Describe the four (4) Deming’s Profound Knowledge System.
W. Edwards Deming stated “A
product or a service possesses quality if it helps somebody and enjoys a good
and sustainable market.” Deming never defined precisely what quality really is,
he summarized his philosophy of quality and management in a system which he
called “A System of Profound knowledge”. The system demonstrates the foundation
of beliefs and values about learning that have guided Japan to rise in its
economic recovery and its quality products.
Profound knowledge, according to
Deming, comprises of four components which are inseparable and interrelated
among one another:
- Appreciation
for a system
- Theory
of variation
- Theory
of knowledge
- Psychology
Appreciation for the system is, according to Deming, a starting
point in quality management process which would be the light for the management
team to understand their organization better and able to make the right
decision for the organization at the right time.
System could be defined as a set of functionally
related components or activities within an organization that are interrelated
and work together to achieve organizational goals. An example of a system could
be seen in a fast food restaurant, for example KFC Restaurant which consists of
Order Taker or Cashier Subsystem, Promotion Subsystem, Drive-Through Subsystem
and Grill and Food Preparation Subsystem.
The objective of any system in any organization is for the long-term
benefit of everyone from the stockholders, employees, customers, community to
the environment surround it. For stockholders or shareholders, they would
realize the financial benefits earned within a period of time. Employees
working in the organization would be given opportunities for training and education
as the objective of the organization is to produce quality goods and exceeds
the customer expectation, employees would be and should be given adequate
education in order to perform better and improve their skills in doing things.
While for the customers, a system’s aim is to ensure the customers receive
products and services that met their needs and ensure their satisfaction over
the services or product provided.
The components of a system must work together for the system to be
effective. For example, if the order taker who works as the front liner of a
restaurant took the order wrong, without much doubt, the food preparation staff
prepared the food as required by the order taker, the customer would not get
what he demanded for, hence create dissatisfaction. The objective of the system
to achieve quality goods and satisfying customers would ultimately fail.
According to Deming, when every
part and element of a system is working in support of another part, ‘optimization’ occurs. Optimization refers
to the optimum quality or result. To be able to manage the organization
successfully and to achieve optimization, managers must first understand the
system, what are the elements or parts within a system and to understand the
interrelationships among all subsystems and the people who work in each
subsystem. Deming was concerned for the internal competition, ranking and
numerical ratings within an organization, which, according to him, should be
eliminated to avoid demotivation and suboptimization, to reach the employees
who are the main player of the production process in order to understand
problems at processing level and also to convey feedback to individuals about
their performance.
Refer to the example of the KFC
Restaurant mentioned earlier, it is the manager’s responsibility to optimize
the system and make the best decisions for all subsystem and everyone in it,
not to focus only on a small part of a system. Without careful consideration
and responsibility, if the manager sub-optimized the whole system, the
organization would not be able to achieve its goal and eventually the whole
organization would fail. For example: To improve sales and customers comforts,
the manager renovates the restaurant, upgrading the system, and buying new cookware
needed to produce food faster, but he neglect the training for the staff on how
to operate the new system, how to use the new cookware and etc. As the result,
the staff could not prepare the food in a short period of time, and due to lacking
of skills and delay in food delivery, it would eventually lead to
dissatisfaction of the customers. Hence, from this simple example, it is true
to Deming’s saying that “a system requires cooperation”.
To understand and comprehend the
interactions and interdependent forces of all elements within the system could
benefit the management in controlling the events around them and manage the
system to achieve the goals of the organization. The system would work smoothly
and hence making quality goal a possibility for everyone involved.
Understanding Process Variation (variasi).
What is variation? Why is it necessary to comprehend variation? And how
does it affecting the quality goal of the organization? To understand variation, the management would know and understand
what to expect in the process of working on achieving the quality goal, hence,
prepare and predict future actions to reduce cost and wastage and enable to
improve final product to meet the customer’s needs. By understanding variation
also helps the manager to make the right decision at the right time.
Deming makes 2 points about
variation:
i.
errors and inconsistencies will always exist in any
process or activities
ii.
people apply the wrong corrective action when
something goes wrong
Lack of understand of the process
variation, many money were wasted as organization try to understand what has
caused a problem in the process as a production process contains many sources
of variation. For example, raw material for making a dress is differing in
thickness, strength and durability. While tools used for sewing or making the
dress are differ in strength, functionality and usability, some could be used
for long term and some tools may be worn out in a very short period of time.
There are two types of variation,
which are:
i.
