A Possibility In The Construction Industry

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Jung Kian Ng

University of Southern California

CE460

Abstract

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an approach to management that prioritizes customers’ satisfaction and improves the quality of products through continual effort by all level of company employees. Although this method might initially raise the cost of management, however the long-term success that it will bring will offset the cost. Many manufacturing industries have adopted this philosophy. However, several studies show that participants in construction field do not actively practice this approach. This paper looked into the obstacles that hamper the participants of the construction field from adopting this philosophy. The obstacles include the slow effect of the outcome of TQM, non-steady nature of construction work, strong emphasis on price in the industry and difficulty for organizational shift in the industry. However, the long-term benefits of TQM will eventually offset the cost to overcome these problems. This paper then suggested effective ways to implement TQM in construction companies such as, strong commitment, emphasis on long-term benefits, reduction in management mobility, and considering some of the invisible outcomes of Total Quality Management

Introduction

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management philosophy that places emphasis on the overall and integrated effort in a business organization to increase and maintain the quality of products it produces and services it provides. This philosophy holds the belief that quality of products and services do not lie only in the hands of the top management of the organization or the "quality controller" of the production or service end. Quality products and services are instead the results of the effort to improve quality at every level of the organization. [1]

There is a lot of ways to define the quality of the products since each consumer and user has different definitions for quality or even the manufacturer or business organization would have different standards for quality products. Nonetheless, the strong emphasis on quality products alternatively means prioritizing the demands and expectations of the customers. To ease the process of defining quality products, several key dimensions have to be defined to identify the standard of quality products. For manufacturing industry, these factors are: conformance to specifications, performance, reliability, features, durability, and serviceability. These dimensions are similar in service industry but differ slightly. The dimensions for service industry include: tangible factors, consistency, responsive to customer needs, courtesy and friendliness, timeliness and promptness, and atmosphere. [2]

Total Quality Management started mainly in 1950s and 1960s in Japan after World War II. One of the main and the most prominent contributors to this management philosophy is an American statistician named W. Edwards Deming. He was initially in Japan to assist the Japanese in census in 1947. Nonetheless, he returned to Japan two years later and started teaching a course on statistical control with more than two hundred engineers enrolled in the class. The Japanese industrial players were keen on improving the quality of their products because they would like to increase their export and recover their economy after World War II. Deming not only brought the ideas of statistical control in his course, his teaching involved a management philosophy that was beyond the traditional statistical control approach.[4] Deming believed that putting the blame on the workers on the quality of the products was counterproductive since 85 percent of quality problems actually were caused by processes and systems including poor management and only the remaining 15 percent are caused by worker errors. [2] It is then that Deming believed that quality management must come from the commitment of top management of a business organization and it must bring about organizational change to provide a system that supports this commitment involving all employees. [3]

Deming developed 14 points as the core concept in implementing Total Quality Management in improving quality and productivity for business organizations.[5] A lot other players in different industries and scholars in academia have summarized and concluded a lot of different sets of basic principles of Total Quality Management. This paper identifies a few most important key principles of Total Quality Management to be implemented by companies.

1. Customer Focus

Since strong emphasis on quality products means satisfying customers’ need and expectations as mentioned above, a customer-focused approach that has to be taken by the company is to constantly identify the changing trend of market demands. Customer preferences and market trends change easily and swiftly from time to time. Therefore, it is imperative that companies always keep a closed-connection with their customers, constantly receiving feedback from the customers and are open to ideas from customers. Besides, the feedback and comments as well as ideas have to receive attention and the company always has to act on them as soon as possible. It is important for companies to remember that they exist only because customers exist.

2. Product Design

Product design is a process which the company has to translate customers’ need into technical specifications. Oftentimes, this is the hardest aspect of Total Quality Management because different customers have different ways of conveying their needs for the products. Therefore, companies can pick up different tools to aid them in this process of translating. One of the most common tools is Quality Function Deployment (QFD). QFD is able to relate the customer requirements with the design specifications by quantifying the importance of major customer requirements and relate them to specific product specifications.

3. Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is another major principle in Total Quality Management. Once a process or a project is started, there is a lot of room to be improved. However, it is important also to realize that the room to improve never ends. Some well-established companies tend to be complacent at the achievements, standards, and quality they have and begin to slow down on the effort to continually improve themselves and their products. Besides, continuous improvement is not limited to improving the quality of the products. It also plays a vital role in other key areas such as cross-functional management, team efficiency, quality standards, and so on. Cross-functional management is useful when the management team not only is familiar within their job scope but is able to cross-check different teams in ensuring all the teams are working at its optimum efficiency. Furthermore, improving team efficiency means constantly requiring team members to commit their best in the team. Increasing quality standards from time to time also allows the teams to constantly motivate themselves in innovations in existing products.

