Investigation of the failure of statistical process control in manufacturing industries in South Africa : case study - Atlantis Diesel Engines

Includes bibliography.This work strives to give an insight into why Statistical Process Control (SPC), a quality management tool, is not yielding desired results in some manufacturing industries such as Atlantis Diesel Engines in the Western Cape. Statistical Process Control is an improvement technique that, when properly used, can improve both the quality and the productivity levels which may subsequently improve the competitiveness of a company. SPC achieves this by highlighting when a process is out of control. This happens at the source and a very early stage. The advantage of this is that in the case of manufacturing, rejects are limited and in some cases prevented depending on the relationship between process capability and specifications. The aim of SPC is to reduce variability of characteristics of a product. Wetherill and Brown (1991) revealed that many organisations regulated the quality of their products with SPC during the Second World War. This gives an idea of how long SPC has been in existence. The widespread use of SPC nearly came to an end in the 1960s. The reason for the abandonment of SPC by leading manufacturing industries in most parts of the world was not clear but the belief was that at that time industries were prospering, with little or no competition. However, in the late 1970s, the Japanese industries took the market by storm by the use of quality management techniques and tools, which were introduced by quality gurus such as Deming, Juran, Crosby and many others. This gave the incentive for organisations that wanted to be world class players in their respective sectors to reconsider exhaustively the use of SPC and its tools. In South Africa, predominantly in the Western Cape, SPC has been reintroduced in many companies over the past eight years. The introduction of SPC in most of the industries has not been a smooth transition as it was based on the misconception that if enough of the "right" improvement activities were carried out, then actual performance improvement would improve. There have been many factors hindering the successful implementation of SPC in manufacturing industries such as ADE. This research aims to identify these factors

Spirit of change : a quest for the heart of quality

Why do quality initiatives work in some organisations but not in others? In a quest to discover the heart of quality, this thesis sets change programmes within the context of a turbulent global environment, where learning to adapt is the key to survival. The research explores how individuals, organisations and government use learning to promote change, as well as respond to it. Two case studies demonstrate how management style can influence learning, and hence the changes needed to achieve 'real' quality.Seeking to achieve quality through systems and procedures provides only nominal quality. This research suggests that, for some people at least, work is used for self-fulfilment, and in the quest for 'real' quality, aspirations for self-fulfilment within the workplace must be addressed. By using the metaphor of 'work as part of the heroic quest' for self-fulfilment, links are made between Maslow's concept of self-actualisation and the new literature on organizational 'soul' and spiritual intelligence.The conclusion is that if 'real' quality is the goal, self-fulfilment is the path. By establishing a community of learners in the workplace, tremendous energy - the spirit of change - is released and that energy leads straight to the heart of quality

SYMBOLIC MEANING OF MONEY, SELF-ESTEEM, AND IDENTIFICATION WITH PANCASILA VALUES

That human behavior is influenced by money is widely understood by many of us today. The influence is quite great not only in economic-related human behavior, but also in political, social, cultural, legal, and even in religious domain of human behavior. Therefore it is important to understand the meaning of money. In the terms of its symbolism, different individuals give different cognitive and affective meaning to money. This research proposes a model which hopefully is able to explain the symbolic meaning of money with both individual and group perspectives. In doing so, the research placed self-esteem and social identity (that is identification with the Pancasilathe state foundation and ideology of the Republic of Indonesia-values) as predictor variables. There were 161 Indonesian students (46 males and 115 females) participated in this research and they came from two universities located in Jakarta, the capital city of the Republic of Indonesia. The multiple linear regression analysis showed that self-esteem and identification with the fourth principle values of Pancasila significantly predicted the symbolic meaning of money, although the correlation coefficient of self-esteem and the dependent variable was considerably weak. The one-way ANOVA showed that there were significant differences in the symbolical meaning of money according to the faculty where the students went, the category of residential place where the students lived in, the students' occupation, and their ethnicity. The implication of the research findings in order to understand the financial corruptive behavior in Indonesia is discussed; so is the recommendation concerning the Indonesians' spirituality factor for symbolic meaning of money measurement improvement

An Evaluation of the Implementation of Total Quality Management in a Service Organization

This research consists of a formative evaluation designed to identify the steps necessary to revitalize a formerly successful Total Quality Management (TQM) process at a U.S. Navy engineering and logistics support organization. The research also developed a methodology to account for the fact that the investigator is a well-informed insider who served as one of the principle change agents for the TQM implementation. The research is based on the researcher\u27s observation that the major cause for the waning implementation was due to senior management and leadership issues and the organization-wide processes with which they interface. The investigation consisted of an extensive review of the literature to identify, from a leadership perspective and theory framework, an ideal implementation for this organization. Then a case study was conducted to identify the espoused and actual implementation processes, again from a leadership viewpoint. The gaps or differences between ideal and espoused and espoused and actual were analyzed to identify conditions and relationships which must be addressed as part of the formative evaluation. Significant concerns were identified in leadership actions, TQM processes, allocation of assets and cultural issues which hindered the adoption of the principles of TQM. Each of these was addressed by the development of specific recommendations which, if followed, would result in actions to revitalize the implementation of TQM. The research recognized that much of the discovery and mutually agreed understanding of the incidences associated with TQM had occurred during the actual implementation. The challenge was to develop methods of obtaining validity and insure a true mutual agreement on the occurrences in a manner to satisfy academic standards. This was accomplished through multiple techniques involving the researcher making statements which he believed accurate, frequently in writing, and then either finding substantiating documentation in the historical records or having multiple other insiders correct the understanding, either through interview or in writing response. This formed a method of mutual mirroring which insured multiple viewpoints and shared understanding. This research developed a systematic revitalization process which may have application to other similar organizations and improved methods of implementing TQM, especially for planning and developing improvements in quality of daily work. The literature research provided an improved integration of TQM principles with the underlying theories of organizational change and leadership. Specific leadership actions to implement TQM were identified

A critical analysis of the application of total quality management principles in two schools

In recent years, the principles of Total Quality Management, developed by Edwards Deming and others and used with varying degrees of success in the business world, have been used in schools as part of the process to transform education in terms of school management and classroom learning. This research grew out of my experiences when St. Andrew's Preparatory School participated in a Total Quality Management training programme which highlighted for me the problems and the benefits of such training. This research was undertaken, therefore, to find out how two other schools - one a high school in Grahamstown and the other a high school in Clarke County, U.S.A. had responded to similar training. Open ended questionnaires were used and the responses were analyzed to detect patterns of thoughts, feelings and attitudes, particularly in terms of human relationships at the school and with regard to various components of school culture. Comparisons were also made between the responses from the two schools, and the findings were compared with the claims made for TQM by the theorists and other educational practitioners who have ventured into TQM in their schools. The research findings indicate that Total Quality Management training had a positive impact on the participating schools but that there are problems associated with its adaptation for education. Given the necessary leadership commitment, however, these problems are not insurmountable. Total Quality Management may well be able to contribute towards the restructing of education which seems to be more and more urgently needed both in South Africa and in their countries

An evaluation of total quality management projects in the National Health Service

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis sets out to account for the relative failure of Total Quality Management (TQM) experiments installed in the NHS between 1990 and 1994. In the study, only two NHS pilot sites in a large sample of hospitals and community services were found to have made significant progress on implementing TQM. Whilst most of these TQM sites made more progress on structured quality improvement than a group of non-TQM NHS quasi-controls, all were outperformed by two commercial TQM companies in the sample. The analysis is based on 850 semi-structured interviews carried out with a wide range of staff as well as documentary analysis, non-participant observation, and feedback workshops at selected sites. In accounting for the results, the thesis tests eight propositions about the application of rationalistic private sector models of change to a complex public sector organisation like the NHS. The analysis demonstrates the limitations of such approaches when they are not adapted to take account of the technical, systemic and behavioural differences between the two sectors. It can also be said that funding for the NHS experiments, whilst substantial, was an order of magnitude lower than that in the commercial companies. Similarly, support both centrally and locally in the NHS was not sufficient to provide for rigorous pre-planning and monitoring of progress. Numerous other changes being made at the same time were mostly incompatible with TQM principles and hindered progress on coherent change. Leadership commitment to, and understanding of, TQM was much weaker in the NHS than in the commercial companies. The requirement to move towards collective, userdefined, measures of quality met with opposition from staff groups who were used to their own individualistic and professional conceptions of quality. This led to NHS TQM sites being unable to demonstrate the organisation-wide changes that are said to be hallmarks of TQM

Leadership in a Quality School

Education in Western countries has been under attack in recent years. Numerous individuals and groups have made attempts to reform or restructure the system in which students are schooled. Such change is difficult and on many occasions the attempts at reform resulted in very superficial modifications. Significant change can come from a complex interaction of people where leaders and collaborators work interactively to achieve common purposes. This research examined one school, which is part of William Glasser\u27s consortium of Quality Schools, where significant changes took place. Glasser\u27s control theory has played an important role in the change process. The challenge was to determine the nature of leadership in the school as the changes unfolded and so the focus was on the leadership processes that occurred. The study examined the various ways in which people used influence and how they established and sustained influence relationships to make substantive changes in the education processes at the school. The researcher used a qualitative case study methodology to examine the school in rural California. Through this methodology it was possible to provide an outline of the range of strategies that people used to entice others to enter into relationships with them, relationships that brought about significant change that reflected the mutual purposes of the people concerned. The findings of the study indicate that for significant change to occur adults in the school must change their beliefs about the nature of the school, about their relationships with one another and about their relationships with the students. Leaders and collaborators can best achieve changes that reflected their mutual purposes when they confront the beliefs they have brought with them from their past and take steps to change those beliefs through enabling and encouraging noncoercive influence relationships to exist between them. Changing beliefs is assisted by changing the language that is used in the school, particularly changing the metaphors used to speak about the school and the relationships that exist there

The making of total quality management (TQM) : a supplementary examination.

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