Quality Management Systems
E- Quality Manuals and Audits A requirement of ISO 9000 2000, as with all
other quality initiatives audited by a third- party certification body, is that the quality system has documented procedures and work instructions that can be produced as a quality manual on paper or electronically (e-quality manual).
Many software houses and quality man- agement consultants have developed pack- ages that can process and manage all the data that a quality management system involves.
The next development is for electronic audits (e-audits) to be carried out. These can be regular in-house audits or where all docu- mentation is sent on-line to the third-party certification bodies. The authors know of few tourism and leisure organizations that have yet embraced this concept.
Quality Awards and the Excellence Model
A number of accredited quality awards are based on the Excellence Model, which is a
generic model that allows a holistic approach to be taken to the management of the quality system. An individual organization has the flexibility to insert numerous quality tools and techniques within the model’s framework.
Excellence is the focus of the quality awards and many writers, including Gallo- way (1996), would have difficulty in defining quality this way, considering it ‘transcendent’
and something to be ‘recognized rather than identified or measured’.
Search for excellence and dissemination of ‘best practice’ form the underlying philos- ophy and are a major function of the quality award organizers. The following are UK quality awards available based on the Excellence Model (Oldfield, 1999): Quality Scotland; Northern Ireland Quality Award;
Excellence North East; Midland Excellence;
British Quality Foundation; Wales Quality Centre; Excellence North West; Excellence South West; Meridian Business Excellence;
Sheffield Excellence; Business in the Community.
There are also industry-specific awards such as QUEST (see Chapter 12), which is a quality management system for sports devel- opment and leisure centre management and is said to be based on the Excellence Model.
Whilst there seem to be many different quality awards, their use of the Excellence Model as their foundation makes it easier for organizations to benchmark (see Chapter 12) against each other.
The model allows organizations to develop either an accredited or a non- accredited quality system by way of its two stages: the first is to monitor the organization by using the self-assessment criteria of the model; and the second phase is to apply for a specific quality award, which requires an external assessment. For every organization that enters an award, over 1000 others have asked for the model’s assessment criteria so that self-assessment can be undertaken (Smith, 1999).
The process of self-assessment is a means for continuous improvement, as advocated by Berry (1995) and Coulambidou and Dale
(1995). The self-assessment vehicle is not with- out its critics. Research by Daviset al. (1996) showed that the scores can be higher than when externally assessed but that overall benefits were still gained.
Berry (1995), writing about organizations applying for a quality award but not winning one, said that they
report significant benefits none the less.
Not only does the application process offer a framework for thinking about quality and a mechanism for identifying weaknesses, but the process itself requires broad participation and leadership.
Daviset al. (1996) stated that the Excellence Model is
based on the premise that customer satisfac- tion, people satisfaction and impact on soci- ety are achieved through leadership driving policy and strategy, people (employee) empowerment, resources and processes and this leads ultimately to business results.
This is illustrated in Box 11.2, which uses the European Quality Award Scheme (EQA) as well as the Excellence Model framework.
As the model has an all-embracing frame- work, this allows for the incorporation of the principles of many of the quality tools and techniques discussed in the next chapter.
Jones (1995) expressed the opinion that the EQA gives ‘meaningful scores’, which have weightings that reflect the importance of the dimensions. Unfortunately, Jones did not state to whom they are important – the customer or the organization?
These quality awards based on the Excellence Model enable all aspects of the business to be managed. Zink and Schmidt (1998) suggested that the model is a ‘multi- dimensional target system’. Dale and Lascelles (1997) saw organizations that have reached this stage of their quality evolution as being at
‘a point at which continuous improvement has become total in nature’.
Box 11.2. Case study: European Quality Award (EQA).
This annual award has been administered, since its inception in 1991, by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). EFQM was formed in 1988 and its purpose is ‘to enhance the competitive position of European organizations and the effectiveness and efficiency . . . by reinforcing the importance of quality in all aspects of the organization’s activities’ and ‘assisting the development of quality improvement’ (EFQM, 1996).
