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494

Parvey

Paradigm Shifts & Quality Management

Paradigm shifts are influencing the way that managers think about ąuality and competition; Total Quality Management (TQM) and World Class Manufacturing (WCM) strategies are being employed to improve competitiveness. To successfully deploy these strategies, managers need to understand employee motivation and tap into all of the organization's resources. This reąuires a paradigm shift in the management and measurement of ąuality. In the old paradigm, ąuantity is the production driver and ąuality gets inspected into the product through a series of tests and audits; old paradigm organizations are rigidly structured in Iayered hierarchies, giving each employee a limited span of control. In the new paradigm, heightened interest in ąuality, flexibility, responsiveness, and time to market reflect a re-examination of the earlier universal principles of volume, consistency, and efficiency (Kotha & Orne, 1989).

In their 1991 report on "21st Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy," Nagel, Dove, and an industry-led team cali for a new strategy in Agile Manufacturing to help U.S. companies become “world class manufacturers.” With agile manufacturing, competitive advantage will be determined in terms of ąuality and customer satisfaction. The flexibility, superior process knowledge, and focus on customer satisfaction of agile manufacturers will reąuire assimilation of social values into the managerial decision-making process. Organizational frameworks must leverage the knowledge, creativity, and initiative of the company’s personnel. When organizations attempt to implement new ąuality strategies, many employees resist taking on responsibilities that are seen to be additions to their "real" jobs. To achieve fuli implementation, a perspective progression must take place in which employees come to understand that ąuality relates in large part to everything they do at work (see Figurę 1).

Fine and Hax (1985) madę the following observations regarding ąuality management:

Responsibility for product ąuality has traditionally resided in the ąuality assurance or ąuality control organization in the firm. Recently, this viewpoint has been challenged by the school of thought that each worker in the organization should be responsible for the ąuality of his or her work. Implementing this proposal would reąuire a significant change in many companies where hourly workers are not expected to exercise judgment on the job. Where implemented successfully, this corporate culture regime has proven to be very efficient.