University of Lagos,

Faculty of Management Sciences,

Department of Business Administration
Course Code/Title: BUS 433 – Total Quality Management

PART ONE
QUALITY MANAGEMENT GURUS: THEIR PHILOSPHIES AND
CONTRIBUTIONS
Defining Quality and quality Management
The word quality is a multi-faceted notion and has been subjected to numerous
interpretations and perspectives. The diverse conceptualizations, meanings and
descriptions of quality is a reflection of the evolution and trend marking the history
and development of quality management system. Quality, literarily mean activities
designed to improve firm and its products (goods or services). Quality also means
learning what the company is doing and how to do it better. Quality describes
effort and policies to discover ways to facilitate change towards improving quality
of outputs to customers. Some of the notable descriptions of quality are:
✓ Zero defects (Crosby, 1979)
✓ Customer focus (Garvin, 1988; Juran, 1989)
✓ Having both technical (tangible) and functional (intangible) dimensions
(Gronroos, 1984)
✓ Ability to meet the present and future needs of the customers (Deming,
1986)
✓ Customers as the sole creator of value (Vargo & Lusch, 2016)
✓ Control of variability (Shewhart, 1931)
✓ Drive towards sustainability (Craig & Lemon, 2008)
✓ Fitness for purpose or use (Juran, 1988)
✓ Value for money (Feigenbaum, 1991)
✓ Avoidance of loss (Ross, 1993)
✓ Conformance to specification - stated or implied (Crosby, 1965)
✓ Performance superiority (Bitner & Hubert, 1994).
✓ Customer as the sole judge of value (Jason, Mattias, & Ida, 2020).

The contemporary and widely accepted understanding of the concept of quality

focus on customer-centric, that is meeting or exceeding customer needs and
expectations. Quality management is defined as the act of overseeing all activities
and tasks needed to maintain a desired level of excellence. Quality management
includes the determination of a quality policy, creating and implementing quality
planning and assurance, and quality control and quality improvement.

A guru, by description and definition, is a good person, a wise person and a

teacher. Therefore, a quality guru should be all of these, plus developing a concept
and approach to quality within business that has made a major and significant
impact.
Quality gurus have done and develop a number principles and ideologies that
shape our knowledge and understanding of quality and quality management.
Quality management guru have been grouped into three categories:
i. Early 1950’s Americans who took the messages of quality to Japan
ii. Late 1950’s Japanese who developed new concepts in response to the
Americans
iii. 1970’s-1980’s Western gurus who followed the Japanese industrial success
Edwards W. Deming
Placed great importance and responsibility on management, at both the individual
and company level, believing management is responsible for 94% of quality
problems. His fourteen-point plan is a complete philosophy of management that
can be applied to small or large organisations in the public, private or service
sectors:
i. Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service
ii. Adopt the new philosophy. We can no longer live with commonly accepted
levels of delay, mistakes and defective workmanship
iii. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Instead, require statistical evidence
that quality is built in
iv. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price
v. Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the system
vi. Institute modern methods of training on the job
vii. Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers, The
responsibility of foremen must be changed from numbers to quality
viii. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company
ix. Break down barriers between departments
x. Eliminate numerical goals, posters and slogans for the workforce asking for
new levels of productivity without providing methods
xi. Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas
xii. Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and their right to
pride of workmanship
xiii. Institute a vigorous programme of education and retraining
xiv. Create a structure in top management that will push on the above points
every day

He believed that adoption of, and action on, the fourteen points was a signal that
management intended to stay in business.

Deming, Dr Shewhart
Deming Shewhart developed the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle also known
as the Deming cycle.
➢ The plan or planning phase is used to define the root cause of a problem or a
process that can potentially be improved.
➢ In the do phase of the cycle, a problem-solving technique (solution) to solve
a potential problem(s) or way to improve the process is developed.
➢ The check phase is used to test idea advocated to solve the problem and see
if it is actually working.
➢ The act phase permits the implementation of the solution (as long as it is
effective), develop or use new standard, and seek for new approach to
improve the process.

