Problem solving essay

Running head: A Study of Quality Management Methods in Industry 1

A Study of Quality Management Methods in Industry: Traditional Quality Controls, TQM

and 6σ Method

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Quality has long been a vital element and foremost concern in industry. The quality of the product is a key factor for companies to be in competitive in market. People spent hundreds of years to study how to control the quality of the product. The first statement of the quality management started as quality inspection; then changed into statistics quality control; at last developed into Total Quality Control (TQM).By using TQM, companies could monitor the whole process with quality join in. This method, however, is not perfect and could be enhanced.In order to study how to optimize the quality control process, a brief introduction and case study of TQM would be presented, then a new quality control method, 6σ method, would be provided and analyzed.

As it is said by the quality management master Joseph M. Juran (1998): "Historians in later decades will look back on the 21st century as Century of Quality". Quality is of vital importance to industry companies, as well as a foremost concern.Customers expect high quality products from companies. Quality products would maintain customers' satisfaction and loyalty, hence the customers would continue to buy from a same company. If customers were disappointed by a product once, they might seek for alternative choice from other producers. Moreover, in some cases, for example, aviation industry and automobile industry, quality problem could cause catastrophic result. Thus, companies would always treat quality as an essential factor they need to focus on.

Before the 20th century, quality inspection was the major method to control the product quality problem. Workers inspected the quality of products based on a certain standard. If a product did not pass the inspection, it would be reprocessed until it fulfilled the quality standard.Otherwise, it would be thrown away as waste.

In 1920s', a statistics expert,Walter A. Shewhtar, offered a new concept of quality control, pointed out that the statistics could be used in quality management for controlling the manufacturing process hence to manage the quality of products. Thus,quality managers used control chart and cause-and-effect diagram help to finish their work.

In the 1960s', customers' demand of products expanded from simple functionality to durability, security, reliability and economy. The old methods of quality control could no longer satisfy the demands of customers. Thus, a quality management expert,A.V. Feigenbaum advanced TQM concept to reform the quality control system, changed the quality control from a single process into a systematic behavior, and changed the field of the quality control from one quality department into a whole company. Tools usually used in TQM method are PDCA cycle (a plan-do-check-adjust iterative four–step management) and Seven Basic Tools of Quality (cause-and-effect diagram, check sheet, control chart, histogram, pareto chart, scatter diagram, flow chart, run chart).The TQM was being used by thousands of quality manage staffs since the 1960s until now.

Raj Kumar (2014) used TQM concept to analyze the data collected from 50 units of small and medium enterprise from Haryana state in India. In using of One-Way ANOV A method, he found out several factors, for example, improvement in management control and improvement in supplier relationship, that affected the quality of product of those companies. Thus, he concluded that in order to advance the quality of products, those companies should improve their service quality by improving the supply system of particular organization.

Though Kumar's research did found out the quality problems of his experimental objects then came up a solution to those problem, he did not mention how to avoid relevant problems.

This flaw, in fact, is the shortage of the TQM. By using the TQM method, one could dig out and solve the quality shortcoming inside companies, but could never monitor when and how the problem would happen. In order to predict the risks, there is a new method named 6σ has been provided this decade.

Different from all the quality management methods before, the target of 6σ method is not aiming at product quality, but the customers' satisfaction. (HE Zhen & YUE Gang & WANG Lilin, 2007) In order to fulfill this target, a company should keep developing its managing process, reducing the cost of its manufacturing and management, and improving its profit ability. The result of operating a whole 6σ p rocess is not only the improvement of a company's product, but also a construction of a more efficient management system of the company. Moreover, as long as the company keeps running the 6σ, those improvement would be a constant process.

The 'σ' represented the 'standard deviation' of statistic, used to describe the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of data values. In quality management system, it is a measure that is used to quantify the ratio of the number of defective products over the number of all products.(YU Lu, 2006) A 6σ standard require s less than 3.4 piece of defective products appear in a million one, the qualified rate is larger than 99.99966%. In order to achieve this target, the 6σ method required users keep optimizing the management process of their companies based on alldata of the companies' daily operation. The tools of 6σ are statistic and data mining.

Although the 6σ is an extremely powerful tool to improve the quality, it still has shortage. The process of 6σ is complicated, required every employees of a company to do large amount

of extra work at the very beginning to build up a new management system. Thus, many employees would be come negative to their work or even be conflict to the 6σ method, which could make the 6σ method achieve nothing. Actually, 90% of the failure of using 6σ method is because of the employees' confliction of those companies. Thus, more research and experiment should be done to consummate the 6σ method.

In conclusion, this paper has discussed the quality management problem that had long been existing in industry field. Then it introduced the historical statement of how the quality control methods been improved. At last the paper provided a new tool, 6σ me thod, to solve quality problems, and pointed out there should be more study in this method.

Reference

Keng-Boon Ooi (2014). TQM: A Facilitator to Enhance Knowledge Management? A Structural Analysis. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(11), 5167-5179.

Zhou, GH., Wang, B., Xiao, ZD., Jiang, PY.(2011). An Improving Approach for 6 sigma-based Multi-process Machining Environment. Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 314(1), 2524-2528

Raj Kumar (2014). Relationship Between Profitability and Dimensions of Quality Management in Small Business Enterprises: An Empirical Study. e-Library Science Research Journa l, 2(7), 1-5

YU Lu (2006). Application of statistics method in Six Sigma quality management. Journal of Chongqing Technology Business University(West Forum), 16(6), 108-111

HE Zhen, YUE Gang, WANG Lilin (2007). Six Sigma Management and Its Implementation.

Application of Statistics and Management. 26(6), 1049-1055