4. Use of Quality Tools

The implementation of the management philosophy also requires the use of quality tools among the workers. The employees have to undergo constant training in order to fully comprehend the usefulness of quality tools. Among the quality tools available include: cause-and-effect diagrams, flowcharts, checklists, control charts, scatter diagrams, Pareto analysis, histogram and so on.

5. Employee Empowerment

This principle requires that all employees to have the proper skills and training. This approach not only will allow the employees to carry out their duties effectively but also allow them to have the capabilities to advise their superiors. This opens up the scope of suggestions since the employees are capable of communicating with their superiors in term of technicality. Besides, employee empowerment also means that the organization must have an accessible means to provide suggestion to their superiors and the top management. Besides, once the employees have adequate training and skills they would be able to recognize and identify the processes that would have the most errors and this would in turn reduce the frequency of errors hence increase in productivity and quality.

6. Management Commitment

Management commitment to quality products is yet another key aspect in Total Quality Management. It is usually carried out by using the plan of action that is commonly known as Plan-Do-Check-Act. The first step of this action plan is plan. The company will have to come up with a quality plan and the rest of the management and company employees have to abide by the plan from the top management. The plan can also include suggestions from the employees. The second step of this action plan, do, means to fully enforce this quality plan and have the whole company from the top management to the manufacturing or service employees to work according to it. The third step is check, and it requires the company to constantly review and check the effectiveness of the plan and identifying the positive and negative outcomes of it. The last and final step is to act. Whenever negative outcomes or errors come out from the plan, the management has to immediately recognize the issues and look for a new alternative or repair it as soon as possible.

7. Managing Supplier Qualities

To fully ensure consistent quality products, the effort to improve is not limited only to the organization itself. Most of the products require suppliers to supply the raw materials or tools needed to produce the materials. Thus, it is pertinent for the company to identify the best suppliers that would supply long term demand. Therefore, competitive bidding might not be the best outcome for this process since bidding places emphasis on the lowest price but not the highest quality. One instance for the company to ensure quality supplies could be to subscribe to a long-term supplier and have a company representative to inspect the supplies at the suppliers’ side.

Difficulties in Implementing Total Quality Management in Construction Industry

Total Quality Management even though has been widely accepted by different industries such as manufacturing and service has not been fully accepted by construction industry. One of the reasons behind this lag is the slow effect of Total Quality Management. [6] Total Quality Management often requires a long time frame to see its benefits. Besides, it also requires a thorough organizational change including top management. A lot of companies are skeptical of this approach due to the long time frame it takes to fully achieve the best outcome of Total Quality Management. Moreover, construction industry is often subject to unforeseen changes and impact. Therefore, a lot of construction industry players would not take the risk of adopting Total Quality Management that would incur them higher cost at the beginning.

The second problem that serves as a hindrance to fully implement Total Quality Management in the construction industry is the non-steady state nature of construction work. [7] Construction work often has changes and the changes in demand and work natures impede Total Quality Management from fully helping construction company to achieve its best results. Unlike manufacturing and service industries that constantly produce the same products or provide the same service, construction companies accept different projects that would have very different natures of work and quantities of materials needed.

The third problem is perhaps the most difficult problem to overcome in construction industry. [7] Construction industry has been using competitive bidding to select contractors to run the job. Competitive bidding however is widely known to have placed strong emphasis on its price. Total Quality Management even though increases the quality in the long run and cost would be offset in the long run, for short-term projects and for new companies that have just begun to adopt Total Quality Management, the cost incurred on them would be significantly high and therefore would allow them to lose the bids. Losing bids in the long run will lead the construction companies into bankruptcy.

The fourth major problem in the construction industry is also the difficulty in implementing organizational shift. Total Quality Management requires the company to have organizational culture change. [7] Construction companies often hire temporary employees and most of contractors would also work with sub-contractors. The construction company will have internal change difficulties when it has to keep training new workers and employees its culture of upholding Total Quality Management. That caused the construction industry to have higher cost in implementing Total Quality Management compared to manufacturing industry and service industry in the long run. Besides, contractors would find it really difficult to extend its culture to their subcontractors since they are entirely separate entities but working on a same project.

