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Quality Theories
Numerous theories on how to improve business quality and performance have
emerged over the years. The theories and tools developed by Drs.
Shewhart, Deming and
Taguchi have been particularly instrumental in shaping the quality
goals, processes and successes of the OmniLingua language management team.
Among these important tools are:
Shewhart Cycle for Learning and Improvement
Dr. Walter A. Shewhart, arguably the father of contemporary quality control,
established the Shewhart Cycle for Learning and Improvement – the quality
management concept and tool. Generally referred to as the PDSA cycle, the tool
is dynamic, yet straightforward.
The Shewhart Cycle or PDSA Cycle is simply a wheel divided into four quadrants –
Plan, Do, Study and Act. It is in essence, a never-ending process very
reflective of the “continuous journey” character of continuous quality
improvement.
OmniLingua language management professionals routinely use the PDSA cycle as an
effective tool for enhancing quality. The PDSA model, continuously applied,
helps identify causes of poor translation quality or areas that can be further
enhanced.
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| The PDSA Cycle is a continuous and continuing cycle. The length of time and
effort dedicated to a particular segment varies with each situation and
knowledge base.
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The outcome of applying the PDSA Cycle?
OmniLingua embraces the PDSA Cycle not only because it delivers important new
knowledge, but also because it enables:
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Process improvement decisions to be based on data, not opinion and speculation;
and,
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Stronger potential for enhanced quality and productivity outcomes, because
decisions are databased.
OmniLingua intra- and inter-departmental teams from sales, service, accounting,
technology, production and vendor management continuously challenge themselves
to improve by using the PDSA Cycle.
Dr. Deming’s 14 Points and 7 Deadly
Diseases
Dr. W. Edwards Deming observed in one of his many writings:
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“Folklore has it in America that quality and production are incompatible: that
you can not have both. A plant manager will usually tell you that it is either
or. In his experience, if he pushes quality, he falls behind in production. If
he pushes production, his quality suffers. This will be his experience when he
knows not what quality is, nor how to achieve it. |
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“Why is it that productivity increases as quality improves? Less rework.” |
In his highly regarded 14 Points, Dr. Deming notes that they are the basis for
transformation of American industry. At OmniLingua we agree with his assessment
that these points “apply anywhere, to small organizations as well as large
ones, to the service industry as well as to manufacturing.”
Dr. Deming’s 14 Points
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Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service.
What? Deal with problems of tomorrow, as well as problems of today.
Why? We focus on short-term results: Quarterly profits; Fast track management.
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Adopt the new philosophy.
What? The need to improve quality is urgent and affects everything we do.
Why? Quality seen as separate from the “real” work of the organization, less
important.
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Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
What? Build quality into the product rather than trying to inspect it in.
Why? Quality is/was defined as inspection.
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End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone.
What Look beyond initial purchase price.
Why? Total cost includes what happens after purchase.
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Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service.
What? Every aspect of the organization must be improved and improved again.
Why? We typically think of fixing the problem.
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Institute training.
What? Teach people the right way to do their jobs.
Why? Employees learn from other employees.
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Institute leadership.
What? Management must discover the barriers that prevent people from taking
pride in their work.
Why? We promote the best worker, not always the best manager. We hire managers
out of school.
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Drive out fear.
What? Find and remove the sources of fear in the organization.
Why? Fear prevents people from speaking up about how to improve the system.
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Break down barriers between staff areas.
What? Recognize the whole system and integrate its components.
Why? Acting in isolation, people can defeat the aim of the system as a whole.
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Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
What? Stop expecting that stating the desired outcome will produce the desired
outcome.
Why? Goals without plans accomplish nothing.
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Eliminate numerical quotas.
What? Stop using quotas to motivate or evaluate.
Why? People focus on the quota instead of the job. Quotas do not allow for
variation.
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Remove barriers to pride in workmanship.
What? Find out what prevents people from feeling good about their work; then
eliminate those barriers.
Why? Many people naturally take pride in doing good work; organizations
sometimes get in the way.
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Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining.
What? Make sure employees are trained in new techniques and new approaches.
Why? New techniques and approaches are needed in a continual improvement
environment.
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Take action to accomplish the transformation.
What? Plan for it, do it, see if it works, adjust.
Why? Quality improvement is a significant investment.
