Total Quality Management - Essay Example

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT Total Quality Management Introduction Total quality management refersto a set of skills used for managing and improving the work. It emphasizes on continuous improvement. It integrates basic management techniques and improves the already existing techniques. Question 2 Internal customers: It is used to describe the set of people and colleagues working within the same organization and institution where the services are being provided. Various services and strategies are employed to boost their performance. External customers: This refers to a set of customers who need a given service and are located or work in other organization and institutions. (Craig, 2009) 2(b) Application of the TQM in the hotel industry The external customers: this refers to a set of all the hotel visitors. These are the people who visit the hotel with a view to utilize their services. Some of the services include lodging, dinning, conference meeting and other services. Hotels such as Hilton spend millions in advertising so as to attract and retain customers. The internal customers; refers to a set of services directed towards the workers working in the hotel. These include the front office personnel, the management of the hotel, different department and vendors and consultant. The internal customer is usually neglected in the big hotels and this has ripple negative effects on the external customer. 2(C) incorporating customer focus This are services designed to enhance the customers levels of satisfaction. These include; External customers After sales services provisions Assisting the customer with his luggage Responding to the customer complains and comments to improve/reinforce the existing services. Providing quality and modern services Internal customer Motivating them Training them Give the workers different responsibilities Management should respond to employees complains. 2(D) (i) consumer satisfaction measure On method is formulating a questionnaire. One question would be How can we serve you better Such a question will help the managerial team determine the level of customer satisfaction as well as provide an answer to the improvement question. Question should gear towards, services quality, speed and other aspects. 2(D) (ii) measuring satisfaction of internal customer. A questionnaire or forming focus groups (employees meet and the are asked question) can be used to evaluate the satisfaction. Typical question is Are you satisfied working for this hotel If not, state the reason and necessary changes 2(D) (iii) Some of the problems that will be encountered when evaluating and analyzing the results are: For the first question (How can we serve you better) Different customers will give different views about the hotel improvement methods. The list of the variables may be too long. For example one customer can talk about improving the time required to serve client, while another may comment about improving quality. The hotel management may be faced by numerous solutions and may not have capacity and capability of fulfilling each client wants. Question 2 Are you satisfied working for this hotel If not, state the reason and necessary changes Many internal customers may give the solution of increasing wages and salary and leave out vital issues like harsh management due to fear of victimization. Question 3 the funnel rules The four funnel rules are Rule 1 'leave the funnel fixed, aim at the target and make no adjustment' Rule2 'at drop k (k=1, 2, 3---, the marble will come to rest at point zk which is measured from target' that is zk is the error at drop k, move funnel to a distance -zk. Rule 3 'set the funnel at each drop right over the spot zk, which is measured from target 'no memory Rule 4 'set the funnel at each drop right over the spot (zk) where it last came ' (Source (Thomas, P. 2008. Tampering effects and diagnosis. Quality publishing.[online]. Available at http://www.qualityamerica.com/knowledgecente/articles/CQEIVH3f.html) Applying these rules to the situations described below. (1) A person who was recently trained then trains the next new employees of the organization (This is volition of rule number 4) which stipulates that "train the trainer" is unacceptable as this progresses the error. The error increases as the levels of training increases. Rule number 4 assumes 'no memory'. This can be compared to gauge calibration where a given gauge calibrates another gauge while the calibrated gauge calibrates another. Such calibration results to an error that is propagated downwards. (2) The use of trade barriers between countries (a country may increase the price of an import to reflect the price of their own product) This is a violation/tampering of rule number 2, this involves checking the results of a given last experiment and adjusting the current survey so as to make the results similar to a given observed phenomena. (3) A gambler increases a bet to cover previous loses This is an example of tampering with rule number '3'. It means that since you got a result 5 times more than you expected. You must reduce the current experiment parameters 5 times to cover for the mistakes. (4) An investor purchases a stock when its share price is increasing and sells as it is decreasing This is a violation of rule number 2; the investor cannot just sell the shares at a loss just because the shares are falling. According to rule number 2, the investor can compare this situation with previous situations where the shares continue declining, based on this he might decide to sell the shares. This comparison tampers with rule number 2. Question 4 displaying data Source of graph: Roy, S. latest global temperature. [Online]. Available at: http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ According to wainer, the most common mistakes that make it hard to interpret results from graphs are Changing scale at mid axis Confusing data ink ratio Drawing graphs without necessary studying the data carefully. (drawing graph without understanding its importance) Using many baselines Illegible graphs Incomplete graphs Incorrect graph Ambiguous graphs Drawing graphs that are out of content. From the graph given above it can be found that; The graph is not highly legible, it is hard to get the exact points on the graph, at some points the graph appears like shading. The scale seems so spaced and locating the actual temperature value may be difficult. The two graphs are not explicitly labeled hence it is hard for the person analyzing the graph to determine which graph represent a given parameter. No key is provided in the text as well as in the graph. The graph is of the different temperatures at the lower atmosphere, however the temperature given are in the range of -0.6 to 1.2. While to a layman the temperatures of the lower atmosphere are 200C to 400C, this makes it hard to analyze such graphical information. The graph main merits are Uniform scale The points of study are circled to aid in understanding the El Nino phenomena The title of the graph is also explicitly displayed The scales are labeled correctly. Question 5 Generic top-down flow diagram The top-down flow charts are used for studying or planning process. The maximum number of steps is 6 to 7. Ideally the process should produce only one result. A top-down flow chart identifies the inputs, throughputs and outputs. For the problem of a student selecting 3 courses to study next semester Question 5(a) main processes of the top-down flow diagram for choosing the topic to study the next semester 5(b) Causes and effects diagrams They are also referred to as the fishbone diagrams and are used in quality management to show the causes of a given event. To determine the problem, the causes are usually categorized with some of the most common categories being; machine, manpower, material and methods. 5b (ii) in the cause choosing problem, the main causes can be outlined in the diagram below 5 (c) constructing the flow chart 6 Poka Yoke This is the methods of preventing human error by making devices such that they cannot be connected wrongly. The USB port of most devices is made in such a way that it cannot be connected or plugged the other way round. The USB devices are connected to the USB port of the computer. There are many USB devices such as flash disks, cameras, mobile phones and printers. To prevent wrong connections, it is made in such a way that the device cannot be connected in a reversed way. The diagram below shows this special port References Roy, S. latest global temperature. [Online]. Available at: http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ Accessed 30 august 2009. Thomas, P. 2008. Tampering effects and diagnosis. Quality Publishing. [Online]. Available at http://www.qualityamerica.com/knowledgecente/articles/CQEIVH3f.html). Accessed 30 august 2009 Craig, H.2009. Turning customer service inside out! How poor internal customer service affects external customers. [Online]. Available at http://www.smallbusinesssuccess.biz/articles_week/customer_service_internal_external.htm Accessed 30 august 2009. Read More