PDCA is a universal improvement methodology, the idea being to constantly

improve, and reduce the difference between the requirements of the customers and
the performance of the process. The cycle is about learning and ongoing
improvement, learning what works and what does not in a systematic way; and the
cycle automaticity repeated, after one cycle is complete.

Joseph M Juran
Juran developed the quality trilogy – quality planning, quality control and quality
improvement. Good quality management requires quality actions to be planned
out, improved and controlled. The process achieves control at one level of quality
performance, then plans are made to improve the performance on a project-by-
project basis, using tools and techniques such as Pareto analysis. This activity
eventually achieves breakthrough to an improved level, which is again controlled,
to prevent any deterioration. Juran believed quality is associated with customer
satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the product, and emphasized the necessity for
ongoing quality improvement through a succession of small improvement projects
carried out across the organisation.
His ten steps to quality improvement are:
i. Build awareness of the need and opportunity for improvement
ii. Set goals for improvement
iii. Organise to reach the goals
iv. Provide training
v. Carry out projects to solve problems
vi. Report progress
vii. Give recognition
viii. Communicate results
ix. Keep score of improvements achieved
x. Maintain momentum He concentrated not just on the end customer, but on
other external and internal customers.

Kaoru Ishikawa
Kaora made many contributions to quality, the most noteworthy being his total
quality viewpoint, company-wide quality control, his emphasis on the human side
of quality, the Ishikawa diagram and the assembly and use of the “seven basic tools
of quality”:
i. Pareto analysis - which are the big problems?
ii. Cause and effect diagrams -what cause the problems?
iii. Stratification - how is the data made up?
iv. Check sheets - how often it occurs or is done?
v. Histograms - what do overall variations look like?
vi. Scatter charts - what are the relationships between factors?
vii. Process control charts - which variations to control and how?

Kaoru believed these seven tools should be known widely in an organisation

and used to analyse problems and develop improvements. Used together they
form a powerful kit.

Genichi Taguchi
Taguchi believed it is preferable to design product that is robust or insensitive to
variation in the manufacturing process, rather than attempt to control all the many
variations during actual manufacturing. To put this idea into practice, he took the
already established knowledge on experimental design and made it more usable
and practical for quality professionals. His message was concerned with the routine
optimisation of product and process prior to manufacture rather than quality
through inspection. “Taguchi methodology” is fundamentally a prototyping
method that enables the designer to identify the optimal settings to produce a
robust product that can survive manufacturing time after time, piece after piece,
and provide what the customer wants. Quality and reliability are pushed back to
the design stage where they really belong. Taguchi broke down off-line quality into
three stages:
i. System design
ii. Parameter design
iii. Tolerance design

Shigeo Shingois
Shigeo is strongly associated with Just-in-Time manufacturing, and was the
inventor of the single minute exchange of die (SMED) system, in which set up
times are reduced from hours to minutes, and the Poka-Yoke (mistake proofing)
system. In Poka Yoke, defects are examined, the production system stopped and
immediate feedback given so that the root causes of the problem may be identified
and prevented from occurring again. Shigeo distinguishes between “errors”, which
are inevitable, and “defects”, which result when an error reaches a customer, and
the aim of Poka-Yoke is to stop errors becoming defects. Defects arise because
errors are made and there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the two. Zero
quality control is the ideal production system and this requires both Poka-Yoke and
source inspections.

Philip B Crosby
Crosby is known for the concepts of “Quality is Free” and “Zero Defects”, and his
quality improvement process is based on his four absolutes of quality:
i. Quality is conformance to requirements
ii. The system of quality is prevention
iii. The performance standard is zero defect
iv. The measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance
He further developed fourteen steps to quality improvement, namely:
i. Management is committed to a formalised quality policy
 ii. Form a management level quality improvement team (QIT) with
responsibility for quality improvement process planning and
administration
iii. Determine where current and potential quality problems lie
iv. Evaluate the cost of quality and explain its use as a management tool to
measure waste
v. Raise quality awareness and personal concern for quality amongst all
employees.
vi. Take corrective actions, using established formal systems to remove the
root causes of problems
vii. Establish a zero defects committee and programme
viii. Train all employees in quality improvement
ix. Hold a Zero Defects Day to broadcast the change and as a management
recommitment and employee commitment
x. Encourage individuals and groups to set improvement goals
xi. Encourage employees to communicate to management any obstacles they
face in attaining their improvement goals
xii. Give formal recognition to all participants
xiii. Establish quality councils for quality management information sharing
xiv. Do it all over again – form a new quality improvement team