Indeed, agree the language management professionals at OmniLingua, quality
improvement is a significant investment – with the potential for even more
significant returns on that investment.
Dr. Deming points out 7 Deadly Diseases
In the quest for transformation Dr. Deming notes, there are at least 7 Deadly
Diseases that stand in the way of realizing transformation and its benefits in
terms of quality. It is his assertion that the infections are widespread, and
require immediate attention.
7 Deadly Diseases
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Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a
market and keep the company in business, and provide jobs.
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Emphasis on short-term profits; short-term thinking (just the opposite from
constancy of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear of unfriendly takeover,
and by push from bankers and owners for dividends.
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Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review.
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Mobility of management; job-hopping.
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Management by use only of visible figures, with little or no consideration of
figures that are unknown or unknowable.
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Excessive medical costs.
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Excessive costs of liability, swelled by lawyers that work on contingency fees.
OmniLingua language management professionals are highly skilled in the pursuit
of quality improvement and in addressing various obstacles to the realization
of the benefits of focusing on quality and organizational transformation.
Dr. Deming’s Operational Definitions
OmniLingua language management professionals clearly recognize that one of the
most crucial steps to increasing the quality of outcomes for any given project
is creating a comprehensive understanding of client and supplier expectations,
processes, terms, quality measures and other factors.
Guidance for the necessity of developing clear operational definitions again
comes from Dr. Deming, who notes:
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“In the opinion of many people in industry, there is nothing more important for
transaction of business than use of operational definitions.” “An operational
definition puts communicable meaning into a concept. Adjectives like good,
reliable, uniform, round, tired, safe, unsafe, unemployed have no communicable
meaning until they are expressed in operational terms of sampling, test and
criterion.”
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Using butterfat as an example, Dr. Deming notes:
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“What is the meaning of the law that butter for sale must be 80 percent
butterfat? Does it mean 80 percent butterfat, or more, in every pound that you
buy? Or does it mean 80 percent on the average? What would you mean by 80
percent butterfat on the average? The average of your purchases of butter for a
year? Or would you mean the average production of all butter for a year, your
and other people’s purchases of butter from a particular source? How many
pounds would you test, for calculation of the average? How would you select
butter for test? Would you be concerned with the variation of butterfat from
pound to pound?”
“Obviously, any attempt to define operationally 80 percent butterfat runs
headlong into the need for statistical techniques and criteria.”
Operational definitions are necessary for economy and reliability. Without an
operational definition investigations of a problem will be costly and
ineffective….”
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At OmniLingua we work with each client to clearly define each aspect of a
project from inception to completion, and assessment of the quality of the
outcome.
Dr. Deming’s Leadership and Training Theories
OmniLingua enthusiastically embraces Dr. Deming’s theories on Leadership and
Training relating to the pursuit of quality performance and outcomes.
Leadership
In his theory of leadership Dr. Deming notes,
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“The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine,
to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of
workmanship to people. Put a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely
to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to
help people to do a better job with less effort.”
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| He identifies three responsibilities of leaders: |
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Determination of individuals who are outside of the parameters of a process,
and are “in need either of individual help or deserve recognition in some
form.”
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“Improvement of the system” – i.e. to make it possible, on a continuing basis,
for everyone to do a better job with greater satisfaction.
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Accomplish ever-increasing consistency of performance.
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Training
Dr. Deming challenges leaders to take a new look at training and determining
when additional training is beneficial, and when it no longer contributes to
the enhancement of an individual’s efforts. He also encourages taking a careful
look at the system or processes involved, to determine if the cause of
condition outside (either bad or good) of statistical control are the source of
the condition. He notes,
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“In a state of chaos (poor supervision, bad management, nothing in statistical
control), it is impossible for anyone in the organization to develop his
potential ability and capacity for uniformity or for quality.”
“To hold a worker on the job without pay till he has cleaned up the defectives
that were detected by inspection of his product, if he is in statistical
control, is to charge him with faults of the system.”
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| Dr. Deming further notes,
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“A basic principle presumed here is that no one should be blamed or penalized
for performance that he can not govern. Violation of this principle can only
lead to frustration and dissatisfaction with the job, and lower production.”
