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Total Quality Management -Recipe for quality concrete construction

The core of TQM is the customer-supplier interfaces. Customer is the king and supplier is a major player in the total quality management system. The customer – supplier interfaces exist both internally (within the same organization) and externally. These interfaces are connected by the “quality chains” and they can be broken by any one man or machine, leading to customer dissatisfaction. Failure in any part of the system will have multiplying effects on the whole system.

The customer-supplier core must be surrounded by the 3 C’s, commitment to quality, communication of the quality message, and recognition of the need to change the culture of the organisation to create total quality. These are the foundations of TQM, and they are supported by the key management functions of people, processes and systems in the organisation. Effective coordination of Men, Machine and Material is essential for a Total quality management system.

For an organization to be effective, the Quality function shall spread across all departments, all people and all activities. The common practice is to assume that quality department is the only function responsible for quality, hence blame the quality department for any “quality failures”

Every person in the organization plays the role of a supplier (internally & externally) and shall be aware of:

 Who are his customers?
 What are the real needs and expectations of the customer?
 Does he have the capability to meet the customer needs and expectations? and if he doesn’t have the capability, what shall he do to achieve it?
 How do he measure the changes in their needs?

He also plays the role as an internal or external customer and shall be capable of understanding:

 Who are his internal suppliers?
 Who are his external suppliers?
 How he can communicate his needs and expectations?
 How he can measure the capabilities of his suppliers?

One simple example is the role played by a sales engineer in any organization, both as a customer and supplier. Sales engineer takes an order for his service or product from an external customer. He must be aware of all the points mentioned above (as a supplier). He communicates the customer requirements to the production manager, where production manager shall act as an internal supplier to the sales engineer and sales engineer shall act as an internal customer to the production manager. In all these processes communication, culture and commitment of People, System and Process plays a pivotal role.

The ideal situation is where an open partnership style relationship exists between customer and supplier.
Poor practices must be identified through regular monitoring or auditing processes and corrective actions shall be implemented for continuous improvement of the system.

Few reasons for poor practices which everyone might have observed in their organization include but not limited to:

 Vague directions given by the leaders disturbing the process – Non committed leadership.
 Not understanding, or ignoring the competitive positioning – improper communication or training
 Each department working only for achieving its own KPIs (Key performance indices)
 Trying to control people through systems
 Confusing quality with grade
 Creating a mentality to accept that a level of defects or errors is inevitable
 Believing in “reactive” rather than “proactive approach” – firefighting behaviour
 The “It’s not my problem” attitude

We shall discuss the poor practices in the Ready-mix concrete business and concrete construction with some examples, in upcoming articles…