Seven Basic Quality tools documents
Definition of Quality Management -- it is a method for ensuring that all the activities necessary to design, develop and implement a product or service are effective and efficient with respect to the system and its performance. It is also a principle set by the company to endure the continuous advocacy of quality services and products, or the further improvement of it.
Welcome to QT-charts knowledge base section. Hopefully you will find some of them useful in your work.
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Key Business Factors
By Tash Anestos (Original text on www.freequality.org)In the world of business, firms are
typically measured by the level of success they have achieved in the market
place. Every firm desires to attain
success, thus surpassing the competition and planting a profitable foothold
into their industry of choice. All too
often, the means that the successful firms have used to gain this competitive
advantage becomes blurred by the focus on the end-result, success. Key Business Factors, also known as KBF’s,
can be found within the elusive means to this end. KBF’s, the foundation upon which a given
firm’s formula for success is enacted, can be likened to the way-signs chosen
to direct a firm throughout its arduous road to success. Specifically, KBF’s are measures or
indicators that are significantly related to the business success of a
particular firm.
If
KBF’s are so easily defined, why is it that firms fail to successfully
incorporate them into their infrastructure?
Typically, firms tend to forget their own self-declared motivations
behind the actions they choose to execute on a daily basis. Due to the ever-increasing size and
multiplying divisions within the average firm, the core elements intended to
guide the firm’s decisions, often become lost in the multi-directional atmosphere. KBF’s ,
as declared core elements which glue the firm’s actions together through
specified indicators, act as the prerequisite focus designed to guide a firm’s
actions. The business criteria for the
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award states, “The measures or indicators you select should best represent the
factors that lead to improved customer, operational, and financial performance.
A comprehensive set of measures or indicators tied to customer and/or
organizational performance requirements represents a clear basis for aligning
all activities with your organization’s goals.” Through understanding, identifying,
integrating, and synthesizing KBF’s into core business practices, the critical
gap between product/service provisions and customer, operational, and financial
needs can be bridged.
KBF’s, found within customer, operational,
and financial needs, can be identified by the means of active & passive
data gathering. For customers, active
data gathering can include things such as focus groups and surveys. Passive data gathering is also an effective
tool, and can be carried out via comment cards and internet response
databases. On the operational end,
active data gathering may include quality teams, whereas passive data gathering
might incorporate statistical process control measures and their resulting
data. Financially, a firm may choose an
active data gathering method such as the formation of a marketing survey team. Passive data gathering techniques such as
reporting off of financial results statements may also be opted. Regardless of the tools utilized, firms
should strive to build feedback loops and data gathering methodologies into
their system structure in order to facilitate continuous improvements. The business criteria for the MBNQA (Malcolm
Baldrige National Quality Award) declares, “Through
the analysis of data from the tracking processes, the measures or indicators
themselves may be evaluated and changed to better support such goals.”
Integration of Key Business Factors
becomes the next step after the identification process. The integration process is more objective,
and can be outlined through what the MBNQA calls the Areas to Address, or the “Where” of the KBF implementation process.
The areas of integration include Organizational Environment,
Organizational Relationships, Competitive Environment, Strategic Challenges,
and Performance Improvement Systems. If
for example, one of your identified KBF’s happened to be “maintaining short
cycle times”, you could address the category of
Organizational Relationships through working with your suppliers toward the
implementation of a JIT (Just in Time) operations system. The selected KBF should then be integrated into the other four Areas to
Address as well.
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award outlines three Evaluation Dimensions within the Areas to
Address. The Evaluation
Dimensions act as the means of measurement for KBF animation, answering the
“What & How” of the KBF
integration process. The first two Evaluation
Dimensions are Approach &
Deployment. They pose the following
questions; What do you do? How do you do it? How repeatable is it? How do you measure it? And how do you improve upon what you do? The third aspect of the Evaluation
Dimensions is the Results
category, which asks; How are you doing? How are you improving over time? And how is your performance relative to the
competition and industry standards? When
these questions have been answered and satisfied within the Areas to Address, the integration
process can be considered complete.
Ultimately, any firm seeking to properly integrate KBF’s, will end up
with a company that plans, measures, trains, controls, processes, and leads by
means of it’s KBF’s.
Finally, you have a business that has
successfully identified and integrated its Key Business Factors into the
backbone of its company. But how do you
retain it, infusing it permanently and continuously? Synthesizing, a firms Key Business Factors
can be critical for tying together the loose ends that have a tendency to untie
over time. Two key steps should be taken
when seeking to synthesize the results. Pervasive alignment of KBF’s and pervasive focus on KBF’s. Ensuring that a firms KBF’s are aligned and
focused throughout the areas of Leadership, Strategic Planning, Customer and
Market Focus, Information and Analysis, Human Resource Focus, and Process
Management, will, as the MBNQA points out, bear fruit in the firm’s Business
Results. From such results, the firm can
begin to learn how to anticipate how it’s KBF’s will impact and drive customer,
operational, and financial results. From
there, it becomes a repetitive cycle of planning, aligning and focusing
accordingly.
In summary, Key Business Factors must
be clearly defined as the focus behind the firm’s decisions, permeating every
action therein. Through proper and
thorough integration and synthesis, Key Business Factors can, and will, become
the way-signs which direct your firm down the road to success.
Bibliography
- www.nist.gov
- Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria. NIST website, 2002.
- Foster,
Thomas - Managing Quality. Prentice
Hall, Inc.: New Jersey, 2001.
- www.alleghenymarketing.com/cust_satis.htm
– Customer Satisfaction. Allegheny Marketing Group, 2002.
- Schuttler,
Richard - Performance Excellence in Academia. Presentation, 2001.