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For individuals outside of statistical control parameters, Dr. Deming suggests:
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Investigate the circumstances (eyesight, tools, training) and take any remedial
action indicated.
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Or determine if the individual is in the wrong job.o
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Determine if the training provided the individual was inept and incomplete.
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Determine for an individual outside of statistical control parameters on the
“good” side, if there is reason for study – such as unique personal operating
methods or motions that others could learn and use to improve their
performance.
At OmniLingua, we continuously train to do our jobs better, but we also analyze
our individual needs and processes for optimum performance for our clients.
Dr. Taguchi’s Loss Function
Innovative in his approaches to quality improvement and design, Dr. Genichi
Taguchi uses a different method to measuring quality – Loss Function. This
method establishes a measure of the user’s dissatisfaction with a product’s
performance as it deviates from a target value.
Dr. Taguchi’s quality improvement theory notes that average performance and
variation are critical measures of quality. By selecting product design or
manufacturing processes that are insensitive to uncontrolled sources of
variation (which he calls noise factors) – quality is improved.
Static Taguchi applications search for a product design or manufacturing process
that attains one fixed performance level. In dynamic applications, a signal
factor moves the performance to some value and an adjustment factor modifies
the design’s sensitivity to this factor. By carefully charting these factors
and changes it is possible to gain a sharp focus on the impact of variables.
Being able to reduce a product’s sensitivity to changes in the signal is useful
in enhancing quality.
Measuring quality
Traditionally, quality is viewed as a step function. A product is either good or
bad. This approach assumes that a product is uniformly good between the lower
and upper specification levels.
Taguchi, in his Loss Function measurement of quality, believes that the customer
becomes increasingly dissatisfied as performance departs farther away from the
target performance level. He recommends using a quadratic curve to represent a
customer’s dissatisfaction with a product’s performance. The curve is centered
on the target value, which provides the best performance in the eyes of the
customer. Identifying the best value is not an easy task, and targets may at
times be the designer’s best guess.
When charting measurements for this process, “lower consumer tolerance” and
“upper consumer tolerance” level designations replace traditional
engineering-driven “specification” levels. This allows an organization
to focus on the actual consumer response to, and the measurable financial
impact of, variances in performance as opposed to specification-driven
parameters.
At the lowest loss the client’s exact needs are being met.
Movement to either the right or left is loss according the client’s desires.
Statistical Process Control
If the quest for quality is a continuous journey – how will we know if we are
making progress toward achieving quality? What is the roadmap and what are the
signposts along the path to quality?
The answers to those questions are – process and metrics. Or, upon their
marriage – Statistical Process Control (SPC).
In pursuit of improvement
To effectively apply SPC it is important to define and understand the multitude
of processes that make up a business. This of course includes those processes
involved in document translation. The processes involved in document
translation begin with the preparation and quality of the source document and
optimally continue through the statistical tracking and review of the outcomes
of each translation and publishing process along the way.
Statistical tracking logically implies that various metrics have been
established by which the outcomes of a process can be reviewed for quality and
productivity. It is important to remember that as part of SPC these metrics and
statistical reviews are not intended as a means of punishing, but rather a
means of identifying targets for process improvement – and then documenting the
outcomes of the resulting efforts. That approach to applying metrics and
statistical analysis may require some viewpoint adjustments on the part of
management, project teams and others. And that means taking some time to
effectively communicate the “vision” throughout the organization and to train
all members to “view for improvement through cooperative effort” rather than
“hunker down and protect turf.”
Defining process aspects and quality characteristics to measure
Establishing process and quality metrics simply for the sake of establishing
metrics is --- folly. OmniLingua language management professionals will help
you establish specific criteria for measurement and review. Think in terms of:
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Developing a specific review of the source document
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Developing a specific test of the document or translation
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Creating criteria for analysis
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Making a decision as to whether or not the tested document or translation met
the established criteria.
Once that essential framework is in place and functioning, it is crucial not to
allow the vital information it collects to be simply
“gathered-but-unused-data.” Make it work for you. Track and analyze the data
over time and apply the derived knowledge to enhance quality and productivity
of the entire translation process.
OmniLingua has the extensive Statistical Process Control expertise that can
prove to be an invaluable resource to your organization’s overall drive to
improve and enjoy the rewards of enhanced quality and productivity.
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