TQM Assignment 1

Assignment 1
Name: Abhiram Sridhara, UCID: as2488, Course: Total Quality

Management
1. What is Quality?
Answer:
In manufacturing, a measure of excellence or a state of being free from
defects, deficiencies and significant variations. It is brought about by strict
and consistent commitment to certain standards that achieve uniformity of a
product in order to satisfy specific customer or user requirements. ISO
standard defines quality as "the totality of features and characteristics of a
product or service that bears its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs." If
an automobile company finds a defect in one of their cars and makes a
product recall, customer reliability and therefore production will decrease
because trust will be lost in the car's quality.
Quality can be defined only in terms of the agent. Who is the judge of
quality? In the mind of the production worker, he produces quality if he can
take pride in his work. Poor quality, to him, means loss of business, and
perhaps of his job. Good quality, he thinks, will keep the company in
business. Quality to the plant manager means to get the numbers out and to
meet specifications. His job is also, whether he knows it or not, continual
improvement of leadership.
So, Quality is a dynamic state associated with products, services, people,
processes, and environments that meets or exceeds expectations and helps
produce superior value.
2. What is TQM?
Answer:
Total quality management is a system seeking continuous improvement for
incorporating and integrating various organizational elements into the
design, development, and manufacturing methodologies, facilitating costeffective products or services that are fully acceptable to the ultimate
customer. Seeking continuous improvement helps in analyzing problems,
drawing inferences which would help in enhancing future products or
services thus helping in retaining existing customers, winning back lost
customers and winning new customers.
Externally, TQM is customer oriented and provides for more meaningful
customer satisfaction. Internally, TQM reduces production line bottlenecks
and operating costs, thus enhancing product quality while improving
organizational moral.
3. How can we achieve organizational excellence with quality?

Answer:
Organizations consider implementing total quality management
methodologies as a new way of doing business, they are committed to
increase the value for customers, investors and employees. They try to align
their IT strategy with the business processes by achieving end-to-end
collaboration using web based, on demand tools that are fully integrated
throughout the supply chain.
Organizations know that market dynamics change and in order to sustain in
a highly competitive market they need to deploy high end machineries which
will increase the efficiency and save time without compromising on the
quality of products or services offered.
Organizations put in efforts to operate efficiently and survive in the long run
by achieving four objectives which are Customer satisfaction, cost
leadership, effective human resources and integration with the supplier base.
4. What is the Deming cycle?

Answer:
Deming postulated that 85 percent of all the quality problem required

management to take initiative and change process and the laborers on
production floor were responsible for 15 percent of quality problems arising
or observed in a batch of products being manufactured. One can justify these
as the management is responsible for purchase of cheap raw materials which
determine the quality of end product or deliverables. Thus, there is tradeoff
between pursuing low cost suppliers and compromising with quality to some
extent.
Deming contended that workers simply cannot do their best. They had to be
shown what constitutes acceptable quality and that continuous improvement
is not only possible, but necessary. For this to be accomplished, workers had
to be trained in the use of statistical process control charts. Realizing that
even training required managements approval, Demings lectures became
more and more focused toward management and what they must do.
5. What are the most common errors when starting quality initiatives?
Answer:
Every organization has to face challenges while making a transition from
traditional view of quality to total quality management methodologies this
challenges can be classified as follows:
a) Senior management delegation and poor leadership: Delegating
responsibility to a hired expert rather than getting everyone involved.
b) Team mania: Rushing and putting everyone in teams before learning has
occurred and the corporate culture has changed will create problems rather
than solve problems. Thus, building up a team and nurturing right candidates
for an effective team is an important aspect which needs to be mastered by
the supervisors.
c) Deployment process: Some organizations develop quality initiatives
without concurrently developing a plan for integrating them into all elements
of the organization (operations, budgeting, marketing, etc.).
d) Taking a narrow, dogmatic approach: We need to identify which
approach is practicable and best suitable for our organization before
implementing it in our business processes. Even the experts encourage
organizations to tailor quality programs to their individual needs.
e) Confusion about the differences among education, awareness,
inspiration, and skill building: In order for the people to do their part in
making the total quality approach work, they must have the skills. Helping
them develop the skills must be a part of the transformation process.
6. Explain the cost of poor quality

Answer:
The organization should have a pragmatic approach while identifying and
then eliminating all the redundant activities such as warranty costs, scrap
and rework, on-time delivery, billing, cycle time etc. instead of eliminating
essential services, functions, product features and personnel.
One need to realize the fact that there is always a tradeoff between two
parameters and it is important to strike balance as per the priority and
significance of the area which is being scrutinized to reduce the overhead
costs.
7. What are the quality characteristics of world-class organizations?

