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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This chapter provides the inside to the write up with regards to the problem
statement, objectives of the write up and the organization of the write up.
1.1 Background of the Problem
Quality management has evolved from a tool of system quality management
to a competitive advantage to service in the era of globalization (Jamshed, 2003).
Hence companies have ventured into various quality programs like Total Quality
Management, Lean Manufacturing, ISO19000 certification, Six Sigma-Lean and etc.
As part of the quality drive companies have ventured into the option of having a
Failure Analysis Department within the Quality Assurance Organization. This option
has evolved to become a necessity regardless of the high cost related to the capability
setup. This is accordable to most manufacturing industry but dominantly seen in the
electronic manufacturing industry.
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The department is set to be the technical team of the Quality Assurance
process. This Failure Analysis Department is seeded with the main purposes of being
behaving as the technical mirror to the manufacturing process’s quality and
reliability, the product design’s quality and reliability and to provide technical
support to the too failures seen at the customer side. The department is to technical
complement all the in-process quality checks that have been put in place eg.
Statistical Process Control (SPC), Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM) and etc.
With the level of expectation defined for a Failure Analysis Department, it is
important that the department practices a certain level of quality management
standard. This is to ensure that the technical analysis done by the department truly
provides a mirror representation of the manufacturing process and product design.
The analysis done by the Failure Analysis Department will be the basis of the
corrective action to be taken by the organization to improve the quality and reliability
of a process or product. This will paint the picture of importance for the department
to practice a quality management standard apart form the multiple literature that
state that quality is the trump-card of competitiveness in all industries (Quek and
Sha’ri, 2003). This is truer then ever in a rapidly evolving technology market such as
electronic manufacturing industry.
Hence it is notable that practicing a particular type of Quality Management is
of upmost important.
This is more important in a rapidly changing industry,
particularly if the corporation is a new player into the market segment where it
multiplies the importance of implementing Quality Management principles at all
levels of the corporation.
The QDM being a company that evolved from an Electronic Manufacturing
Services (EMS) business unit is an ISO9000 certified company using the parents
company’s adaptation. But in reality the ISO9000 procedure is as far as paper work
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only in practice. The principles of the ISO 9000 are not embraced and put to
practice. This is highly noticeable across the departments at its local manufacturing
plant.
This same atmosphere is also noticeable at the Failure Analysis
Department of the ODM Company. Where by ISO9000 is very much used as a
documentation control guideline rather than an ideology of systematic control. This
was evident as emphasis was more set at proper documentation of the equipment
calibration track sheet, consumable track ability, and etc.
Hence this leads to customer dissatisfaction and product yield impact to the
corporation. As a result’s the plant’s top management decided to embark on a quality
drive. A comprehensive quality ideology needs to be adopted by the company to
achieve its quality targets.
Total Quality Management (TQM) is seen as a holistic quality management
concept meant to address the need of the overall organization with the mindset of
providing the best solution of product and/or service to the corporation’s customer.
(Mohammad Talha, 2004). The analysis/work done by the Failure Analysis
Department of the ODM is seen as a service to the customer. Whereby the customer
in this place could be the internal customers as in the manufacturing department, new
product introductory engineering department, product design engineering department
and others and/or the external customers as in the ODM’s customer.
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1.2
Statement of the Problem
With the customer flak and yield impact felt by the higher management of the
ODM plant, made them to kick-start a quality drive, resulting in all the department to
look into ways to implement the quality drive from the top management. With the
overall picture painted as in the impact of the Failure Analysis Department to the
ODM organization; where the department’s level of service is seen as critical in
making quality and reliability assessment and correction, and with the department
also provides the confidence to the customers on the after sales commitments, itself
justifies the need of the department to have a strong foundation on quality
management.
With the important issue defined, next it is important to access the current
state of the quality management at the Failure Analysis Department. With the
purpose to make an assessment on the level of satisfaction the customers has towards
the service provided. A benchmark evaluation of the success or impact of any quality
management principle adopted by the department before this point is to be evaluated.
A first hand experience of managing the department showed the magnitude of
disarray state of the company’s quality management, particularly in the Failure
Analysis Department of the company. The magnitude of the disarray can be reflected
by the confidence level of the customers on the department.
This is further
multiplied and reflected by the health state of the product yield.
Another data point based on the personal experience is the confidence level
of the employee of the company/department. This point of assessment reflects the
employee’s involvement, empowerment and the setting of customer satisfaction as a
milestone achievement across all levels of the organization. This point of data
showed a very low confidence and involvement level.
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A one-to-one dialog session with each employee showed the individual
passion to drive for quality targets is hugely present. But a gap that was common
across the employee is the lack of direction or culture set. The gap ranges from the
amount of involvement, continuous skill building commitment, appreciation of
achievement and the list goes on.
The two points of data, (customer satisfaction and product yield) which
reflect the main success indicators of the company and department points to the need
of a quality management revamp. It also indicates the need for the
company/department to adopt a change in quality management ideology.
Further
more the two points of data call for the dressing of a holistic quality management
ideology with the customer being the centre of the focus.
Hence with all the finger pointing to a quality cultural change adoption, Total
Quality Management (TQM) ideology is seen to be the best fit concept for the
Failure Analysis department. This is so, since the ideology is seen as a holistic
solution (Dimitriades, 2000). To achieve continuous improvement targets.
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1.3
Objectives
With the top management of the ODM plant having geared into the quality
drive. An effort is being made across all departments to improve the quality
management principles of the departments. With the picture of impact that the
Failure Analysis Department has on the ODM’s organization and the current state of
the department defines earlier, drives this department as well to make it move in
evolving it quality principles. The project objective is set at defining holistic quality
management principles that best suit the department and organization with the
foundation of the principles set at the basis of Total Quality Management ideology.
