a particular piece could be within, say four or five thousandths of an inch either way from its ideal size. Thus, two examples of the same part might differ in size by as much as one percent. Japanese car makers set no tolerance: a piece had to be exactly the size it was meant to be, or it was rejected. Suppliers quickly learned to make all the pieces exactly the same size; as a result, there was less friction between parts, and cars lasted longer and ran better.
Continual Improvement of Systems: The work of an organization must be viewed as a process that is never finished. Any system or program can always be improved, and any system or program must be changed as the needs of the community or the target population change. Everyone in an organization needs to be committed to constant reexamination of their work, and continuous effort to make it more effective.
Unity of Purpose: In order for quality to be achieved, everyone in an organization or business has to work together toward common goals. That means mutual support throughout the organization, not turf battles (see Chapter 46, Section 6: Sharing Positions and Other Resources, for more on this concept), not jealousy, not unnecessary competition. All interactions among people in the organization should be mutually helpful and aimed at achieving the best possible performance of the organization as a whole.
Teamwork: "Many hands make light work," says an old proverb. By the same token, many minds are better than one at problem-solving and program design. Working in teams, rather than individually, people both make better connections with their colleagues and the organization, and create better results. Teamwork, on the one hand, removes performance pressure from the individual, and on the other, usually coaxes better performance from everyone. And it's generally a whole lot more enjoyable than working in isolation, which is often the fate of those in health and human services.
Employee Involvement: If everyone in an organization is to be committed to quality performance, then all staff members should have the ability to contribute to its achievement, at least in their own spheres. That means that people must have enough control over their own jobs to do them effectively, and that everyone's opinions and ideas must be respected and taken seriously -- especially since most people know their own jobs better than others in the organization do, and often have great ideas about how to improve those jobs. In the many grass roots and community-based organizations that operate either as collaboratives or as democratic organizations, employee involvement is probably already a fact.
Another business analogy: A steel mill in Texas encouraged promotion and innovation from within. A foreman, who had begun as a custodian, read in a trade publication about a Japanese machine that he thought could save the mill a lot of money. He went to the company president with his idea, and the president sent him and an engineer to Japan to look at the machine in action and make a recommendation. On the strength of the foreman's opinion, the company bought the machine, and saved several million dollars in the first year alone. Because the mill's policy of employee involvement had assumed the custodian's ability to become, eventually, a foreman, and had trusted that the foreman knew much more about his job than the president did, the whole company benefited.
Education and Training: Quality can't be achieved without constant learning on the part of everyone in an organization. And that learning needs to be part of the organizational culture. Not only should staff members be learning from others in the organization, but they should also be encouraged -- and sponsored -- to take courses, to attend organization-sponsored trainings and workshops, to visit other organizations, etc., to continually learn more about their work, and to get new ideas and perspectives on it. Part of the process of achieving and maintaining quality performance for the organization is maintaining, through constant education, the quality of each staff member's ability to do her job.
Scientific Approach: While attention to the process and to encouraging staff to give their best are important, it is also important to take an approach that's apt to work. For a business, that means developing products or services based on the best designs that engineering, chemistry, economics, etc. can produce. For grass roots and community-based organizations, it means using the best research available, as well as the experience of others, to construct an effective program or initiative. That approach is much more likely to result in success and high quality than relying only on intuition or on what seems politically correct.
The founders of a Massachusetts community-based adult literacy program, with backgrounds in both developmental psychology and reading theory, based their program on the best available research in both areas. They made sure that the educational and support elements of the program fit together properly, and trained staff with that in mind. Initially, since it was doing something that hadn't been done with adults before, the program was severely criticized by others in the field. The founders were accused of cheating their students by not using a strict, phonics-based approach to reading, and by paying too much attention to other matters -- students' concerns, community issues, etc. As time went on, however, and the program's drop-out rate remained extremely low and its students' success rate extremely high, others began experimenting with similar ideas. The program, 15 years later, is a model for the state, but it keeps changing, responding both to student needs and feedback and to new research findings.
Long-Term Commitment: The best work in the world is ultimately useless if it's not maintained. A Mercedes or a Porsche will quickly stop running if its oil isn't changed and it isn't otherwise regularly serviced. In the same way, a business or a program or initiative will cease to function if it's not continually attended to and maintained. Quality is a long-term concept: you have to keep striving for its improvement, even after you've achieved an acceptable level of performance. "Acceptable" is never good enough. In fact, you're never really at an endpoint, because the level you're trying to reach is "the best that can possibly be."
The assumptions above underlie the "Deming Cycle," which is really a process for creating and selling a quality product. We'll revisit the Deming Cycle later to examine how it can be used in an advocacy, community development, health, or human service context.
The Deming Cycle
1. PLAN. Conduct consumer research and use it for planning the product.
2. DO. Produce the product.
3. CHECK. Check the product to make sure it was produced in accordance with the plan.
4. ACT. Market the product.
5. ANALYZE. Analyze how the product is received in the marketplace in terms of quality, cost, and other data.
What is TQM and its relevance to your organization?
When W. Edwards Deming came up with the principles of TQM, he meant them to be applied to competitive, for-profit businesses. As a result, while some aspects of TQM are totally relevant to organizations and initiatives concerned with advocacy, community development, health, and human services, others may be contrary to the goals of those organizations. It's important to realize which are which, and to take what's useful from TQM without necessarily buying the whole package.
If you think about it, it seems obvious that some elements of TQM would work toward quality in any environment, from a survival center to an international corporation. These include...
- The need for careful planning, monitoring, evaluation, and adjustment
- Teamwork and the empowerment of all in the organization
- Constant education and training for all staff
- Attention to the needs of the target population (Deming's "customers") and to the results for them
- Identifying and changing what doesn't work well
- Encouraging and rewarding, rather than discouraging, new ideas
- Developing an organization-wide culture of quality
- Keeping at it over the long term
Some elements which may not work toward quality for your organization or initiative, however, are those which assume that the goal is the success of a business.
- The emphasis on products and production, which is often implied in TQM thinking, may work to take the focus off the human needs and consequences your organization is concerned with.
- That same emphasis often stresses measurable outcomes (number of units produced, percentage of sales goals met) rather than human factors (self-esteem, increased learning capacity, motivation, developmental progress), which are rarely exact and analyzable in a mathematical way.
- The principle of "scientific approach" can make it seem that the use of appropriate methods or techniques overshadows the people those methods are meant to benefit, or the needs they are meant to meet. While the use of research can be very helpful, it is important that using the latest techniques or knowledge not become the goal in itself.
- The assumption of a hierarchical structure where those in authority "let " others have a say in the achievement of quality, and where leadership always comes from the top, may conflict with the way your organization operates.
A key element of TQM not discussed earlier is "Freedom Through Control," which implies that employees can only operate independently in a very tightly controlled system, and that there need to be strict boundaries to their freedom if the system is to run well. In a grass roots organization geared toward empowerment, such an assumption about staff can poison the atmosphere and work against both employee involvement and quality performance.
- The definition of everyone as either a supplier or a consumer/customer may provide the wrong metaphors for grass roots work where everyone is, on some level, a participant.
When empowerment is the goal, rather than a means of reaching the goal, and when the effects on people are far more important than the production of a "product," it's important to keep in mind which TQM principles support the aims of the organization, and which serve to work against them.
How do you achieve quality performance, using TQM and other principles?
Remember the Deming Cycle, the process for producing and marketing a successful product? It's called a cycle because that's what it is: a repeating process that, ideally, produces higher quality each time it repeats. Using the Deming Cycle, while keeping some of the basic TQM principles in mind, can help you design, deliver, refine, and maintain an effective program or initiative. Let's take a look at how the Deming Cycle can be applied to your organization.
The Deming Cycle as a tool for achieving quality performance
1. PLAN. Conduct consumer research and use it for planning the product.
The "product" here is the actual program or initiative you intend to conduct, and the "consumer research" is an examination of actual needs that involves the target population, the community, and others who will be affected. Thus, the "Plan" part of the cycle might include the following:
- Conducting a needs assessment, involving everyone concerned.
- Deciding what the desirable outcomes are, from the perspectives of the target population, the organization, and the larger community and social change.
- Determining ways to reach those outcomes that are feasible, consistent with the guiding principles of the organization, inclusive (respectful of all and beneficial to as many people and groups as possible), and consistent with the needs and culture of the target population.
- Developing indicators to show when you have reached either outcomes themselves or significant points on the way to reaching those outcomes.
- Inviting all stakeholders to participate in the development of the plan.
(See The Community Tool Box, Chapter 3: Assessing Community Needs and Resources and Chapter 8: Developing a Strategic Plan.)
2. DO. Produce the product.
The "production" part of the process is the actual design of the program, outreach effort, treatment strategy, etc. that will meet the need determined in the "Plan" part of the cycle, and be consistent with the plan you've made. Much of the actual work here depends not only on TQM principles (teamwork, employee involvement, scientific approach, obsession with quality, and customer focus), but also on common sense and organizing principles. The following are important elements of designing an effective program:
- Finding out what has already been tried in the community, and how well it worked
- Discovering whether there's any leftover bad feeling attached to certain methods or approaches -- or people -- which may resurface if they're proposed again.