Common causes of
variation which refer to factors that are present as a natural part of a
process, such as tool which has worn out or break down. System run by common
cause variation is stable and has predicted performance
ii.
Special causes
of variation or assignable causes are variation appears from external
sources that are not integral or natural in the process, such as poorly trained
staff, who cannot operate the tools properly. It usually would mess up the
predicted pattern and is easy to detect by using statistical method. It is more
economical to remove or replace compared to common causes of variation.
According to Deming, Variation is
the main factor of poor quality. For example, inconsistencies in service due to
lack of knowledge and skills of the employees and the ununiformed standard of
procedure failed to meet the customer’s needs, thus frustrates the customers
and breaking the brand of the company. Deming also stressed that variation increase
the cost of doing business. For instance, defect items at Factory A were
adjusted within the factory, this would add cost to the process as the item
need to be rework. Even the product was adjusted, but yet it was not close to
the expected quality specification, customers would complain and this would
then increase the cost on field work such as customer service and more
promotion or ads to assure the customers and to convince them to remain royal
to the company.
To minimize or reduce, Deming
suggested few remedy
·
Special causes variation should be identified by
workers, who are the ground workers and the assemblyman of the products, the
method work through the use of control chart with the support of the management
team and adequate training, should also be given.
·
Common causes variation could be improve by
changing the technology of the process. Technology included the machine, people
working in it, the materials to produce the goods, methods and system.
Minimizing variation would
benefit both the producer and the customer. As for customer, they are assured
of all products quality is the same. For instance, the government who usually
buy in bulk cannot inspect the purchase once by one, if they are assure of the
quality of the goods provided by a certain company, they would buy in confident
and perhaps increase the purchasing value. And the producer could increase
productivity with less inspection on the production process to be done, and
less wastage but more efficient in utilizing resources.
By understanding variation, the
members of the organization, the top management to the operating employees
would see the trend of the customers’ demands, they would understand past
performance and so can predict future performance, they would also be able to
learn from past mistakes, hence taking action to correct and improve their
future performance.
Knowledge as mentioned in Deming’s
system of profound knowledge, is a
branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, it is the
general reliability of claims to knowledge and its bases.
Deming believes that ‘knowledge
comes from theory and that without theory, there is no learning’. Experience
alone without a theory of knowledge, an organization cannot learn from its own
experience or from that of another company. For example, without proper
knowledge of human resource, when crisis happened, the management team works on
it and get it passed somehow. When the same problem resurface, they tried the
same method, but now it failed them, because previously they did not acquired
much human resource knowledge to handle crisis, so when it happened again,
there is no guideline and theories that help them to analyze the problem and
solving it.
Management decisions should be
driven by knowledge, which are facts, data and justified theories, not solely
on opinions. Good theories supported by data are not only persuasive, but it
would also establish a cause-effect relationship and it can be used as
prediction for future events.
Likewise, experience without
knowledge, theory and justified data is just a myth which no leader would take
risk on managing their organization. With knowledge, the managers would know
how to plan, and improve learning in order to achieve the quality goals.
Improvement and changes were seen as different entity. Problems could be solved
with the knowledge learnt.
Psychology, according to Deming,
is the most powerful component of the three elements of the system of profound
knowledge. Deming believes that everyone wants to learn and to create. By
learning, practicing and adapting psychology, it helps to
i.
Understand people
·
Interaction between people, employer-employee,
producer-supplier and producer-customer, could be comprehend
·
Circumstances that affecting everyone within the
organization, and
·
The drivers of behavior, which makes people,
behave in certain way.
ii.
Nurture and preserve people’s positive characteristic
Management need to understand the
above factors and integrating in their decision making process, then quality
management would be a success. Deming strongly against rating the employees, as
he mentioned that ratings and rankings of employees would rob them from
motivation.
Management must know how to
motivate the employees, how to build positive relationship with the employee,
create positive working environment and also dealing with employees and
customers positively.
 |
| PDCA (aka the Deming Cycle, Shewhart cycle, or Deming Wheel) is an iterative four-step quality control strategy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Psychology review shows that people
learn in different ways and rates. Training methods and approaches need to
increase learning for individuals and for the organization itself. For example,
if an employee prefer to learn from doing things himself, then technical
training is suitable for him. Training session which requires him to sit in a
hall for hours would not only wasted his time to be productive, but would also
result in low quality outcome.
Ø Deming
recommends applying Shewhart / Deming Cycle to analyze a problem and use
Shewhart’s Control Chart to track activity. As an event occurs, it is plotted
at the given juncture on the X and Y axis, each representing a variable such as
time and date
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