Tom Peters
Tom identified leadership as being central to the quality improvement process,
discarding the word “Management” for “Leadership”. The new role is that of a
facilitator, and the basis is “Managing by walking about” (MBWA), enabling the
leader to keep in touch with customers, innovation and people as the three main
areas in the pursuit of excellence. Peters asserts that, when effective leader walks,
at least 3 major activities are happening:
i. Listening suggests caring
ii. Teaching values are transmitted
iii. Facilitating able to give on-the-spot help

Having researched successful American organisations, Peters concluded that any

intelligent approach to organising had to encompass, and treat as interdependent,
seven variables, in what became known as the McKinsey 7-S Framework of
change management model. The seven elements are: shared value, skills, style,
staff, structure, systems, and strategy
PART TWO
CONTINOUS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
The overriding goal of quality management is to keep the variations to a minimum
or at least to acceptable standards. For example, if the ideal weight of a product is
10Kg, acceptable standard weight may be 9.99Kg. Whether a firm already has a
mature quality management system-QMS, or attempting establishing one, there are
a number of tactics to continuously improve quality management process and
system and ensure that it contribute continuously to business success and customer
satisfaction. One of the notable approaches is the Business Process Management
lifecycle (BPM). The BPM lifecycle model (depicts in Figure 1) describes the
stages in managing business processes and highlights how a BPM initiative can be
contemplated to arrive at improved process.

Source: Dumas, La Rosa, & Reijers, 2013.

The BPM steps are:
✔ Process identification
✔ Process discovery
✔ Process analysis
✔ Process redesign
✔ Process implementation
✔ Process monitoring and controlling

Process identification
This is connected to the identification and setting up of the BPM initiatives,
including a high-level description of the firm’s major processes and an evaluation
of their current state. The main result of this stage is process architecture which
identifies firm’s main processes, describes the relationships between them and
defines criteria for prioritizing them.
Process discovery
With process discovery, the focus shift from the firm’s overall portfolio of process
(multi-process management) to one specific process. This description is
distinguished as an ideal process model.
Process analysis
Analytical tools and techniques such as Pareto effect, cost of quality, etc. are
applied during the process analysis to determine weaknesses in the (chosen)
process and the impact of each weakness.
Process redesign
Process redesign addresses the most important weaknesses in the process and
delivers a reworked design for the process, called the to-be process model. This
model is subsequently adopted as the basis of process implementation.
Process implementation
Process implementation typically encompasses information system to measure to
facilitate organizational change.
Process monitoring and controlling
Once the redesigned process is implemented, the process monitoring and
controlling phase collects and analyzes data continually to ensure their compliance
with performance and conformance objectives. Deviations from these objectives
and change in the business environment or the firm’s goals trigger an iteration of
the BPM lifecycle.

Reading Materials
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Bessant, J., Caffyn, S., Gilbert, J., Harding, R., & Webb, S. (1994). Rediscovering
continuous improvement. Technovation, 14(1), 17-29.
Crosby, P.B. (1984). Quality without tears: The art of hassle-free management. New
York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Cooper, R., & Kaplan, R.S. (1988). Measure costs right: Make the right decisions.
Harvard Business Review, 66(5), 96–97.
Cooper, R. (1988). The rise of activity-based costing – Part I: what is an activity-based
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Deming, W.E. (1986). Out of the crisis. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
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Dumas, M., La Rosa, M., Mendling, J., & Reijers, H. (2013). Fundamentals of business
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