What is Quality Management?

Have you arrived? If you answer yes to this question, you're not improving. If you think there is no more growth left, then you're frittering away. Living organisms grow...or they die. This reality has led successful companies to adopt principles of Continuous Improvement. One of the most advanced of these is the Deming Principle, developed by Dr. W Edwards Deming, and utilized by the Toyota Company and Sony Corporation to change their culture from that of cheap, poorly made products to valuable, high quality products. The Deming Principle has multiple levels to it, but at the heart is the Plan>Do>Check>Act cycle, which is the never ending process of continuous improvement.

We'll review several levels of the Deming Principle as well as a few other elements of Quality Management to get a grasp on how comprehensive Continuous Improvement is. Simply put, Continuous Improvement is the never-ending journey of reducing variations in your products and processes. There are many ways to improve even the most basic processes, but there must be a desire to improve and the discipline to see it done.

14 Points for Management

by Steven Brown

When I say made in Japan, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? I think of quality, high quality products made efficiently. Companies like Toyota and Sony set the standard for quality around the world. But it hasn't always been that way. When I was growing up, made in Japan meant poor quality. Japan was famous for making very inexpensive electronics that didn't last very long, like transistor radios. When the radio quit working, you just threw it away and bought another cheap one. It took a long time for Japan to transition from making junk to making high quality products. Dr. W. Edwards Deming was a big part of that change, thanks to his philosophy for managing quality. In fact, the highest award a Japanese company can earn is called the Deming Prize. Deming's philosophy focuses on reducing variability. The thought is that consistency can not only help companies design more reliable products and services, but can also lower costs. Deming's approach involves an integrated 14-point strategy to help manage quality in companies. You'll notice I said manage because Deming believed management must drive every quality program. I won't go into detail on all of his strategies, so you can print out the document called Deming's 14 Points in the exercise files. That gives you a brief explanation of each one. But I would like to talk about one point specifically. Point five of the Deming philosophy is to improve constantly and forever. If you're familiar with Lean principles, this is the foundation of Kaizen, which is the Japanese word for improvement. In business, Kaizen means to continuously make small, incremental improvements to every process. To accomplish this, Japanese companies adopted a four-step model called the Deming Cycle. This guides you first to develop a plan for improving a specific process, product, or service, then to try out the idea, execute the plan you developed. Next, analyze the results, and implement any changes that gave you improvements in the process. This last step is, of course, the longest and each change may take some time to put into place. Toyota's a good example here. It took many years to implement Deming's principles and become a world standard for quality. The most important aspect of the Deming Cycle is that, once you have completed the last step, you start the cycle again. This is the foundation of a continuous improvement culture. Take a close look at Deming's 14 points. You may find some of these practices in your organization, but with a different name. Specifically look for the plan, do, check, act cycle. It's the heart of many quality improvement teams. It's the heart of many quality improvement teams.

Download a copy of Deming's 14 Points.

The PDCA Cycle

Plan > Do > Check > Act

The Deming Cycle is the heart of Continuous Improvement. It is a methodical, controlled system of improvement. It is also called the PDCA Cycle.

• P - Plan
• D - Do
• C - Check
• A - Act

Plan is the first step in the cycle. Make a plan to do something, anything. Any process that needs improvement, sit down and make a plan for how to improve. The plan won't be perfect and that's the point. It's just the first plan or many. Make a plan.

Do is the second step in the cycle. Carry out your plan. Don't try to control the results, but rather let things play out naturally. Pay attention to every result from every angle. Fulfill the plan completely, so you can later assess the full results. Do your plan.

Check is the third step in the cycle. How did your plan work? What successes did you experience? What failures took place? What were the unintended consequences? Can you modify your plan and try it again? Or do you need to scrap the plan and come up with a different plan? Check your plan after it's done.

Act is the forth step in the cycle. Make the adjustments needed to your plan or create a new plan. Unless your first plan was total nonsense, you probably will just make adjustments to it and try again. There are times when a new plan is required, but don't jump to that action unless it's necessary. The point is to reduce variations in your outcome, so it makes sense to refine plans rather than start with new ones unless you must start over. Act on your checked plan.

Then the cycle started over. Work out your new/revised plan. Do your new/revised plan. Check your new/revised plan. Act on your new/revised plan. Keep doing this until every process is working as effectively and with as few variation as possible.

The PDSA Cycle

Plan > Do > Study > Act

PDSA is a similar cycle to PDCA. Plan, Do Study, Act are the four elements of this cycle. The third step is Study rather than Check. While similar, they are not exactly the same. The use of Study instead of Check includes more in-depth review of the results from the Do stage. The PDSA grew out of the PDCA as Dr W. Edwards Deming focused on more detailed reflection of the data being studied. It's not just enough to check whether your plan worked. You need to measure it and document it.

PLAN - In the Plan stage, you plan out a course of action and predict what you expect to happen. There is a purpose behind the plan of action. You are hoping to accomplish something specific. Maybe you want to improve the quality of product coming from a specific device. Or maybe you want to reduce the amount of times spent between jobs on a specific device. So, you plan out what it will take to accomplish that and write down what you expect to happen. Let's say you want to improve a fold on a note card. The fold is pretty good, but it's not centered on the art perfectly. To formulate a plan you might say, "If we reduce the programmed trim size by 1/16th of an inch, hopefully the fold will be centered correctly." There's the plan, there's the prediction. Write it down and start to track your progress. Keep the plan simple. Make as few changes as possible. If you change multiple things at the same time, you might not be able to identify what change had what result. Aim small, miss small.

DO - In the Plan stage, you carry out the details of the plan. With the purpose of improving the fold on a note card, you execute your plan. You reduce the trim size in the folder program by 1/16th of an inch. You expect that with the slightly shorter trim size programmed, the fold will be placed in the center of the card. Once you have programmed the change in the folder, you run a few cards through to see where the fold is on the note card.

STUDY - In the Study stage, you compare your planned predictions to the result produced in the Do stage. In our example, you measure the score or fold on the note cards you ran through after making the adjustments in the folder program. You measure each side. You measure each note card. Is the fold exactly centered? If not, was the adjustment too much or too little? Is the fold consistent on the test note cards that you ran through after the change? If not, could the machine be in error and need its own troubleshooting and/or maintenance? Let's say the machine is producing consistent results and the fold on the note card needs to move back a little.

ACT - In the Act stage, you adapt, adopt, or abandon your plan. In our example, the plan needs to be adapted, as is usually the case. You determine from your study that the fold is the same distance from the center, but now on the other side of the art. So, you start over the PDSA cycle with a new plan to change the programming on the folder by negative 1/32th of an inch. This cycle is repeated until the fold is in the center.

The PDSA cycle is used unofficially all the time. You're probably recognizing it as something you've done or do frequently. In reality this is something you do regularly when you’re trying to trouble shoot any problem at work or at home. The difference is the documentation and the way this process interacts with other processes to improve an organization as a whole. Even in work situations, it is usually done without physical tracking overall progress of our organization and is limited to a localized process. The PDSA cycle is meant to be documented and used over and over until it can't be used on one process and then moved to another process, constantly improving. Just because a process was focused on and improved in the past doesn't mean it doesn't need improvement now or in the near future. Equipment changes, materials change, operators change, instructions change, and ultimately the process needs to be put through PDSA again until it is optimized again. And as the PDSA cycle is utilized it is to be documented. This documentations helps you keep track of all the pertinent details and strengthens accuracy. Documentation though serves a deeper purpose, it is built into the entire systems continuous improvement documentation that tracks all processes and coordinates their efforts for large scale improvement. Each PDSA cycle is a brick in the foundation of a growing and improving organization.