Total Quality Management, Audits, and the EFQM Model
Total Quality Management
Total Quality Management (TQM) provides a quality culture necessary to achieve continuous improvement. TQM shapes an organization, focusing on quality and involving all members. The goal is to achieve long-term success through client satisfaction and benefits for all organization members and society.
Total Quality Excellence
Total Quality Excellence is a strategy whose objective is for the organization to meet the balanced needs and expectations of all stakeholders. The main objective of TQM is business excellence. Recognized Total Quality Management models are fundamental to implementing an excellent organization.
Main Models
- Deming Model
- Malcolm Baldrige Model
- EFQM Model
EFQM Model
An organization can achieve excellence through a distinct approach. There are eight core concepts:
- Results orientation
- Customer orientation
- Leadership and constancy in objectives
- Management by processes and events
- Involvement and development of people
- Continuous improvement and innovation
- Development of partnerships
- Social responsibility
Structure of the model: Describes the facilitators as potential agents of the company. The results reflect the effect of the facilitators.
Self-Diagnosis
The agents: EFQM evaluation of processes (comprehensive, global, regular, and systematic review of activities and results of the organization), self-diagnosis (a study of how the company is doing in each of the recognized aspects of the model).
Evaluation
RADAR Model: Results, Approach, Deployment, Assessment, Review.
Balanced Scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a research project that shows excessive orientation to financial indicators. The BSC provides the establishment of instruments, objectives, and indicators that conform to or drive the vision and business strategy.
Basic Perspectives
- Finance
- Customers
- Internal processes
- Training and growth
The BSC is an optimal complement for a company that follows a process using the EFQM self-diagnosis model.
Audits
An audit is a systematic, independent, and documented process to obtain audit evidence and evaluate it objectively to determine the extent to which the audit criteria are fulfilled.
Actors
- Auditor: The person who conducts the audit.
- Auditee: The entity subject to the audit.
- Client: The entity that requested the audit.
Audit Classes
Depending on activities: System, process, product, or service.
Depending on responsibilities: 1st party, 2nd party, 3rd party.
System Audit
Verifies the effectiveness of the implemented quality system to ensure the quality of services. It covers much of the process or product.
Process Audit
Verifies the effectiveness of the quality implemented in a process to ensure product or service quality. It checks that the characteristics of the process satisfy the expected specifications.
Product or Service Audit
Verifies the adequacy of the characteristics of one or more products to the client’s needs, regulations, and standards, and ensures that they maintain compliance.
1st Party Audit
The client and the audited organization are the same.
2nd Party Audit
The client and the auditee are not the same organization; the auditor comes from the client or is contracted out. The client can request an audit for evaluation, monitoring, or within the contractual framework.
3rd Party Audit
The client is the same as the auditee. The company seeks an independent and recognized body. These audits allocate the conservation, approval, or revocation of certification.
Audit Quality Objectives
Offer a comparison between what is and what should be, becoming a continuous improvement within the company. To do this:
- Establish deviations through audits
- Analyze and establish a corrective action plan
- Carry it out
- Monitor results
- Secure it
- Establish new objectives
Audit Development
UNE ISO 19011:2002: Applicable to all internal or external quality management audits.
Audit Principles
- Ethical conduct
- Fair presentation
- Professional care
- Independence
- Evidence-based approach
Audit Phases
- Establish audit objectives
- Establish the field and depth
- Establish frequency
- Appoint auditors
- Qualification of auditors
- Prepare the audit plan
- Collect information on the objects of the audit entities
- Classification of documents
- Preparation of a checklist
- Announce the audit and conduct preliminary conversations
- Conduct the audit
- Report
- Verify the effectiveness of the process