The award is given to the most successful organizations that ‘show a high level of commitment to quality’ (EFQM, 1996), whilst the lesser European Quality Prize is given to a number of organizations that display excellence in quality processes towards continuous improvement.
The awards objectives are to:
•
Focus attention on total quality management activity in a dramatic way.•
Provide encouragement to individuals and companies to develop quality improvement activities.•
Demonstrate the results achievable in all aspects of the organization’s business.The means for achieving these objectives are by:
•
Obtaining recognition of the European Quality Award around the world.•
Recounting top quality performance of people and organizations in Western Europe.•
Spreading information on quality programmes and creating role models of excellence (Peacock, 1994).The model shown in Box 11.3 is based on theRADARlogic (EFQM, 1999):
Results Determine results required
Approach Plan and develop
Deployment Deploy approaches
AssessmentandReview Approaches and their deployment
Other Significant International Awards Deming Prize
The Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers award this prize to individuals, organizations or industries that have contrib- uted to statistical process control. Whilst once
restricted to Japanese organizations, it is now open to all.
Malcolm Baldridge Award
This is as a result of American legislation that established an annual national award Box 11.3. Model based on RADAR logic (EFQM, 1999).
Summary criteria for enablers:
1. Leadership
How leaders develop and facilitate the achievement of the mission and vision, develop values required for long-term success and implement these via appropriate actions and behaviours, and are personally involved in ensuring that the organization’s management system is developed and implemented.
2. Policy and strategy
How the organization implements its mission and vision via a clear stakeholder-focused strategy, supported by relevant policies, plans, objectives, targets and processes.
3. People
How the organization manages, develops and releases the knowledge and full potential of its people at an individual, team-based and organization-wide level, and plans these activities in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes.
4. Partnership and resources
How the organization plans and manages its external partnerships and internal resources in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes.
5. Process
How the organization designs, manages and improves its processes in order to support its policy and strategy and fully satisfy, and generate increasing value for, its customers and other stakeholders.
Criteria for results:
6. Customer results
What the organization is achieving in relation to its external customers.
7. People results
What the organization is achieving in relation to its people.
8. Society results
What the organization is achieving in relation to local, national and international society as appropriate.
9. Key performance results
What the organization is achieving in relation to its planned performance.
Evaluation Systems:
Two monitoring or evaluation systems have been devised:
1. Pathfinder Card
This is for use in the self-assessment exercise to facilitate improvement. There are no scores to be calculated, but a series of searching questions; for example:
•
Is the approach focused on stakeholder needs?•
Is the approach sustainable?2. Radar Scoring Matrix
This is the system used by the European Quality Award assessment and the weighting of each criterion is shown in Box 11.2. The percentage scores are combined to give an overall score out of 1000 points.
This scoring system can be used as a benchmarking tool (see Chapter 12) with organizations that are using this matrix. Spider diagrams can be constructed for a comparative analysis to be made (Chapman, 2000).
to promote quality awareness and to dis- seminate good practice. This is only open to US organizations in three categories: manu- facturing, service and small businesses. The seven categories of assessment are very simi- lar to the Excellence Model, but the points allocation is somewhat different.
From the tourism industry, the Ritz- Carlton Hotel Company was a service category winner in 1992.
Summary
Dale and Lascelles (1997) saw the intro- duction of quality management systems into an organization as the stage below TQM in
their four levels in the evolution of quality management and quality assurance. The fundamental difference between this stage and the two previous ones is that quality permeates the whole of the organization, rather than control or inspection. Quality leads the decision-making process and the results are that the meeting of customer needs and the quest for continuous improve- ment are tireless.
The choice of which system and or whether or not it is accredited is actually immaterial as long as those last two factors, driven by senior management, are adopted into the culture of the organization. External factors will determine if an accredited system is required (e.g. local authority contract specifications).