- Using as examples other communities that have successfully mounted similar programs or initiatives, while remaining aware that not everything that works in one place will work in another.
- Consulting the research to see what has worked in this situation.
- Involving all stakeholders in the development of the program or initiative, especially -- if they've been hired or recruited yet -- the people who will do the actual work
- Taking care of the logistics: a place to operate, equipment and supplies, the proper staff and/or volunteers on board, etc.
Logistics raises the issue of lead time, the amount of time you have to prepare before actually starting something. There are two important things to remember about lead time:
1. It is absolutely necessary that enough lead time be built in to the process so that everything is in place when you're ready to start.
2. It is absolutely impossible to build enough lead time into the process so that everything is in place when you're ready to start.
Build in as much lead time as you can, then set yourself a deadline and stick to it. At some point, you just have to bite the bullet and begin.
3. CHECK. Check the product to make sure it was produced in accordance with the plan.
Compare the details and overall shape of the program or initiative to the plan. Does it square with the needs assessment? Does it look like it will address the desired outcomes in desired ways? Is it inclusive? Was everyone involved in its development? Is it feasible? Is it ready to go?
4. ACT. Market the product.
"Marketing the product" here means actually running the program or initiative that you've planned. If it's going to work well, there are some non-TQM standards that need to be applied:
- Everyone involved should understand both the process that led up to this program and the philosophy, concept, and workings of it.
- Everyone involved should be committed to making every effort to bring about success. A program or initiative should never fail because people don't follow through or do their jobs. (This doesn't mean that you shouldn't expect mistakes; it means, rather, that mistakes shouldn't happen just because people weren't trying, or because they simply didn't bother to do something they knew they had to do.)
- All the planning in the world is useless if everyone involved doesn't go into the experience expecting to do her best, and if there aren't good people implementing the functions of the organization.
5. ANALYZE. Analyze how the product is received in the marketplace in terms of quality, cost, and other data.
Analysis in this context -- looking at what you're doing, evaluating it, and trying to improve it -- needs to be conducted on the basis of the original plan, with discussions among participants, staff, and others being a vital element:
- Does the program or initiative actually address the identified needs? Are these needs the same as when the original assessment was conducted?
- Does the program or initiative reach, or help participants reach, the desired outcomes? Were those outcomes the right ones to aim for, or do they need to be changed? (Looking at the indicators you've developed should help you answer both these questions.)
- Is the plan in fact feasible? Can the program or initiative be run with the time, resources, and personnel available? Is it accessible to participants? Are staff and volunteers able to do their jobs without having to work to exhaustion, or beyond reasonable expectations? Is the program or initiative accepted, or at least tolerated, by the community and other organizations?
- Is the program or initiative consistent with the vision, mission, philosophy and guiding principles of the organization (and are those still the same as when the plan was formulated)? Does what actually goes on in the program or initiative -- working conditions, empowerment, relations among staff, participants, volunteers, and the community -- mirror its desired effect on the community and society?
- Is the program or initiative inclusive and respectful of the target population and the community?
- Is the program or initiative ethical? Are you skirting your own principles in any way? Are you ignoring basic principles of fairness, honesty, civility, democracy, or responsibility for your actions?
Although the two are usually congruent, ethical is not always exactly the same as legal. The exercise of civil disobedience may be profoundly ethical, while being, at the same time, inarguably illegal. The civil rights marches and actions led by Martin Luther King and others during the 1950's and 60's often fell into this category.
6. RESTART THE CYCLE.
ANALYZE becomes PLAN for the next round, and leads, where necessary, to rethinking and reworking the program or initiative, or even the task of the organization itself.
How do you maintaining quality performance?
While the maintenance of quality is, to some extent, built into the Deming Cycle, it requires some particular commitments and action.
Institutionalization of dynamism: An organization needs to be dynamic, always moving and always seeking continued improvement, and to institutionalize its dynamic character. This means
- An assumption of dynamism needs to be part of the organizational culture, with everyone understanding and buying into it.
- Encouraging and providing support -- to staff, volunteers, and participants -- for learning.
Organizational support for education includes providing, or piggybacking on someone else's provision of, professional development or university courses, training, certification, or whatever else is relevant for helping staff and volunteers to build their skills. If financial resources are simply not available, other means of institutional support -- release time or leave time, special recognition, an organization library, study circles or reading groups, etc. -- need to be considered. Everyone in the organization, including administrators and Board members, should be encouraged to take advantage of learning opportunities and to model learning behavior.
