A Project Report On

Quality Management Approaches: A Comparative Evaluation of International Standards

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF Mrs. Habiba Abbasi

IILM Institute Gurgaon-122001 (BATCH: 2010-2012)

Submitted by: Saket Garg PG 20102324

Introduction: Quality is one parameter on which businesses and customers focus to make decision. Whether a company calls it Total Quality Management (TQM), Total Quality Control (TQC), or by some other designation, all such programs aim to improve operating processes, products and services. But quality can be a very subjective judgment. Your idea of what constitutes quality service, for instance, may be very different from that of the clerk who serves you at the grocery store. And the grocery store in Delhi may have a different standard of quality than the grocery store in Jaipur or Mumbai. That's where ISO 9000 fits in. The term refers to a series of universal standards that define a "Quality Assurance" system developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and adopted by 90 countries around the world. National standards representatives from more than 100 countries comprise the ISO. Its goal is to promote the international exchange of goods and services around the world, and to encourage worldwide cooperation in intellectual, scientific, technological and economic arenas. To gain ISO 9000 registration, a company must meet certain standards for quality assurance in its operations, as certified by a third-party registration agency. The quality assurance system, not the product or service itself, achieves the registration. An ISO 9000 registration says to customers: This company has a system in place to insure that any product or service it sells will consistently meet international standards of quality. Companies that gain ISO 9000 registration often benefit from reduced customer complaints, reduced operating costs and increased demand for their product or services. Although manufacturing industries first led the charge toward quality assurance, the ISO 9001 standard does not exclude any specific industries or economic sector. Your decision on whether to seek compliance will depend more on what your customers expect or the market requires. Some companies, for instance, do not buy parts and products from manufacturers who are not ISO 9000 registered. There are two standards are nearly identical; however, ISO 9001 applies to companies involved in the design of products or services, as well as their production and installation or implementation. ISO 9002 simply excludes the design element from a similar model for quality assurance.

Other designations of quality assurance standards include the QS 9000 series for companies manufacturing parts for the automotive industry, and the ISO 14000 standards for companies involved in environmental management systems specification. Quality management basics ISO 9000-series According to EN ISO 9000 quality management is defined as coordinated activities to direct and control an organization with regard to quality. Direction and control with regard to quality generally includes establishment of the quality policy and quality objectives, quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement: quality planning is focused on setting quality objectives and specifying necessary operational processes and related resources to fulfil the quality objectives quality control is focused on fulfilling quality requirements quality assurance is focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled quality improvement is focused on increasing the ability to fulfil the quality requirements

ISO Quality Standard Certification: Companies may probably wondering what ISO 9000 registration involves. In broad terms, it requires your company to design and implement a quality system that complies with the appropriate ISO standard (ISO 9001, ISO 9002, QS 9000, ISO 14000). Company will be asked to: Write a quality manual to describe your quality system Document how work in your organization is performed Design and implement a system to prevent problems from recurring Identify training needs of employees Calibrate measurement and test equipment Train employees how quality system operates Plan and conduct internal quality inspections, or audits Comply with other requirements of the Standard as needed The certificate saying that your company complies with the ISO 9000 standard can only be issued by an accredited, third-party registration agency. You should select your registrar at the beginning of the process, and find out in detail what they require before they will grant a

registration. Typically, the registrar will conduct a "reassessment audit" to identify areas of noncompliance so that you can correct those areas before the "registration audit." An ISO 9000 registration certificate is valid for three years, and the registration agency may conduct audits at six-month intervals to insure that the company continues to comply with the standard.

PDCA-cycle An important mindset of quality management is the so-called PDCA-cycle. This cycle including the four components Plan, Do, Check and Act (PDCA), was originally conceived by Walter Shewhart in the 1930`s, and later adopted by W. Edward Deming. The model provides in general a framework for the improvement of a process or system and is an iterative four-step quality strategy (cf. Deming 1982). Implementation of processes take actions to the outcome for necessary improvement (e.g. improve, standardize) monitor and evaluate processes and results against objectives and specifications establish objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance to specification Plan Do Check Act PDCA-cycle The cycle begins with investigation of the present situation, in order to formulate a plan for improvement (Plan). In the following the planned processes are realised (Do) and evaluated whether the desired improvement was obtained (Check). In positive case the measures become standard and/or can be reworked in a new iteration (Act). Herein a starting point for constant improvement of quality and the linked work with it can be seen. FMEA Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a method, originally developed for systems engineering, used to examine potential failures in products or processes. It is used to evaluate the priorities of risks, and helps to determine remedial actions to minimize the risk of the failure. It is used in many formal quality systems such as QS 9000 or ISO/TS 16949.

The basic process is to take a description of parts of a system, and list consequences if each part fails. In most formal systems the consequences are then evaluated by three criteria and associated risk indices: severity (S), likelihood of occurrence (O) (Note: This is also often known as probability (P)) inability of controls to detect it (D) Each index ranges from 1 (lowest risk) to 10 (highest risk). The overall risk of each failure is called Risk Priority Number (RPN) and the product of Severity (S), Occurrence (O), and Detection (D) rankings: RPN = S O D. The RPN (ranging from 1 to 1000) is used to prioritize all potential failures to decide upon actions leading to reduce the risk, usually by reducing likelihood of occurrence and improving controls for detecting the failure.

