Deming's 14 Points and Crosby’s 14 Steps: A Comparison

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Introduction

The concept of quality has become at the core of effective management and leadership in our modern times, and programs like Total Quality Management and Six Sigma have been at the heart of many companies' success. that quality needs to be built into every level of a company, and become part of everything the organization does. This Document will be discussing the theories of two of the progenitors of TQM. Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Philip B. Crosby

Dr. W. Edwards Deming

W Edwards Deming was an American statistician who was credited with the rise of Japan as a manufacturing nation, and with the invention of Total Quality Management (TQM). In 1960 he was awarded a medal by the Japanese Emperor for his services to that country's industry. Deming returned to the US and spent some years in obscurity before the publication of his book "Out of the crisis" in 1982.

In this book, Deming set out 14 points which, if applied to US manufacturing industry, would he believed, save the US from industrial doom at the hands of the Japanese.

Although Deming does not use the term Total Quality Management in his book, it is credited with launching the movement. Most of the central ideas of TQM are contained in "Out of the crisis". The key to understanding Deming’s 14 points lies in Deming's thoughts about variation. Variation was seen by Deming as the disease that threatened US manufacturing. The more variation - in the length of parts supposed to be uniform, in delivery times, in prices, in work practices - the more waste, he reasoned.

From this premise, he set out his 14 points for management:

Create a constant purpose toward improvement.

Plan for quality in the long term.
Resist reacting with short-term solutions.
Don't just do the same things better – find better things to do.
Predict and prepare for future challenges, and always have the goal of getting better.

Adopt the new philosophy.

Embrace quality throughout the organization.
Put your customers' needs first, rather than react to competitive pressure – and design products and services to meet those needs.
Be prepared for a major change in the way business is done. It's about leading, not simply managing. * Create your quality vision, and implement it.

Stop depending on inspections.

Inspections are costly and unreliable – and they don't improve quality, they merely find a lack of quality. * Build quality into the process from start to finish. * Don't just find what you did wrong – eliminate the "wrongs" altogether. * Use statistical control methods – not physical inspections alone – to prove that the process is working. 4. Use a single supplier for any one item.

Quality relies on consistency – the less variation you have in the input, the less variation you'll have in the output. * Look at suppliers as your partners in quality. Encourage them to spend time improving their own quality – they shouldn't compete for your business based on price alone. * Analyze the total cost to you, not just the initial cost of the product. * Use quality statistics to ensure that suppliers meet your quality standards.

Improve constantly and forever.

Continuously improve your systems and processes. Deming promoted the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach to process analysis and improvement. * Emphasize training and education so everyone can do their jobs better.

6. Use training on the job.

Train for consistency to help reduce variation.
Build a foundation of common knowledge.
Allow workers to understand their roles in the "big picture."
Encourage staff to learn from one another, and provide a culture and environment for effective teamwork.

Implement leadership.

Expect your supervisors and managers to understand their workers and the processes they use. * Don't simply supervise – provide support and resources so that each staff member can do his or her best. Be a coach instead of a policeman. * Figure out what each person actually needs to do his or her best. * Emphasize the importance of participative management and transformational leadership. * Find ways to reach full potential, and don't just focus on meeting targets and quotas.

Eliminate fear.

Allow people to perform at their best by ensuring that they're not afraid to express ideas or concerns. * Let everyone know that the goal is to achieve high quality by doing more things right – and that you're not interested in blaming people when mistakes happen. * Make workers feel valued, and encourage them to look for better ways to do things. * Ensure that your leaders are approachable and that they work with teams to act in the company's best interests. * Use open and honest communication to remove fear from the organization. 9. Break down barriers between departments.

Build the "internal customer" concept – recognize that each department or function serves other departments that use their output. * Build a shared vision. * Use cross-functional teamwork to build understanding and reduce adversarial relationships. * Focus on collaboration and consensus instead of compromise. 10. Get rid of unclear slogans. * Let people know exactly what you want – don't make them guess. "Excellence in service" is short and memorable, but what does it mean? How is it achieved? The message is clearer in a slogan like "You can do better if you try." * Don't let words and nice-sounding phrases replace effective leadership. Outline your expectations, and then praise people face-to-face for doing good work. 11. Eliminate management by objectives.

Look at how the process is carried out, not just numerical targets. Deming said that production targets encourage high output and low quality. * Provide support and resources so that production levels and quality are high and achievable. * Measure the process rather than the people behind the process. 12. Remove barriers to pride of workmanship.

Allow everyone to take pride in their work without being rated or compared. * Treat workers the same, and don't make them compete with other workers for monetary or other rewards. Over time, the quality system will naturally raise the level of everyone's work to an equally high level.

Implement education and self-improvement.

Improve the current skills of workers. * Encourage people to learn new skills to prepare for future changes and challenges. * Build skills to make your workforce more adaptable to change, and better able to find and achieve improvements. 14. Make "transformation" everyone's job.

Improve your overall organization by having each person take a step toward quality. * Analyze each small step, and understand how it fits into the larger picture. * Use effective change management principles to introduce the new philosophy and ideas in Deming's 14 points.

Criticism:

Deming has been criticised for putting forward a set of goals without providing any tools for managers to use to reach those goals. His inevitable response to this question was: "You're the manager, you figure it out.“ There are also situations in which approaches like Management By Objectives are appropriate, for example, in motivating sales-people. As Deming points out, however, there are many situations where a focus on objectives can lead people to cut corners with quality. You'll need to decide for yourself whether or not to use these approaches.