Answer:
The characteristics of world class organization are as follows:
a)
Quality control and assurance
b)
Research and development/new product development
c)
Acquiring new technologies
d)
Innovation
e)
Team-based approach (adopting and using effectively)
f)
Best practices (study and use of)
g)
Manpower planning
h)
Environmentally sound practices
i)
Business partnerships and alliances
j)
Customer services
Companies that develop the characteristics listed above will be those that
fully institutionalize the principles of quality management. As long as the
concept of competition exists, there will be a need for quality management.
8. Responsibility and total quality

Answer:
Top management must drive fear from the workplace and create an
environment where cross-functional cooperation can flourish. The ultimate
responsibility for quality in the organization lies in the hands of upper
management. It is only with their enthusiastic and unwavering support that
quality can thrive in an organization.
To build an environment which fosters trust and cooperations among team
members people should be responsible for their actions and accountable for
their performance which help the Total Quality system to prosper and
encourage ethical behavior.
9. Discuss some models for ethical quality decisions

Answer:
Proportionality ethic model:
This model is based on the assumption
that the world is so complex that decisions are seldom clearly right or wrong.
Consequently, the best an organization can do is to make sure that the good
outweighs the bad when making decisions.
Professional ethic model:
This model is based on the principle of peer
review. It states that a decision is ethical if it can be explained to the
approval of a broad cross-section of professional peers. Professions that
subscribe to this model typically adopt a professional code of ethics.
Market-ethic model: This model is based on the belief that any legal
action that promotes profitability is ethical. Proponents of this model profess

that the purpose of a business is to make a profit. Consequently, what is
ethical should be decided within a framework of profit and loss. They argue
that in the long run the market will reject unethical corporate behavior,
making it thereby unprofitable.
10. What is the engineering managers role in quality ethics?

Answer:
From an Engineering Managers perspective, there are six quality
management concepts that should exist to support each and every project.
They include:
Quality
Quality
Quality
Quality
Quality
Quality
policy
objectives
assurance
control
audit
program plan
Ideally, these six concepts should be embedded within the corporate culture.
The engineering manager has the ultimate responsibility for quality
management on the project. Quality management has equal priority with
cost and schedule management. However, the direct measurement of quality
may be the responsibility of the quality assurance department or the
assistant project manager for quality. For a labor-intensive project,
management support (i.e., the project office) is typically 1215 percent of
the total labor dollars of the project. Approximately 35 percent can be
attributed to quality management. Therefore, as much as 2030 percent of
all the labor in the project office could easily be attributed to quality
management.
Sustainable Green Focus:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LequyTSSxVM
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh3k3CiV3tk
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9BDj7BK6qk
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBceG-2EAUM
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O8Yv5U7_PY
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U544Mo-us18
The videos shows Palau Corals & El galleon Philippines. There is evidence
that the oceans have suffered at the hands of mankind for millennia, as far
back as Roman times. But recent studies show that degradation, particularly
of shoreline areas, has accelerated dramatically in the past three centuries
as industrial discharge and runoff from farms and coastal cities has
increased.
Pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants that are outside the
norm for a given ecosystem. Common man-made pollutants that reach the
ocean include pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, detergents, oil,
sewage, plastics, and other solids. Many of these pollutants collect at the
ocean's depths, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and
introduced into the global food chain. Scientists are even discovering that
pharmaceuticals ingested by humans but not fully processed by our bodies
are eventually ending up in the fish we eat.
Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from
coastlines. Nitrogen-rich fertilizers applied by farmers inland, for example,
end up in local streams, rivers, and groundwater and are eventually
deposited in estuaries, bays, and deltas. These excess nutrients can spawn
massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving areas where
little or no marine life can exist. Scientists have counted some 400 such dead
zones around the world.
Solid waste like bags, foam, and other items dumped into the oceans from
land or by ships at sea are frequently consumed, with often fatal effects, by
marine mammals, fish, and birds that mistake it for food. Discarded fishing
nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals. In certain regions, ocean
currents corral trillions of decomposing plastic items and other trash into
gigantic, swirling garbage patches. One in the North Pacific, known as the
Pacific Trash Vortex, is estimated to be the size of Texas. A new, massive
patch was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean in early 2010.
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Assignment 1

Name: Abhiram Sridhara, UCID: as2488, Course: Total Quality

3. How can we achieve organizational excellence with quality?

4. What is the Deming cycle?

Deming postulated that 85 percent of all the quality problem required

6. Explain the cost of poor quality

7. What are the quality characteristics of world-class organizations?

Quality control and assurance

Research and development/new product development

Acquiring new technologies

Team-based approach (adopting and using effectively)

Best practices (study and use of)

Environmentally sound practices

Business partnerships and alliances

8. Responsibility and total quality

9. Discuss some models for ethical quality decisions

action that promotes profitability is ethical. Proponents of this model profess

10. What is the engineering managers role in quality ethics?

Sustainable Green Focus:

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