- Listening to and carefully evaluating ideas from everyone.
- Encouraging openness to change and experimentation with new ideas and strategies
Administrators and Board members need to model such openness by being willing to reexamine and change procedures, policies, etc. when needed. Staff and volunteers should be given room to try out even things that others may be skeptical about, as long as they can justify the attempt ("It worked elsewhere" and "I learned about it in a course" are both reasonable justifications.). If such an attempt is honestly carried out, it should be seen as a positive even if it fails: it provided new information, and is another building block in the construction of a quality program.
- Never being complacent and believing that it's doing its job "right"; but always having the sense that whatever it's doing could be different -- and better.
- Incorporating constant reevaluation, including feedback and ideas from the target population.
- Always being aware of its original mission, but not being afraid of change. While that mission itself may change as the community and circumstances do, it should nonetheless remain consistent with the principles and philosophy upon which the organization was founded.
Long-range strategic planning: To maintain quality, an organization needs to continually look at itself over and for the long term. It needs to ask some questions about its role and its future:
- Is it meeting an ongoing need effectively? If not, what does it need to do to become more effective?
- Have community needs changed? Are they likely to? If so, how can the organization regroup to meet new needs?
- Are there more or different things it should be doing? Does it need to expand its present activities to meet current or projected community needs?
- Does it need more resources, or will it in the future? What are some likely sources?
- Is its structure appropriate to what it's doing, and consistent with its mission and guiding principles? (An organization dedicated to empowerment, for instance, may not be consistent if its internal structure is hierarchical and authoritarian.)
- Are its goals, vision, and philosophy still relevant to the realities of the community and in keeping with its organizational mission and guiding principles?
One way to explore these questions is through the use of another device partially borrowed from TQM: SWOC analysis. SWOC stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges. Each of the questions above can be examined in the light of SWOC analysis. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization in regard to each question? What opportunities exist for the organization in each area of its functioning? And what challenges will the organization have to meet if it is to continue to be successful, and to maintain quality performance?
Strengths and weaknesses:
Strengths and weaknesses may be trends, rather than specifics. A level of service that is currently appropriate, for example, is not a strength if it is more or less than will be needed in a year. A new program that's not ready to implement yet is not a weakness if it's unready because the developers are taking the time necessary to make it effective.
By the same token, strengths and weaknesses don't necessarily lie only in the success of programs or the skills of staff members, but in such areas as relationships, contacts, and reputation. An organization running a great program may still be have serious weaknesses because it lacks some of these other features, no matter how well it carries out its day-to-day activities.
Opportunities:
Opportunities can take many forms.
- An organization may be able to meet other needs with its current structure. An organization that publicizes and provides prenatal care to pregnant teens, for instance, could be in an excellent position to also publicize and provide vaccinations, nutrition information, and help with parenting skills after the babies are born.
- It may be possible to expand into other areas of service, or into a larger arena (another town, another county, national instead of just one state).
- Increased funding may be available from new sources, or because of changed circumstances. A new census, for example, can result in an increase in federal funds to a region, or an economic downturn may bring a demand -- and increased funding -- for adult education or retraining.
- Collaboration with other groups, leading to increased resources, may become a prospect. (See Community Tool Box, Chapter 46, Section 6: Sharing Positions and Other Resources.)
- Board recruitment, invitations or awards offered to your organization or staff members, or particularly good press or press support may lead to your organization being viewed as more "legitimate."
Taking advantage of any opportunity can have both positive and negative consequences for your organization, so it's important to analyze the situation carefully before committing yourself.
Challenges:
Some of the challenges that go along with any opportunity can be truly daunting if they're not thought through carefully. Many of the opportunities above require some sort of organizational restructuring or growth, processes that are always difficult, and require a lot of planning in themselves. Some even represent rethinking the purpose of the organization, which may become a different organization in the process. In becoming larger or more accepted, for instance, an organization may forget its roots or its guiding principles, and so lose much of its effectiveness.
Other challenges may come unaccompanied by opportunity. Your organization may experience difficulty finding -- and keeping -- ongoing funding and other resources, including competent staff; sustaining continued effort in all areas of functioning (advertising, recruitment, public relations, programming, evaluation, etc.); dealing with controversy; and addressing antagonism from individuals, other groups, or the community.
Applying SWOC analysis to all the areas your organization has to deal with makes it easier both to anticipate and prepare for the negative, and to remember to identify and build on the positive, which can sometimes be more difficult.
Other facets of the planning process:
Some specific areas that long-range strategic planning needs to address at regular intervals:
Reexamining the organization's vision, guiding principles, and mission statement. Are they still relevant to what the organization does, and are they still what the organization believes? Do they need to be restated or redefined?