Philip B Crosby

Philip Bayard Crosby, (June 18, 1926 – August 18, 2001) was a businessman and author who contributed to management theory and quality management practices. Crosby initiated the Zero Defects program at the Martin Company.[5] As the quality control manager of the Pershing missile program, Crosby was credited with a 25 percent reduction in the overall rejection rate and a 30 percent reduction in scrap costs. He is the Author of many acclaimed Books in Quality Management, Including Cutting the cost of quality, The strategy of situation management and Quality is Free. The 14 Steps of Crosby formulate a program for Total Quality Management efforts. Crosby's fourteen steps rely on the foundational thought that any money a company spends upon quality improvement is money that is well-spent.

In Crosby's theory, he cites four absolutes of quality management: A company ought to define quality not as something that is "good" or something that is "exquisite" but instead as something that conforms to company, stakeholder, or end-user requirements. Quality starts with prevention - defects should be prevented rather than found after the fact. By preventing defects and other obstacles to quality, companies save money. The standard for performance for any company needs to be "zero defects." Otherwise, it just doesn't cut it. In order to measure quality, rather than relying upon intricate indices, companies need to focus on the Price of Nonconformance. The price of nonconformance, sometimes called the cost of quality, is a measure of the costs associated with producing a product or service of low quality.

Crosby’s 14 steps:

Commitment of Management

First and foremost, management must be committed to improving the quality in a company. This commitment must also be transparent to all employees so that proper attitudes towards a Zero Defect product or service line are modeled. 2. Formulate the Quality Improvement Team

Forming a quality improvement team is the second step to achieving total quality management. Search for team members who will model quality improvement commitment, and who are not already over-committed to other projects. The quality improvement team should be able to effectively commit themselves to improvement of quality.

Measure for Quality in Current Practices

Before you can establish a plan for improving quality, you first have to know exactly where your products and services lie when it comes to conforming to requirements. Thus, the third step on Crosby's list is to measure quality. Determine where there is room for improvement and where potential for imrpovement exists.

What Will the Cost of Quality Be?

How much is your cost of nonconformance to standards? What is the cost for quality? By answering these questions, you can demonstrate to all company employees that there is a need for a quality improvement system. Explain how the cost of quality figures into the overall company plan. 5. Quality Awareness is Central to Success

You will need to raise employee awareness to the importance of quality management. By doing this, and making quality a central concern to employees, you will increase the likelihood that your quality improvement efforts will be realized.

Remember the Quality Problems? Take Corrective Action

By now, you will have determined what your company's quality problems are. It is now time to take corrective action to eliminate the defects that have been identified. Be sure that you install a system, using causal analysis techniques, to ensure that these problems don't reoccur in the future.

Plan for Zero Defects

You need to create a committee to ensure that there are zero defects in your products and services. For Crosby, it's not enough, remember to have "as few as possible" defects. Instead, you really need to have this number at zero - establish a zero-defect tolerance in your company.

Practice Effective Training for Supervisors

Ensure that your supervisors can carry out the tasks required of them for maintaining quality. By practicing supervisor training, with quality in mind (and the four absolutes), then you will be more likely to achieve zero-defect status.

Happy Zero Defects Day!

Hold a quality event, called a zero defects day, where all employees are made aware of the change that has taken place. By holding a zero defects day in your company when implementing a total quality management project, you can be sure that you are increasing awareness for quality in your workplace.

Involve Everyone in Goal Setting

After implementing a change, you will need to ensure that you involve everyone - both employees and supervisors - in the goal setting process. By bringing everyone in the company in on setting goals for improvement, you can ensure greater commitment to achieving zero defects.

Eliminate Causes of Errors

Error-cause removal is necessary for the successful implementation of any quality improvement effort. Encourage your employees to come to management with any obstacles or issues that arrise in attempting to meet improvement goals. By having employees communicate obstacles before they become crises, you can avert many of the dampers for quality improvement efforts.

Implement Recognition for Participants

The twelfth step of Crosby's 14 Steps is the implementation of employee recognition. By regularly recognizing those who participate in quality improvement efforts, employees will be much more likely to continue to participate.

Create Quality Councils

By bringing together specialists and employees, you can create a focused effort towards creating lasting quality improvement implementations. Make sure your quality councils meet on a regular basis.

Lather...Rinse...REPEAT!!!

Quality improvement doesn't end because you have run out of the 14 Steps of Crosby! In order to really make improvements in the quality of your products and services, you will need to do it over again...and again...and again. Similarities:

Top management support and commitment are essential.
Education and training must be continuous.
Measurement is critical.
Improvements are not viewed in terms of final products.
Most problems associated with quality can be attributed to management
Policy or action.
Implementation is applicable to any organization.
Post-production inspection needs to be minimized.
Effective communication and teamwork at all levels are essential.
Managers need to provide workers with the means to do a good job.
There are no shortcuts to quality.
Suppliers must be involved in the quality effort.
The pursuit of quality must be a continuous effort.

Final comments:

No one pathway is ideal for a company.
Most companies create their own unique pathway.
Many companies evolve from Crosby to Juran to Deming.
Deming`s approach is regarded as ideal by most quality experts, if ever instituted properly.
The key to successful implementation of quality principles and methods is tied to leadership.

References:

Department of the Navy Office of the Under Secretary of the Navy Total Quality Leadership Office. http://www.teachingpr.org/management_book_reviews/2009/04/tqm-in-action-by-pike-barnes.html http://www.transtutors.com/homework-help/industrial-management/total-quality-management/crosby-14-steps-to-improvement.aspx http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_75.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_B._Crosby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming