全面质量管理与质量成本【外文翻译】

外文文献翻译译文

一、外文原文

原文：

Total quality management and cost of quality During 1950 Feigenbaum introduced the concept of Total Quality Control (TQC) into western countries, as a management tool to improve product design and quality by reducing operating costs and losses. Kauro Ishikawa, a Japanese chemist, introduced TQC in Japan around 1950-1960 as “a company-wide management tool in order to produce high quality goods and services that give a competitive edge both in the short term and in the future”.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a company culture that allows it to provide quality goods and services at the lowest cost in order to achieve customers’ satisfaction and, at the same time, ensure satisfactory business development by continuous improvements.

For an organization to function effectively and efficiently, it has to identify numerous linked activities. An activity using resources, and managed in order to enable the transformation of inputs into outputs, is considered as a process. Often the output from one process directly forms the input to the next.

The process of TQM consists of three major activities:

- Setting the policy and strategy of the organization,

- effectively and efficiently managing the organization, and

- seeking continuous improvement.

Firstly, the fundamental concepts of Total Quality Management are introduced. When this is understood the question that arises is “what can we do to implement the TQM principles in our organization?”. At this point we will understand the need to ex plain further the meaning and fundamentals of the “quality improvement” and how to manage quality improvement. A set of tools for quality improvement has to be installed in our organization so that it is adequately equipped for quality

improvement and TQM. To understand TQM in practice a few quality philosophers and their approach to quality will be presented. The ultimate goal of TQM is to give benefits to the organization e.g. by minimizing the cost of quality and maximizing productivity.

The philosophy of the Total Quality Management is applicable to any organization, which is customer oriented and committed to quality. Management commitment to Total Quality is essential for the organization to achieve excellence. The commitment to quality must be conveyed to all levels and activities of the organization.Furthermore, management commitment involves every department, function and process in the organization and the active commitment of everyone in the organization to meeting customer needs and seeking continuous improvement.

Quality improvement is the aim of any modern organization. Improvement needs to be continuous and never ending. The means of improvement can be applied to both the staff and the processes. The degree of improvement achieved can be measured, monitored and controlled.

Problems are present in all real situations. These problems provide opportunities for improvement. Problems are there to give the laboratory the opportunity to solve them and to enable laboratories to learn from their problem solving experiences. Provisions for identification and resolution of potential and existing problems on a continuous basis are essential.

Quality improvement is a continuous activity, aiming to ever higher levels of process effectiveness and efficiency. Situations requiring improvements may arise from different studies and surveys, from systematic monitoring of the laboratory activity, from analyses of various measurement results and statistics etc.

A quality driven laboratory is constantly seeking the opportunities for improvement arising when problems are encountered and during problem solving processes. Therefore, problem solving techniques should be applied to all areas of the business and all individuals and groups should be encouraged to use them.For the best use of available resources priorities for improvement should be reviewed before action is taken.

The management shall motivate its members to undertake quality improvement projects or activities in a consistent and disciplined series of steps based on data collection and analysis. The quality improvement process is initiated and its need, scope and importance are clearly defined.

Investigation of possible areas for improvement increases the understanding of the nature of the process to be improved. The data of the process to be improved are analyzed and a cause and effect relationship is formulated. Alternative proposals for improvement actions are developed and evaluated by the members of the organization involved in such processes. The improvement is confirmed by analyzing more data and the process is introduced into the system.

The quality improvement project or action starts with the identification of an improvement opportunity which is based on measures of quality losses and/or on comparisons against organizations recognized as leaders in a particular field. The opportunity for improvement is defined and the process involved is evaluated by analyzing data and facts. The objectives for improvement are introduced: - A set of processes is introduced to achieve the improvement in question.Data from such processes are analyzed and evaluated and the causes requiring improvement are identified. The objectives for improvement are also identified.

- Possible solutions are devised and the preferred one is selected. The imple- mentation of the solution is then planned.

- The plan is implemented.

- The results are monitored, reviewed and evaluated.

- The process is repeated if solution is not achieving its objectives.

Quality improvement needs first a well structured organization, both horizontally and vertically. Within the organizational hierarchy, responsibilities for quality improvement include:

- management processes (i.e. provision for the policy, the strategy and the major quality improvement goals, provision of resources, education and training etc.) - work processes (i.e. how the various operations are performed),

- how measurements are done and how quality losses are calculated,

- how secretarial, budgeting and purchasing processes are performed and

- how an environment that empowers, enables, and charges all members of organization to continuously improve quality is built and maintained.

Quality improvement as a term denotes transition from a stage of inferior quality to a stage of superior quality. This change should always be measured in order to prove that the transition to the better stage is successful. The measurements should relate to quality losses associated with customer satisfaction, process efficiencies, and losses sustained by society.

Joseph M. Juran was one of the most well known gurus in the quality scene, worldwide. He first visited Japan in 1954 and started conducting seminars explaining to top managers the role they had to play in promoting QC activities. Juran developed the idea of the Quality Trilogy: Quality Planning, Quality Improvement and Quality Control. These three aspects of company-wide strategic quality planning are further broken down in Juran’s “Quality Plann ing Road Map”, into the following key elements.

Quality

- Determine the needs of those customers.

- Translate those needs into our language.

- Develop a product that can respond to those needs.

- Optimize the product features so as to meet our needs and customer needs.

Quality Improvement

- Develop a process which is able to produce the product.

- Optimize the process.

Quality Control

- Prove that the process can produce the product under operating conditions.

- Transfer the process to operations.

Juran stressed that any organization produces and distributes its products through a series of specialized activities carried out by specialized departments These activities (actions) are depicted by the spiral of progress in quality. The spiral shows actions necessary before a product or service can be introduced to the market. Each

specialized department in the spiral (e.g., customer service, marketing, purchasing) is given the responsibility to carry out its assigned special function. In addition, each specialized department is also assigned a share of the responsibility of carrying out certain companywide functions such as human relations, finance,and quality.Juran talked about the quality function to describe activities through which the departments around the spiral can attain quality.

Cost of quality is the total cost of ensuring quality in products and services (including analytical activities). This cost enables the organization to measure the effect of quality on current practices. Total quality management requires the management of processes, not just the outputs. Every person within the organization contributes to and operates within a process, and every process should have an identified process owner who is responsible for the effectiveness of the process. Process cost is the total cost of conformance and cost of non-conformance. Cost of conformance (COC) is the intrinsic cost of providing products or services to declared standards by a given, specified process in a fully effective manner. Cost of non-conformance (CONC) is the cost of wasted time, materials and capacity (resources) associated with a process in the production, dispatch, receipt, and correction of unsatisfactory goods and services.

The traditional approach to quality cost modelling categorizes costs as prevention, appraisal and failure costs. Prevention and appraisal costs are the costs of assuring quality, and internal and external costs are the failure and scrap costs. Added together, these produce the total costs.

Internal failure cost is the cost when you discover, before release a laboratory report or an analysis certificate that something has gone wrong. External failure cost is where an analysis result or certificate reach the customer before you discover that something has gone wrong. The lost opportunity cost is the cost when we do not proceed to the routine laboratory activities as a result of other, non productive activities that must take place in the laboratory. In other words, this cost arises when we are dealing with trivial activities that prevent us from doing more important activities. The cost of this lost opportunity is probably the highest of the costs of