Quality management

Quality management Vincent A Ssembatya

Definitions • Quality: Fitness for purpose; conforming to preset products and process (ISO 9000) standards; products and services meeting needs/satisfaction of customers • Quality Assurance: All policies and processes directed at ensuring enhancement of quality and standards of educational provision

Quality management has four main components: • quality planning, • quality control, • quality assurance and • quality improvement.

Quality Management continued • Quality management is focused not only on product/service quality, but also the means to achieve it. Quality management uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality.

Quality management evolution • Quality management is a recent phenomenon. Advanced civilizations that supported the arts and crafts allowed clients to choose goods meeting higher quality standards than normal goods. • Musket Production: The aim was to produce large numbers of the same goods – the model of assembly lines.

QM Evolution • The next step forward sought to improve industrial efficiency and led to the foundation for quality management, including aspects like standardization and adopting improved practices; This further led to production against lower cost with increased efficiency. • W. Edwards Deming later applied statistical process control methods in the United States during World War II, thereby successfully improving quality in the manufacture of munitions and other strategically important products.

Demming Philosophy • Demming’s philosophy may be interpreted by learning and understanding the deeper insights and include: • Break down barriers between departments • Management should learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership • Improve constantly • Institute a programme of education and self-improvement

Demming Continued • In the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese goods were synonymous with cheapness and low quality, but over time their quality initiatives began to be successful, with Japan achieving very high levels of quality in products from the 1970s onward.

ISO 9000 series • The ISO 9000 series of standards are probably the best known International standards for quality management.

Principles forISO 9001:2008 • Quality management adopts a number of management principles[3] that can be used by top management to guide their organizations towards improved performance. The principles include: • Customer focus • Since the organizations depend on their customers, therefore they should: understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and try to exceed the expectations of customers. • An organization attains customer focus when all people in the organization know both the internal and external customers and also what customer requirements must be met to ensure that both the internal and external customers are satisfied.

Leadership • Leaders of an organization establish unity of purpose and direction of it. They should go for creation and maintenance of such an internal environment, in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization's quality objective. • Involvement of people • People at all levels of an organization are the essence of it. Their complete involvement enables their abilities to be used for the benefit of the organization.

Process approach • The desired result can be achieved when activities and related resources are managed in an organization as process. • System approach to management • An organization's effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its quality objectives are contributed by identifying, understanding and managing all interrelated processes as a system.

Continual improvement • One of the permanent quality objectives of an organization should be the continual improvement of its overall performance. • Factual approach to decision making • Effective decisions are always based on the data analysis and information. • Mutually beneficial supplier relationships • Since an organization and its suppliers are interdependent, therefore a mutually beneficial relationship between them increases the ability of both to add value.

Quality improvement • There are many methods for quality improvement. These cover product improvement, process improvement and people based improvement. In the following list are methods of quality management and techniques that incorporate and drive quality improvement:

Quality improvement • PDCA — plan, do, check, act cycle for quality control purposes. (Six Sigma's DMAIC method (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) may be viewed as a particular implementation of this. • TQM — total quality management is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. • BPR — business process reengineering, a management approach aiming at 'clean slate' improvements (That is, ignoring existing practices).

PLAN - identify problems faced, plan solution DO changes on a small scale first to test whether they will work ACT to get the greatest benefit from changes: Implement on a large scale if successful CHECK to see if changes are working: achieving desired improvements QUALITY Quality Assurance System PDCA

There is need to consider carefully which quality improvement methods to adopt. • It is important not to underestimate the people factors, such as culture, in selecting a quality improvement approach. Any improvement (change) takes time to implement, gain acceptance and stabilize as accepted practice. Improvement must allow pauses between implementing new changes so that the change is stabilized and assessed as a real improvement, before the next improvement is made (hence continual improvement, not continuous improvement).

Improvements that change the culture take longer as they have to overcome greater resistance to change. It is easier and often more effective to work within the existing cultural boundaries and make small improvements than to make major transformational changes. • On the other hand, transformational change works best when an enterprise faces a crisis and needs to make major changes in order to survive.

Quality terms • Quality Improvement can be distinguished from Quality Control in that Quality Improvement is the purposeful change of a process to improve the reliability of achieving an outcome. • Quality Control is the ongoing effort to maintain the integrity of a process to maintain the reliability of achieving an outcome. • Quality Assurance is the planned or systematic actions necessary to provide enough confidence that a product or service will satisfy the given requirements.

THE MISSION OF MAKERERE UNIVERSITY QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEM Promote confidence in: • Quality of academic provision (Teaching and Learning, Research and KTP) • Standard of awards of Makerere University • Measures taken to safeguard, enhance and effectively manage quality assurance system

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES • Establish an efficient and effective QA policy and strategy • Establish an efficient and effective QA system • Ensure effective staff and student performance • Provide leadership in the transformation of core QA business processes

PROCESSES ELEMENTS OF A QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEM Organizational leadership & management Personnel: Training Rewards QUALITY OUTPUTS Customers INPUTS Suppliers Documentation Standards Assessment

QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEM • Facilities • Programs • Processes • Financial resources • Staff • Students • Management • Government support • All are important. A chain is as strong as its weakest link

Thank you

Quality management