Function of Quality Management - Essay Example

Quality management Name Institution Date Table of Contents Running Head: QUALITY MANAGEMENT 1 Quality management 1 Table of Contents 2 QUALITY MANAGEMENT 20 2 Introduction 3 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) 3 Application 5 Impacts and accomplishments 5 Some winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award 6 Emirate Airlines and quality management 11 ISO in Emirate Airlines 12 Expectations 14 Six Sigma in Emirate Airlines 15 Conclusion 18 Reference 18 Introduction Quality is a critical issue facing organizational performance and competitiveness. Successful Japanese efforts made U.S industries to realize how important quality is to organizations in terms of competitive advantage while also realizing how failure in developing a quality system may result in business failure. With customers including international clients demanding high quality and the competitors endeavoring to respond to these demands, various businesses embarked on total quality management (TQM) considering this as primary in enhancing the overall performance. However, as expectations of customers grew higher and the initiatives on performance improvement became implemented, quality evolved right from the specific focus on products to the organization wide effort. As well, it evolved from the separate function of manufacturing to the business initiative that is strategic. The function of quality expanded consequently coming with new practices on continuous improvement as well as programs recognizing inventive and effectual quality practices. In discussing the pertinent issues related to quality management, this paper seeks to discuss and compare Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) The much recognized Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is an award that the president of U.S.A presents annually to organizations demonstrating total excellence not only in quality, but also performance. It is currently the highest honor in U.S.A with regards to innovation as well as performance excellence. This particular award derives its name from Malcolm Baldrige, the secretary of commerce who was a major proponent of the main concern of the program (quality management) and who worked in President Reagan’s administration right from 1981 to his death in 1987 during the rodeo accident. The congress, through the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987 (Public Law 100–107) is credited for the establishment of the highly recognized Baldrige National Quality Program along with its associated award. Its establishment resulted from the attempts by the congress to jumpstart the small and slow growth of the quality movement in the U.S. The program was established for the manufacturers, the service businesses, as well as the small businesses and was primarily designed to create awareness on quality management while recognizing the American firms with successful implementation of quality-management systems. Recognizing quality, recognizing business achievements among U.S organizations, and publicizing organizations with better performance strategies are some of the core activities in the program (Cooper, 2002). Organizations can receive three awards annually according to the six categories comprising small business, manufacturing, education, healthcare and non-profit and service company. The six eligibility categories can receive awards totaling to 18 annually. Its name was changed to Baldrige Performance Excellence Program so as to highlight the evolution in the quality management field. Quality management had evolved from a narrow focus on customer quality, product and service to a wider, strategic view on the general organizational quality (termed as performance excellence). The awards are administered by Baldrige Performance Excellence Program which is managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with contributions from the private sector. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency in the department of commerce that also acts as the base of the program. Application In order to apply for the awards the organizations have to ensure that all details pertaining to their achievements as well as improvements in leadership, measurement, strategic planning, knowledge management, process management, and results are included in their submissions. Other required information includes workforce, customer and market focus, and analysis. Impacts and accomplishments Since the presentation of the first awards in 1988 (over two decades ago), there has been a significant growth in both the stature as well as the impact of the Baldrige National Quality Program. Currently, the program, the awarding criteria applied in performance excellence, as well as the recipients of the Baldrige awards are not only emulated, but also admired internationally. The criteria for the performance excellence have been widely noted as having contributed much to the general improvement in U.S organizations. According to Black & Crabtree (2007), the local as well as state quality programs designed following the Baldrige program have grown from 10 to over 40 in a span of two decades. The quality programs operating internationally are estimated to be 80, where many are designed after the Baldrige program including a particular one Japan established in 1996. Since 1988, applications totaling 1,394 have also been presented from a variety of organizations for Baldrige Awards. Additionally, the net private payback to U.S’s general economy had an estimation of $24.65 billion compared to social costs of $119 million involved in the program, hence giving a ration of 207: 1 with regards to benefits and costs respectively. Since the program’s commencement in 1987, over two million copies have also been dispersed to various individuals as well as organizations in U.S and internationally. In 2010, over 2,100,000 copies of this criteria had been accessed and downloaded from the website of Baldrige Some winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award In 2009, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (manufacturing), MidwayUSA (small business), AtlantiCare (health care) and Heartland Health (health care) won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige awards. In 2008, the winners were Cargill Corn Milling North America (manufacturing), Poudre Valley Health System (health care) and Iredell-Statesville Schools (education). In 2007, the winners of this award comprised PRO-TEC Coating Co. (small business), Mercy Health Systems (health care), Sharp HealthCare (health care), and City of Coral Springs (nonprofit). A comparison of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) with other quality awards The various qualities of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award highlight crucial quality issues that are also crucial in other national and regional quality awards. The Deming prize of Japan, European Quality Award, Canadian Quality Award, and Australian Quality Award are major quality awards in various regions that Endeavour to increase quality I various organizations through various strategies and measurements. When the awards are put in comparison with Malcolm Baldrige Award, significant similarities are seen in the criteria applied in assessing the award applicants. Apart from this, all award programs make use of the initiatives for continuous improvement so as to maintain their position as the benchmarks in the quality system and as the principals in development of the global quality model (Shiba & Walden, 2001). A table comparing the various awards and indicating how award and how these frameworks help organizations deliver better performance Malcolm Baldrige Award (U.S) European Quality Award Deming Prize (Japan) Canadian Quality Award Australian Quality Award Objectives • helping enhance performance practices as well as capabilities. Facilitation of communication as well as sharing of the best practices among the U.S. organizations. • serving as the working tool for the understanding and management of organizational performance, its planning, training as well as assessment. Stimulating and helping the European organizations in enhancing customer as well as employee satisfaction, hence impact on the society and the business results. • supporting the European managers’ inputs I initiating total quality management as well as achievement of the competitive advantage. • evaluating and realizing methods of quality control (companywide) for the Japanese businesses. • encouraging adoption of the quality principles, the practices and the processes in Canada. • increasing profitability, responsiveness And also efficiency of various organizations through con-tinuous improvement. • bringing High standards of living to Canadians • giving the Australian organizations the required drive and understanding to achieve the finest quality practices worldwide. • securing the quality council of Australia as the chief quality organization in the commonwealth. • creating national wealth. Quality principles • Companies have to ensure direction along with customer focus. • Customers judge quality as well as performance. •Organizational as well as Individual learning are necessary. • Employees together with partners are crucial to the company success. • Success needs capacity for flexibility as well as change • Market leadership needs the future orientation. • innovation is crucial to a meaningful Change. . • Management needs factual analysis. • Public responsibility remains vital. • Performance measurement must focus on the results. • A systems perspective remains pivotal. • Customer focus. • Supplier partnerships. • People development as well as involvement. • Processes together with facts. • Continuous improve-ment as well as innovation. • Leadership and the Purpose consistency. • Public responsibility. • Results orientation. • Create a vision while demonstrating commitment. • Learning new philosophy. • Understand inspection. • Stop making only cost-based decisions. • continuos and constant improvement. • Institute training. • Institute leadership. • removing fear. • Optimize team efforts. • Eliminate exhortations. • eradicating numerical quotas as well as management by objective. • Remove hindrances to delight in workmanship. • Encourage education Along with self-improvement. • Take action Cooperation, team and partnering results in win-win. • Leadership is a result of involvement and example. • Primary focus should be customer. • Respect and support heighten worker potential. • Strategies should remain process oriented while also prevention based. • Companies should constantly improve methods and result. • Decisions made must have basis on the factual Data. • Companies obligated to the stakeholders as well as the General Society. • quality defined by the customers. . • All processes are changeable. • Improved process results in improved output. • Decisions should be based on facts. • Improvement must be planned. •individuals work in a system. • People are the most essential resource. • Leadership is about direction and support. • Continuous improvement needs continual learning. Criteria 1. Leadership. 2. Strategic planning. 3. Customer focus and market focus. 4. Information together with analysis. 5. Focus on human resource. 6. Process management. 7. Business results. 1.Leadership. 2. Policy along with strategy. 3. People management. 4. Resources. 5. Processes. 6. Customer satisfaction. 7. People satisfaction. 8. Societal Impact. 9. Business results 1. Policies. 2. Organization. 3. Information. 4.Standardization. 5. Human resources. 6. Quality assurance. 7. Maintenance. 8. Improvement. 9. Effects. 10. Future plans 1. Leadership. 2. Planning. 3. Customer focus. 4. People focus. 5. Process management. 6. Supplier focus. 7. Organizational performance. 1. Leadership. 2. Strategy, policy and also Planning. 3. Information along with analysis. 4. People. 5. Customer focus. 6. Quality of process, product plus service. 