Fig. : Failure mode and effects analysis Quality management principles To lead and operate an organization successfully, it is necessary to direct and control it in a systematic and transparent manner. Success can result from implementing and maintaining a management system that is designed to continually improve performance while addressing the needs of all interested parties. Managing an organization encompasses quality management amongst other management disciplines. Eight quality management principles have been identified that can be used by top management in order to lead the organization towards improved performance. Customer focus: Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.

Leadership: Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction of the organization. They should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organizations objectives. Involvement of people: People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization's benefit. Process approach: A desired result is achieved more efficiently when activities and related resources are managed as a process. System approach to management: Identifying, understanding and managing interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organization's effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objectives. Continual improvement: Continual improvement of the organization's overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization. Factual approach to decision making: Effective decisions are based on the analysis of data and information. Mutually beneficial supplier relationships: An organization and its suppliers are interdependent and a mutually beneficial relationship enhances the ability of both to create value. These eight quality management principles form the basis for the quality management system standards within the ISO 9000 family. Quality management systems approach An approach to developing and implementing a quality management system consists of several steps including the following: Determining the needs and expectations of customers and other interested parties; Establishing the quality policy and quality objectives of the organization; Determining the processes and responsibilities necessary to attain the quality objectives; Determining and providing the resources necessary to attain the quality objectives; Establishing methods to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of each process;

 Applying these measures to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of each process; Determining means of preventing nonconformities and eliminating their causes; Establishing and applying a process for continual improvement of the quality management system. Companies helped by the Quality Standard in following way: RISK- A quality system can assist your company in determining its risk areas and implementing measures to reduce and control risk. By assessing the critical areas of your business, documenting the processes and measuring against the standards, you will be able to put in place contingency plans. IMPROVE QUALITY- By measuring and controlling your companies output, you can identify quality issues and implement appropriate measures to increase quality standards of your product. Customer satisfaction is the main objective, an increase in product quality will ensure continual customer support. MEASUREMENT - This refers to the measurement of effectiveness throughout your organization. It is amazing how many companies do not have in place ways of measuring the effectiveness of their processes. It is also important to measure your company against the opposition, the industry and most importantly your customer's satisfaction. PRODUCTIVITY - An increase in productivity can only be achieved by identifying deficiencies and implementing measures to improve these. It is essential to continually identify improvement opportunities and react to these promptly. PROFIT - An increase in productivity, quality, effectiveness and customer satisfaction will increase your bottom line. Your organization will grow in market share and gain a reputation for quality, this means growth and profits.

Quality assurance measures The main objective of quality assurance measures in information processes is to fulfil a required quality level. By using described probabilistic model, cause and effect diagram, and/or FMEA there are firstly to analyze existing processes and to detect existing quality gaps within these processes. Based on these facts adequate measures are to be developed and to be implemented to assure quality:

Error avoidance in sourcing means that probability of erroneous data can be reduced by using a better quality of sources. The quality of used software, hardware and data sources can be assured by different measures, e.g.: - from suppliers a defined quality level is required - used hardware, software and data have to be checked in regular intervals. - quality influence of human resources (operator) can be assured by continuously advanced training. Error control in processing means that within a process erroneous data has to be identified and reworked. The quality within processes can be assured by different measures, e.g.: - user guidelines are necessary, describing how errors will be identified and reworked. Evaluation methods Following the implementation of quality assurance measures into the information processes, quality parameter values are to be determined by using evaluation methods. According to ISO 19114 standard, quality evaluation methods are classified into direct and indirect methods. An indirect evaluation method is based on external knowledge. This external knowledge may include data quality overview elements like information about lineage. According to ISO 19115, lineage is defined as information about the events or source data used in constructing the data specified by the scope or lack of knowledge about lineage A direct evaluation method is based on inspection of items within a dataset. Furthermore it is subdivided into internal and external depending on the used reference data: - The internal direct evaluation method uses only data from the dataset itself. - The external direct evaluation method uses external reference data. can be derived. If direct external methods are necessary, a sampling procedure has to be carried out. One has to start with a small sampling size. A sampling size has to be increased as long as the result is statistic reliable. Finally a result has to be transferred to an entire database. Conclusion: Understanding how businesses stay in business is a difficult business. Most companies, most of the time, manage their quality performance pretty effectively, perhaps without knowing quite how they do it. There are few if any successful business strategies available in the public domain. If there were, there would be less corporate churn.

There are also very few tried, tested, accepted, available and affordable management tools and systems for use by quality managers (QMs). Quality management is a set of activities spread between diverse functions. These include finance teams, investor relations, strategy units, brand managers, corporate communications, risk assessment, the board, HR and IT. This fragmentation can encourage silo thinking and reduce synergy. In few words Quality management is the backbone of any business.