Reasons and Advantages to Implement TQM in Construction Industry

High quality products often bring about higher costs of production. But one of the underlying principles of Total Quality Management is that in the long run the benefits brought by Total Quality Management could eventually offset the high cost of adoption.

The first benefit that construction companies should consider when attempting to adopt Total Quality Management, is a defect-free process. [8] Total Quality Management does not only emphasize on fixing the defects after it has been identified. It also includes identifying the source of the defects along the way. Oftentimes, the source of defects in construction industry is consistent. Therefore, with experience accumulation, the number of errors and percentage of defects would decrease tremendously in the long run. Besides, it also saves cost when the construction company has to deal with less complaints and less cost in re-purchasing materials to fix the defects. [9]

The other benefit that the construction company should consider when implementing Total Quality Management is the boost in public confidence. As one of the few construction companies that practices Total Quality Management, the construction company will stand out from the rest even though the cost is high. There will be some customers who are willing to pay higher prices to get better products. Nonetheless, the boost in public confidence does not stop there. A lower rate of defects in the projects would also boost the confidence of the public in the construction companies and eventually gained more jobs despite higher cost of construction.

Effective Ways to Implement Total Quality Management in Construction Industry

A lot of construction companies had tried Total Quality Management and they eventually went out of business. One of the many reasons is because it did not implement Total Quality Management effectively.

The first effective way that a construction company should consider is the strong commitment in implementing Total Quality Management. There are often a lot of different policies or changes that the management introduces to the company and its employees. Therefore, the company employees might doubt the effectiveness of Total Quality Management as another change policy that will take place and eventually be abolished. In addition to that, even some of the top management adopt Total Quality Management as another change policy and do not pledge full commitment to its implementation. Total Quality Management revolves around the plan of complete organizational culture change. Without full commitment and sincerity, construction companies that adopt Total Quality Management will only pay for its cost and never bear its fruits. The top management has to constantly remind itself and its employees that Total Quality Management is unlike any other and should be enforced fully without doubt.

The second way a construction company should bear in mind while implementing Total Quality Management is to forgo the strong emphasis on profits in a short time frame. The benefits of Total Quality Management never come overnight and a lot of the industry players are aware of that. Nonetheless, the non-steady state nature of construction work often leads the top management into anxiety and impatience when they are waiting for the positive outcome of Total Quality Management. As a result of that, a lot of construction companies will pull out from the adoption of Total Quality Management in their management. This in turn will jeopardize the company as the employees will begin to lose faith in the management due to their flip-flopping decision-making.

The third effective way in adopting Total Quality Management is to reduce the mobility of the top management personnel. More often than not, the top management personnel like to hop from one company to another, to look for higher wages and better benefits. Sometimes management personnel would also leave the company to prepare for his or her own startups. The problem with this is that the management that pledges allegiance to Total Quality Management might leave soon enough and the new management that comes in which is not familiar with this idea would tend to scrap it or spend more time to deal with it. This in the long run would hurt the company’s financial situation.

The fourth effective way in implementing Total Quality Management is to avoid justifying the positive outcomes of Total Quality Management solely based on the profits. Most of the construction companies will review their financial situation in a certain time frame. And they consider only the expense of Total Quality Management and the profits per job have not increased. Nonetheless, since Total Quality Management sometimes bring about non-visible effect such as more jobs in the long run, less defects in each job, the management tends to overlook and undermine the advantages of Total Quality Management and eventually abandon it.

Conclusion

It is now evidently clear that Total Quality Management has its perks and its importance in Total Quality Management. It does not only provide construction companies long term benefits, it will also advance the society and move us forward. One of the reasons is because once most of the construction companies adopt Total Quality Management, the cost of construction will fluctuate but eventually go down due to less number of errors and defects and stronger competitions. Besides, strong emphasis on quality construction will eventually also brings us safer and better buildings and designs. However, the construction industry players need to realize that Total Quality Management has its cost during its adoption and they have to plant the tree or pay the price in order to bear the fruit or enjoy the long-term benefits. There are problems that impede the implementation such as slow effect, non-steady nature of construction work, strong emphasis on price in construction industry, and difficult organization shift. Nonetheless, the benefits of Total Quality Management that include less client complaints, fewer number of defects, and higher profits and public confidence in the long run should encourage the top management of construction companies. In order to succeed in implementing Total Quality Management, the management also has to identify effective ways to fully enforce it such as strong commitment, emphasis on long-term benefits, reduction in management mobility, and considering some of the invisible outcomes of Total Quality Management.