7. Organizational performance. The European Quality Award criteria places most emphasis on customer satisfaction (20%) and least emphasis on impact on society (6%). meanwhile, Canadian Quality Award criteria places its most emphasis on organizational performance (24%) and its least emphasis on supplier focus (5%). On Australian Quality Award, the most emphasis is on people and quality of processes (both 20%) and least emphasis on strategy, policy and planning (8%) along with information and analyses (8%). The Deming Prize of Japan, however, places equal emphasis on all of the areas (Charantimath, 20O3). Emirate Airlines and quality management Emirate Airlines is an international airline company based in Dubai Emirate, in United Arab Emirates. Bennett (2008) states that this is the largest airline in the whole of Middle East, with its base being in Dubai International Airport. The airline company operates more than 2,450 flights on a weekly basis right from the hub (Terminal 3) to about 111 cities located in 62 nations in six continents. The airline is part of the Emirate Groups, which is government-owned and which employees more than 50,000 employees. Emirate is a rapidly growing and award winning airline that has enabled the Emirate Groups achieve tremendous recognition. Currently, the company has orders totaling to more than US$ 58 billion for its aircrafts. Emirate Airlines is considered as a tremendously attractive model of business, hence has enabled the airline company become the fastest growing airline. Bennett (2008) also states that this company is recognized within the airline industry for its excellent services throughout the world. This success, however, is greatly attributed to the company’s attention to the elemental strategic details. The company has successfully flourished through competition. Emirate Airlines has received awards mainly due to some new processes this great company has developed so as to enhance the timeliness as well as the quality of its responses to the customer inquiries, their compliments and their concerns. The team in the Emirate Airlines has also enabled business as well as process enhancements at the airline company’s centre for customer contact to enhance response time while also ensuring that customers receive accurate as well as relevant answers to their various concerns. Following this implementation, a higher improvement in customer response has been experienced, where 99.9% of the customer emails have received response within a period of three days (Oxford Business Group, 2008). The company is hailed as operating three flights out of the ten commercial flights in the world that fly non-stop from Dubai to places like Los Angeles, Houston as well as San Francisco. The company has made a strong brand name mainly as the aviation industry leader, especially in relation to service excellence, rapid growth, and constant profitability. Last year this airline company was chosen and voted for by Skytrax (research consultancy company) as eighth best worldwide. In February this year, it was given the title of Airline of the Year by the Air Transport World. These awards were given on the basis of recognition of commitment to safety, operational excellence, trendsetters in customer service, financial condition, as well as annual profit in a 22-year consecutive period. The airline company, in search of quality in its service delivery and operations, currently seeks to expand the number of destinations the company flights travel. While implementing this, the company recognizes the need to employ high quality staff to join this multi-cultural team. The company, as always, also seeks to provide professional development mainly to its staff in order to aid them in developing some new skills while also helping them in successful development of their careers (Bamber, 2009). ISO in Emirate Airlines ISO is an abbreviation of International Organization for Standardization. This is the world’s greatest developer of International Standards and which publishes the International Standards. It is a non-governmental organization and a network of institutes of national standards from 162 countries with the Central Secretariat based in Geneva, Switzerland. ISO enables the reaching of consensus on the solutions meeting the business requirements as well as the broader society needs. The body promulgates propriety, industrial, as well as commercial standards worldwide (United Nations, 2005). Emirates has chosen ISO because apart from being globally recognized, ISO is the acceptable benchmarking as well as evaluation system effective in assessing operational management as well as control systems. ISO used the internationally acceptable quality principles hence ensuring audits are carried out according to required standard and consistently. This has the advantages of improving the flight safety, facilitation of code share, audit reduction, customer satisfaction, as well as gauging and improving the competitive advantage of the company against other international competitors. Emirate Airlines developed the quality management system for its flight services as a comprehensive exercise aimed at implementing ISO in some selected operational areas. Quality consultants assist in the process of certification. Constitution of a core group which entails leadership from the management team ensures that the quality management system that the flight services develop meets ISO requirements. The company also implements ISO through ensuring quality as well as efficiency in the highest standards throughout every business sphere. The company also has a conceptualization of business plan while also monitoring effectiveness as well as efficiency strategy implementation. The company also considers unique strategies to develop profitable business practices that also satisfy the demands of the market and society as a whole. Emirates Airlines also has leveraged the domain knowledge of international airline into a primary profit center, entailing the development of the industry’s software. This strategy of applying their knowledge as well as trained programmers for creation of an IT development company used in the international airline industry has been hailed as excellent addition (Angwin et al, 2006). The company also conducts extensive training on aviation to the staff as a fundamental strategy to increase and improve