Chapter 3 Flashcards
What is Benchmarking in TQM?
Benchmarking is a powerful quality management tool that allows organizations to compare their performance to industry standards or other organizations. Organizations can set goals for progress and remain competitive in the market by identifying areas for improvement.
What are the types of Benchmarking in TQM
- Internal benchmarking:
Internal benchmarking is a common type that involves comparing the performance of different departments within the same company. This can aid in identifying areas for improvement and sharing best practices. - Competitive Benchmarking:
“Competitive Benchmarking,” which involves comparing the company’s performance to that of its direct market competitors. This can reveal areas where the company is falling behind or excelling in comparison to its competitors. - Functional Benchmarking:
“Functional Benchmarking” compares the company’s performance to that of other companies in the same industry but offering different products or services. This can aid in the identification of novel practices and approaches to quality management.
What is a Quality Circle?
Quality Circles, also known as QC or Kaizen Circles, are small groups of employees who voluntarily come together to identify, analyze, and solve quality-related problems within an organization.
What are the objectives of a Quality Circle?
- Problem Solving: To identify and resolve quality issues, defects, or process inefficiencies.
- Continuous Improvement: To develop a culture of continuous improvement by encouraging employees to take ownership of quality-related challenges.
- Skill Development: To enhance the problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills of participating employees.
- Increased Employee Engagement: Engaging employees in decision-making and quality improvement efforts leads to higher job satisfaction.
What are the benefits of Quality Circles?
- Improved Quality: QC teams are dedicated to finding and fixing quality issues, leading to better product or service quality.
- Cost Reduction: Organizations can reduce waste and operational costs by identifying and rectifying inefficiencies.
- Enhanced Employee Morale: Involvement in QC activities boosts employee morale, as they feel valued and engaged in making a difference.
- Higher Productivity: As QC teams tackle process bottlenecks, productivity increases, leading to more efficient operations.
- Innovation: QC teams often come up with innovative solutions to longstanding problems, driving organizational innovation.
Describe the structure of a Quality Circle.
Quality Circles typically consist of the following elements:
- Team Members:
Comprising 6-12 employees from various levels and departments of the organization.
- Team Leader:
Facilitates meetings, ensures discussions stay on track, and acts as a liaison with management.
- Meetings:
Regularly scheduled meetings where team members discuss and address quality issues.
- Problem-Solving Tools:
Quality Circles use various problem-solving tools and techniques, such as the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle and fishbone diagrams.
What is Quality Planning?
Quality planning is the structured process of designing products and services to meet new goals and ensure that customer needs are met.
What are the steps in Quality Planning?
Quality Planning Steps:
1. Establish the project.
2. Identify customers.
3. Discover the customer’s needs.
4. Develop the product.
5. Develop the process.
6. Develop the controls and transfer to Operations.
What is the PDCA Cycle?
The PDCA cycle is a process-improving method that involves a continuous loop of planning, doing, checking, and acting.
Each stage of the PDCA, meaning the Plan-Do-Check-Act, cycle contributes to the goal of identifying which business processes work and which of them need further improvement.
Describe the stages of the PDCA Cycle
PLAN:
Specifically describe the problem to be solved and state why it is important to be addressed.
Discuss objectives and create Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals that your team members and relevant stakeholders agree upon. Aside from that, the end of this stage should materialize in a comprehensive plan answering information-building questions such as:
1. What is the cause of the problem?
2. What are the current standards and procedures regarding the specific process?
3. What resources are needed to implement the proposed changes?
DO:
Since you’ve identified potential solutions to the problem in the first stage—”Do” is the part where you’ll execute them. Apply the changes but only on a small scale or controlled environment such as specific department, project, or with just a particular demographic.
impact to your process or business, there won’t be much damage to deal with and minimal resources were used.
CHECK
This is the analysis stage.
Assess if the result is already satisfactory and the solutions are already working according to the objective, or if they need further improvements to achieve the overall goal.
If further adjustments are needed, go back to the first stage—Plan—and try other alternatives that you think could work to solve the problem. If it’s considered a success, however, you can now proceed to the next stage, Act.
ACT:
Once you’ve recognized the effectiveness of the solutions, “Act” is the stage where you’ll fully implement them as part of your business process.
What is the importance of the PDCA Cycle?
- The PDCA method is a simple yet powerful tool that gives you the option to repeat the cycle if you think that the solutions can still be improved
- The PDCA cycle is one of the widely used methods of monitoring quality management systems and is applicable to international standards such as ISO 22301, ISO 9001, etc.
- This helps strengthen the efficiency of the cycle and eliminates ineffective elements until an ideal solution is identified.
- The PDCA cycle is versatile—it can be used across all industries, by big businesses, and even by specific teams or departments within a company.
What is Kaizen?
“Kaizen” refers to a Japanese word which means “improvement” or “change for the better”.
Kaizen is defined as a continuous effort by each and every employee (from the CEO to field staff) to ensure improvement of all processes and systems of a particular organization.
What are the 5 principles of Kaizen?
- Know Your Customer: Knowledge of who your selling a product or service to is how one creates value. It is key that companies identify their customer’s interests to enhance their experience.
- Let It Flow: This applies to the target of achieving zero waste. Everyone in the organization is working towards removing any waste from their corner of the business while also in the process creating value.
- Go to Gemba: The literal translation for Gemba is “the real place.” In this context, it’s about leadership and knowing what is happening at every level of the organization.
- Empower People: This one is directed towards teams and having them organized in such a way that it supports the kaizen principles. Therefore, leadership must set goals for their teams that are not contradictory.
- Be Transparent: Data is the strongest determining factor. Therefore, performance and improvements must be tracked with real data.
What are the 5 steps of Kaizen?
- Clarify the mandate. …
- Understand the current process. …
- Create the new standard process. …
- Create an action plan. …
- Implement action items.
