- Build awareness of need and opportunity for improvement:-
Realize that all processes are improvable. Taking an example of mistakes published a newspaper they made the previous day, Juran say that they should:
- Survey the staff, asking them why the mistakes were made;
- After a week, select the top ten reasons;
- Decide how to make sure those mistake-causing steps aren't
- repeated;
- Keep track of the number of mistakes being made, to make sure they are decreasing.
Now we have just created a quality improvement program!
- Set goals for improvement :- Juran’s formula for results is
- Establish specific goals to be reached.
- Establish plans for reaching the goals.
- Assign clear responsibility for meeting the goals.
- Base the rewards on results achieved.
- Organize to reach your goals.
· Establish quality council
· Identify problems
· Select projects
· Appoint teams
· Designate facilitators
- Provide training.
Any company, which has been actively engaged in moving towards TQM in the past few years, knows how important education and training are. The concepts, methods and tools for modern quality management are new for most members of the company -- managers, professionals and workforce. The investment in education and training is high, but the rewards are great.
- Carry out projects to solve problems.
Large improvements are usually the result of interdepartmental or even cross-functional quality improvement teams. These teams tackle the chronic problems that have been in the way of company progress for a long time. These are the vital few problems that create the breakthroughs in quality by reducing waste and improving customer satisfaction dramatically.
- Report progress
Importance here is on the progress expected and the actual progress achieved. Necessary actions to improve the status can be initiated to reduce the variance. Information on the progress also provides the management the confidence on the Improvement activity and further support if required.
- Give recognition
Recognition is a means of providing morale to both those involved in the improvement activity and all others in an organization. This is an important activity to be done by the management as improvements provide a change for betterment resulting in savings to the company and at times, the improvements are made possible against lot of criticisms. Recognition rejuvenates the spirits and makes it possible for improvement areas in other spheres.
- Communicate result.
Lesson learnt during the improvement process requires to be shared to create an awareness of the approach taken and the possibility to learn and improve further. It also provides an outlook for people in other areas to the basis for triggering similar improvements in their areas.
- Keep score.
A Company’s goals are achieved step-by-step. Each step taking it nearer to the targeted goals. Further steps to be taken shall involve an action based on the lesson in the previous steps. Tracking the progress and measuring it provides the management the leverage to control the process.
- Maintain momentum by making annual improvement part of the regular process of the company.
Actions taken in the above steps shall involve the people and sustaining their involvement in improvement activity is a must to achieve the long-term organizational goals and to remain competitive. Juran approach is very many people oriented and it places a strong emphasis upon teamwork and a project –based approach. Expanding the Quality Planning Roadmap discussed earlier, it can be seen that Juran concepts are applied to design of Quality Systems in Software Industry.