If the vision, guiding principles, or mission statement are no longer relevant, what does that mean? Has the organization simply moved on to another area of functioning; or has it, ethically or otherwise, lost sight of the reasons it was founded in the first place? Some institutional soul-searching is in order whenever a reexamination of the vision, guiding principles, and mission statement takes place.
Reexamining the goals of the organization. Are they still relevant to the needs they were originally meant to address? Are they consistent with the vision and mission statement?
Reexamining the current strategies of the organization for meeting those goals. Are current methods effective? Are they consistent with the organization's vision, mission statement, and guiding principles? Are they feasible? Do they play well in the community? Are they inclusive and respectful? Are they ethical?
Keeping at it forever: The single most important thing to understand about maintaining quality performance -- or maintaining an organization, for that matter -- is that you can never stop working at it. No effort at maintaining quality will really work any longer than it is applied. No matter how institutionalized dynamism becomes, no matter how good your planning process is, they take constant care. If a house is unoccupied and uncared for, no matter how solid it is, it will come down within a relatively short time. First the roof goes, then water starts rotting the beams, the walls sag outward, and before you know it, the house is nothing but a pile of wood on the ground. Maintenance takes constant vigilance and constant work. But the result is a quality structure that will outlast the storms and the seasons.
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The Fourteen Points and the Seven Deadly Sins Deming used the key elements listed above in "Basic principles of TQM" to define the "Fourteen Points," fourteen things that he felt businesses needed to do and not do in order to achieve quality performance, and the "Seven Deadly Sins" which keep businesses from achieving quality. The fourteen points:
The seven deadly sins:
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To sum it up
Achieving and maintaining quality performance is important to the target population, to funders, and to the community. The level of quality you can provide will go far in determining whether your organization or initiative will be successful or not.
Using some TQM principles and, specifically, the Deming Cycle (PLAN, DO, CHECK, ACT, ANALYZE) can be helpful in getting to a high level of quality and not only staying there, but continuing to improve. In general, achieving and maintaining quality is a result of
- Careful planning
- Program or initiative development that adheres to that planning
- Implementation that takes quality into account
- Constant reevaluation of implementation and of the organization
- An assumption of the dynamic character of the organization, and a willingness to change continually in striving for a better way to accomplish goals
- Keeping at it indefinitely
If you can carry out and institutionalize these steps, especially the last, success is in your grasp.
We encourage the reproduction of this material but ask that you credit
the Community Tool Box: http://ctb.ku.edu
Resources
Internet Resources
Sytsma, S., & Manley, K. (1997). The Quality Tools Cookbook [On-line ].
Available: http://www.sytsma.com/tqmtools/tqmtoolmenu.html
Downloadable charts, diagrams, and other tools that can be used for TQM problem -solving.
McNamara, C. (1996). TQM Links. Total Quality Management
[On-line].
Bacal, R. (1996). Little-Bitty Quality Steps. The Work-Smart Bulletin [On-line ].
Available: http://www.work911.com/articles/bitty.htm
Article on small steps to quality on the website of Bacal & Associates, management and training consultants to the public sector in Canada.
Dictionary of TQM Terms. Total Quality Management
[On-line]. Available: http://www.mazur.net/tqm/default.htm
A handy site.
Pollock, R. (1996). Total Quality Management and ISO 9000 Resources on the Internet [On-line].
Available: http://fiat.gslis.utexas.edu/~rpollock/tqm.html
University of Texas site with lots of links.
ISO 9000 WWW Pages [On-line].
Available: http://www.isoeasy.org/isorefs.htm
More links, explanations, etc.
TQM BBS Case Study Files [On-line].
Case studies of successful TQM organizations from the press and other sources
Fung, C. TQM: An Integrated Approach Internet System [On-line].
Available: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~pdyer/abis/JessicaElizabeth%20-%20Q2/Executive%20Summary.htm
A short course on TQM.
American Quality Mall [On-line]. Available:http://www.americanquality.
American Quality Institute. Articles, links, etc.
About Quality. American Quality Society [On-line].
Available: http://www.asq.org/about-asq/who-we-are/index.html
Links, articles, definitions.
Print Resources
Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis (1986). Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
Deming, W. Edwards. Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position (1982). Cambridge, MA: M.I.T., Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
Goetsch, D. and S. Davis. Introduction to Total Quality: Quality Management for Production, Processing, and Services, 2nd Edition. Merrill, an imprint of MacMillan Publishing Co.
Hunt, V. Daniel. Quality in America: How to Implement a Competitive Quality Program (1992). Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin.
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