aviation talent in the company. This also forms great foot prints as other people within the industry receive training. In terms of tourism, the company has successfully positioned itself in the resort as well as tourism space, as stated in Graham et al (2010). This has been done through creation as well as acquisition of several resorts along with spas. Additionally, tourism service has been built around the business area, hence propelling growth. Therefore, in Emirate Airlines, assessment of every department’s performances has enabled the company to succeed tremendously in terms of quality. Expectations With the implementation of ISO standards, the company will discover not only the processes, but also the sub processes that are crucial in supporting the operations of flights. Meeting with the respective flight service departments becomes elemental in analyzing the processes as well as developing a process manual. In order to make sure that quality objectives, processes as well as objectives are not only properly understood but also complied with, the flight staff have to be given training. The company will also achieve efficiency benefits, especially cost-efficiency benefits. These are mainly in audit reductions as the scope extends to proper documentation as well as implementation of standard procedures of operation in a variety of operational areas including ground handling, flight operations, flight dispatch, aircraft engineering, security, and cargo. While implementing the ISO, the company positions itself to compete with other similar companies thereby presenting it with opportunities of achieving a higher competitive advantage. Six Sigma in Emirate Airlines Six Sigma is the quality discipline focusing mainly on product as well as service excellence in order to form a culture demanding perfection. This implies that the goods and services have to reach the right people and market in the right time every time. Six sigma takes into considerations the level of accuracy as well as well as defects in every opportunity. Six sigma is fundamental in the current world of the declining prices of products. In Emirate Airlines, Six sigma is crucial to successful competition with the best companies globally. Apart from this, six sigma is also employed in establishing standard languages as well as approaches across the functions and also across businesses. This also assists in developing the coming generation of leaders (Jang, et al., 2004). An illustration of six sigma indicating nominal distribution Mean (m=0), Standard Deviation (s=1) When any process is measured, outputs (products and services) greatly vary in look, size, feel as and other measurable characteristics. The typical output value of a process is measured through mean. Six sigma is crucial in the Emirate airlines in that great success is experienced in if six sigma is applied on the analyses of its advance ticket purchases and the non-refundable fares, compliance to the hotel policies that are preferred, 24/7 services offered by the travel agency, reclaim of the value added tax, as well as consideration of the project that examines the airline contracts. Six sigma is applied in the Emirate Airlines through procedures involving defining, measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling to achieve the required success. In defining, the company defines the process goals according to the main parameters (those significant to quality and production) according to requirement of customers (Voice Of Customer). Steps that the company involves in measuring include collecting the relevant information for proper assessment of a problem. This goes to the next step which is analyzing and where the company employs the use of statistical tools to appropriately point out the main cause of the given problem. From here, improvement is done by the company through correcting the found problem and not just merely the symptoms. Finally, the company does control by developing a plan so as to ensure that the found problems are fixed permanently. The impending fuel increase presents a major challenge to several companies including the airline companies, as stated in Dettmer (2007). As such, concerning the fuel crisis that is globally experienced, a six sigma company like the Emirate Airlines should ensure some cuts so as to remain operational and competitive. In as much as the impacts of the fuel crisis can be minimally experienced in some companies in selected countries like Philippines, companies in other nations experience quite a different effect. This hence requires Emirate Airlines and other companies to ensure cuts on flights as well as employees. The company as such needs to ensure implementation of several measures crucial in cost cutting so as to cope with and handle effectively the issues regarding increasing fuel costs. The Emirate Airlines has enhanced the consistency of the repair operations through the increment of the mean time existing between the engine overhauls from 300 to over 900 hours. Previously before using six sigma, only about 40% of the engines overhauled performed well in the operational tests originally and as such needed reworking. Currently, the first time field return is over 90%. Conclusion In the current global competition experienced by various organizations, greater competitive advantage and larger market share have dominated the aims of various organizations. Faced with such conditions, organizations have discovered how significant quality is to these values, making quality a key strategy in ensuring business success. However, with various quality institutes coming together and developing an International Organization for Standardization, quality management has become necessary for a successful business operation worldwide. Complying with this modern trend, Emirate Airlines has been at the forefront in ensuring quality in its services involving flight operations and has received numerous awards. Reference Oxford Business Group. (2008). The Report: Dubai 2008. Dubai Internet City: Oxford Business Group. United Nations. (2005). 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