This will be followed with the implementation of the principles at the department.
A successful implementation is foresee with the hope that the climax of the
Total Quality Management ideology implementation will improve the perception of
the department within the customers, internal and external and the reflection of the
success being translated to a higher yield of the products. This will enable the
corporation to best serve the needs of the customers. After all customer satisfaction is
the focus of Total Quality Management.
1.4
Scope and Key Assumptions
The quality drive journey is a top management driven and a plant level drive.
In order to revamp the quality practices of the plant as in overall, I will go to the
extend of saying “waking up” the paper level quality to a quality principle that
encompasses the day to day practice. As the case study focus will be set at the
Failure Analysis Department to look at preconditions of the department’s quality
practices and to gage the success level or changes seen in that department via the
adoption of TQM as quality guiding principle.
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There are six principles that could define the overall area of the Total Quality
Management (Quek and Sha’ri, 2003 and Martins and de Toledo, 2000) and they are
given in the following:
•
Management Leadership and Commitment
•
Continuous Improvement
o Upstream control
o Process management
•
Total Customer Satisfaction
o Quality first
o Market-in – customer orientation
o Next process downstream is a customer (internal customer)
•
Employee Involvement
o Management by facts
o Employee respect
•
Training and Education
o Poke yoke
•
Reward and Recognition
o Motivation by recognition
TQM principles do not work individually; it is a collective value that
complements each other. Hence for the purpose of implementation all of the stated
principles have to be adopted. Since they are all an interlinked element to the concept
of TQM. After all TQM focuses on the process not the individual (Tavana et. al.,
2003).
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For the purpose of the project and project write-up implementation emphasis
will be focused on just the three element:
•
Continuous Improvement
o Upstream control
o Process management
•
Employee Involvement
o Management by facts
o Employee respect
•
Training and Education
o Poke yoke
o Motivation by recognition
This emphasis is based on the personal first hand experience at managing the
department and verbal dialog session input obtained from the employee of the
department and also from the internal and external customer. Coupled with the
customer and employee feedback; the department’s function; the important element
needed by the department to do a flawless execution of the function and the current
state of the department of the elements calls for the focus to be set at the three
elements.
A questionnaire was carried out to support this point of focus for the project
and write-up. A quality system survey questionnaire developed by Saraph et. al.
(1989) will be used. The questionnaire is meant for evaluating quality management
in either manufacturing or service organizations (Tavana et. al., 2003). Further more
since it has been a time tested questionnaire to gage the standards of quality
management (Kumar et al., 1999). Adaptation of this questionnaire eliminates the
need to develop a new questionnaire which is time consuming and the need to vet the
questionnaire.
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1.5
Importance of the Project
The need for a quality system is no more for a formality process. Having a
system like ISO19000 but not fully embracing it is a failure of implementation and it
will lead to the failure of quality system. Quality system has become a tool of
competitiveness in this globalized business arena. Quality is the focal point of
corporation’s survival. Hence with this emphasis in mind, the plant top management
has embarked on Quality improvement drive. This is one of the trigger points that
drove the departments of the corporation to set it focus on improving it quality
management. On that note the Failure Analysis Department which has a significant
quality performance indicator impact to the corporation has started it journey in
quality management improvement.
It is notable that the current low state of the internal and external customers’
perception of the department is the main driving factor of this quality drive and this
project implementation. The success of quality management improvement at this
department will be reflected in the overall yield improvement of the ODM’s
products.
Apart from that it will also reflect the confidence level of customer
internal and external. This is the important part of TQM, focus on the customer,
leading to customer satisfaction.
Even though the department and the company in general are an ISO19000
registered via parent company, currently the department do not fully embrace the
basis of quality operation fundamentals. The ISO9000 system is practiced purely as a
documentation standard, rather then a system as overall. This it is one of the main
justification that the department need to implement/put-to-practice a principle that
could set the mindset of the department operation. With the department being a
technical analytical team that defines Fault Model Effect Analysis (FMEA) on a
regular basis it is critical for the department to adopt a system which could provide a
structured solution.
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With the quality drive that has been put into gear at top management level
sets the right environment for TQM implementation. This sets the platform for
having the continuous commitment of the top management. This is a piece of TQM
jigsaw puzzle that is of very important value for the successful implementation of
TQM ideology, since it involves the change of culture at all level. It is noted that
perfect timing is a variable in the successful implementation of TQM (Hashmi); The
timeliness of TQM implementation is important so that all the jigsaw puzzle in TQM
implementation could fall in place. A successful implementation of TQM involves
internal and external factor, with one of the factor being the wheels of motion
(Hashmi).
As of system implementation, all the elements of TQM will be rolled out, but
special emphasis will be given to three elements in this case study implementation
and project writing at the Failure Analysis department as defined earlier.
This is so because of the nature of the department where the function of the
department is very much experience and technical knowledge based. Apart from that
verbal survey from the employees of the department and the internal and external
customer has pointed to the prioritization of the three elements over the other
elements for the department. A questionnaire survey is being carried out to support
this direction of focus.
1.6
Organisation of the Report
With the introduction of the report that provide an insight to the background
of the problem and defining the problem statement, this report will be furnished with
a literature review that looks into the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM)
and the implementation principles of TQM.
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A description of the methodology will follow thereafter describing how the
pre and post implementation evaluation will be done address two main factors of
implementation: the product yield factor (quantitative) and the customer satisfaction
factor (in-quantitative).
This data points will be discussed based on the five element of TQM that is to
be implemented. With that highlights and lowlights of the implemented will be
identified and concluded upon. Possible future study/research will be noted at the
end.