Total Quality Fundamentals (Self-Guided)

Lesson 1

Introduction to Quality

The first lesson will discuss the concept of professional quality certification as defined by the American Society for Quality (ASQ). Next, it will provide you with a universal definition of quality, a challenging proposition because so many people have different perspective of what quality is and what it isn't. You'll learn about the history of the quality movement and see how Six Sigma fits in. The lesson will finish up by examining Total Quality Management (TQM) and discuss its concepts and components.

Customers and Organization

Quality is best viewed as a total customer satisfaction package. You satisfy customers by effectively combining products and services. To help you get to know customers better, this lesson will discuss different customer types and how you can minimize customer complaints. You'll discover the role that your organization plays in providing high customer satisfaction by maintaining a quality philosophy and creating quality systems.

Nonquality Costs and Variation

Companies often don't pay enough attention to problems until they begin to see sales and profits drop. Because of this tendency, an effective way to get top management's attention and hopefully increase their commitment to quality is to express problems in terms of costs. This lesson will discuss the cost of nonquality (also called the "cost of quality") and its components—external failure, internal failure, appraisal, and prevention costs. You'll also explore the concept of variation and discuss how you can use statistical process control (SPC) to meet customer requirements.

Assessment and Leadership

Companies grow by entering new markets and meeting unmet customer needs. To achieve and maintain this growth, it's important to have a healthy organization that has the right mix of leadership and power. In this lesson, you'll learn about the basic leadership styles and two leadership models. You'll also discover how the concepts of distinctive competency, competitive advantage, and organizational assessment position your organization for success.

Motivation and Change

In this lesson, you'll learn what makes people tick and how to manage change. Reaching quality levels you desire will require dedication from everyone in the organization, so you need to know what motivates people in order to successfully work with and direct them. Also, as you work with people, you're faced with change. You'll learn about forces for change, why people resist these forces, and how to manage change.

Team Building and Training

It seems as if teams are everywhere. Despite the popularity of teams, far too many people report that their experience hasn't been too fulfilling. Six Sigma and quality projects rely on high-performing teams, so it's vital that you learn the secrets of team building. Many companies fail to devote enough time to training. After you complete this lesson, you'll be able to play a large role in making sure that employees receive the right type of preparation. When you finish, you'll have a solid understanding of how to build a strong team and effectively deliver training.

TEI and Measuring Performance

When companies decide to improve quality and better satisfy customers, they won't succeed unless all employees are behind these goals. Once you get employee commitment, you need to measure your progress. In this lesson, you'll examine a concept called "total employee involvement" (TEI) that will help you get the most out of every single person at your firm. You'll learn about the role that management and employees play in TEI. You'll also learn how to determine progress by using traditional and progressive performance measurements.

Standards and Auditing

Standards and auditing work hand-in-hand. The first helps you plan and the second makes sure that you follow your plans. Firms that conform to standards are more capable of competing. In this lesson, you'll explore the basics of standards and auditing. The lesson will talk about how standards are used and how they're developed. You'll also explore their benefits and discover how they're defined. Regarding auditing, you'll examine their features, explore the different types of audits, and look at why auditing is a challenging activity.

External and Internal Auditing

In this lesson, you'll explore how your firm can use external auditing to assess suppliers' capabilities and internal auditing to improve company operations. You'll learn the difference between external and internal auditing. The lesson will also share the nuts and bolts of auditing and show you how to plan and conduct an audit and write a final audit report.

ISO 9000

ISO 9000 is one of the main reasons why organizations continue to focus on quality. It's difficult for companies to disregard quality once they make a decision to adopt the ISO 9000 standard. This lesson will start out with some background about ISO, discuss what ISO 9000 represents, identify the challenges of implementing it, and show you a recipe for successfully putting ISO in place. It will also talk about each section of the ISO 9001:2000 standard.

More Standards and Systems

In this lesson, you'll tackle a number of topics that will increase your knowledge about quality standards and systems. Although ISO 9000 has a high profile, other methods and structures also play a vital role in quality improvement. First, you'll finish your study of ISO by looking at a series of standards to manage the environment—ISO 14000. Next, you'll dive into the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), an esteemed award given for quality excellence in the United States. Finally, you'll explore three systems that apply to many companies: QS-9000, the Advanced Quality System (AQS), and the Conformité Europeenne (CE) mark.

Quality Culture and Fallacies

After you implement everything from the lessons of this course, you can safely say your organization has a quality culture. Without a quality culture, it's difficult to satisfy customers, improve processes, and reduce costs. In addition to learning about quality culture, you'll also examine quality fallacies. You'll finish up the lesson by learning about the most common quality fallacies and what beliefs should take their place.