Total Quality Management Frameworks

Total quality assessment frameworks can be grouped into four different categories. The first set of these categories are the models proposed by individuals who have basically thought out points from their knowledge and experience which need to be implemented in an organization to improve quality. Typical examples of these models are the 14points proposed by Deming, Crosby's 10step and Juran's 10point plan.

The rigid and highly structured requirements required to attain international or national quality standards certificationslike ISO14000, ANSI-90 and ISO9000 comprise of the second group of frameworks. Due to the similarities in the prescribed requirements by these standards, they are highly sought after by businesses within countries and the international trading scene and as such are mostly taken as order qualifiers to gain entry into some international markets.

The third set of frameworks that sees the overall performance of an organization are the self assessment models which comprise of also rigid, highly structured models that weighs the overall sum of a business's performance on many parameters with a quantitative approach. These set of frameworks are more popular than the quality standard frameworks because they are believed to be more useful and serve as order winners over order qualifying standards mentioned in the previous set of categories. The MBQNA, business excellence model of European foundation and the self assessment for continuous improvement and standard quality management systems are some of the frameworks in this category.

The final set of quality frameworks are general techniques or tools such as benchmarking and business process reengineering which have been extensively used by many organizations for quality improvement across their supply chain.

The size of an organization and the degree of quality maturity are things an organization has to consider before selecting the most appropriate model and applying them to improve quality in their business. For example, the second group of quality frameworks like ISO9000 seem to work best in the early stages of a business venture's quality improvement efforts because they'd be basically seeking to improve documentation of activities. These models provide some satisfying aspects of the excellence model when implemented properly but however the models in the third group of frameworks seem to become more appropriate when the business matures.

I'll be using Joseph Juran's 10 steps model to assess the effectiveness of BT retail's seven steps program to revitalise quality & discuss the role and involvement of the managers in carrying out the program. The seven steps to real quality program at BTretail are(Oakland,2003):

1.put customers at the heart of what we do

2.reduce the cost of failure

3.develop and deploy strategy

4.get the basics right-quality for everyone

5.quality approach to major change

6.get the workforce involved

7.innovation

While Juran's advocated 10 points to improving quality are the following and I'll be pointing out how each of them has been applied or not by BT Retail's quality program:

1. To start creating the awareness within the organization for a need and opportunity for quality improvement: BT has done this in its first step by listening to customers reactions to their services and responding by aligning their internal measures to what customers require. The staff are rated with survey systems by the customers to rate their satisfaction with the service and rate their comparison to BT competitors. These quantitative models help to identify the qualities that are important to the customers and create the awareness of those qualities to the staff. This quantitative survey method is guided by 10 golden rules for customer satisfaction which was developed internally by BT retail to ensure that every process that gives customer satisfaction is aligned and focused at all times.

2. Set realisable goals for the planned quality improvement programs: The awareness of these qualities make it possible for the staff to know where to improve on to earn rewards and badges. It also makes it easier for management to hire new employees with those qualities. In other words being proactive about employees who are likely to repeat the identified qualities not appreciated by their customers thereby losing more customers and flow of cash to keep the profits stable enough to make future projections. Since the golden rules are graded, they use it identify weak areas, plan targets, set clear responsibilities and targets for staff in exchange for rewards based on the results accomplished.

3. Identify problems, organize groups and create teams projects to tackle those quality problems: This point has also been tackled by customer satisfaction golden rules, other quantitative models along with establishing training teams new approaches to hiring staff.

4. Place a huge emphasis on training your staff to keep the quality implementation ideas fresh in their minds: BT has scored on this point by realising that even though the investment in education and training is high but also important to keep total quality management ideas fresh in the minds of employees. The BT retail quality charter, a document which explains the major aspects of quality was issued to the entire