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Quality Management Tools

Clifford Floyd, Marie Brkljacich, Sylvia Frickey

University of Phoenix

MGT 449

Benchmarking and Brainstorming

Team B was retained by Saturn to evaluate their current quality management plan. Upon evaluation, benchmarking and brainstorming were identified as areas where Saturn has excelled. This paper will review these quality management tools and explain why they are important not only for Saturn, but for any organization striving to achieve total quality management.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a tool that can be used in conjunction with other tools and processes to aid organizations in building a total quality management program. Benchmarking is used to evaluate a current process or product to that of a recognized leader (Burrill and Ledolter, 1999). Three prerequisites must be identified before an organization attempts to use benchmarking. The steps are as follows:

1. Organizations must have an environment conducive to benchmarking. Understanding that other organizations are more effective in certain areas and even the best have room for improvement.

2. Develop an effective benchmarking process and be able to train employees how to use the process.

3. Determine how and what the information will be used for before the benchmarking effort is started.

(Burrill and Ledolter, 1999)

Once these prerequisites have been evaluated an organization is ready to begin the benchmarking process. This process has four major steps as outlined below.

1. Decide what to benchmark. Identify current problems and goals then develop a purpose statement. The purpose statement lists what process is to be benchmarked, who is the sponsor of the benchmarking project and the purpose of the study.

2. Select and train a benchmarking team. The members need to be open minded, willing to accept change and be respectful of colleagues. The training should result in members gaining an understanding of the benchmarking process, what processes will be benchmarked and their performance and what factors are the most and least important in influencing process performance.

3. Prepare and conduct a study. Draw up a plan for the benchmarking project that includes a purpose statement. The statement should review what organizations and processes are involved in the study, the scope of the study and characteristics to be measured. The next steps are to make a project proposal and get approval from the project sponsor. Lastly the study needs to be performed, evaluate and learn from the data and report the findings.

4. Use the findings. After the first three steps have been followed and the results reviewed the benchmark team will need to begin the implementation process. A detailed implementation plan will put the gathered information into use. Without this step the time, energy and effort expended are worthless.

(Burrill and Ledolter, 1999)

Saturn’s roots began with a committee of 99 members who were experts in their field who studied 60 benchmark companies all over the world. They identified useful business practices, innovative ideas, effective operating procedures and winning strategies (Henczel, 2002). The committee set out to determine what made these organizations successful and how some of the same processes could be implemented to develop a quality management program for Saturn. Following the steps in the benchmarking process has allowed Saturn and many other organizations successfully used the benchmarking tool.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a quality tool used to list as many ideas as possible in a short period. The tool is generally used by teams because brainstorming encourages active participation from all team members. The objective is to help a team think about and list all dimensions of current problems or solutions. Teams can use a structured approach to brainstorming where all team members are asked in to suggest an idea, or in an unstructured approach members offer ideas freely and randomly as the ideas come to mind.

Guidelines to Using Brainstorming

The following is a list of guidelines to aid in effectively using the brainstorming as a tool.

1. Agree with team members how long the brainstorming session will be. 10 or 15 minutes are usually adequate. Assign a "timekeeper" to keep track of the time.

2. Remind team members of the rules for brainstorming: never criticize an idea; write down