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Grade

Total Quality Management

Term End Assignment

Submitted by:

Name: Tapan Patel

Roll No: 181164 Section: TQM
Batch: MBA – FT (2018-2020)

Institute of Management, Nirma University

Date of Submission: 24th April, 2020
 Answer-1
1. Explain some of the unique characteristics of the quality culture at RJ.
A quality becomes a key differentiator for any organization to succeed over its competitors and
this success only comes when entire environment and resources of an organization is ready to
challenge against the wastages and defects and work together to improve the quality. This
success observed by RJ is because of the continuous contribution of the Top management till the
bottom level of the organisation which has resulted into continuous quality improvement. Also,
the organization is the winner of Malcom Baldridge National Quality Award which is given to
an organization with highest level of sigma achievement an is a proof for a continuous
improvement culture at RJ.

When we talk about some of the unique characteristics of the quality culture, following are some
major practices observed:
• They continuously study the trend in industry, patient’s preferences and doctor referrals
and design a database called voice of customer and use it for service improvement.
• They are following a 12/25 strategy for quality improvement.
• A daily briefing is done between the team and the CEO.
• They are always exploring ways for patients and employee satisfaction and have very
low attrition rate.
• They have increased the training period for their permanent staff.
• They also have a practice called ‘Walk in My shoe’ where employees’ cross training
takes place and they also understand the importance of other’s job.
• All the patients care plan are evaluated daily and are modified if required for better
service to the patients.
Thus, also these practices show the culture of continuous quality improvement.

2. Who are the customers and how does RJ ensure customer satisfaction?
For RJ Hospital, they have classified their customers into three groups: patients, employees and
community.

For each group of customers, they have a different customer satisfaction plan:
i. Patients: They take into consideration of each patient’s cultural and language
preferences; lifestyle needs and quality of life. They evaluate patient care plan on daily
basis and improve accordingly. They have launched a 12/25 program where any
emergency patient sees a nurse in 12 min and a doctor in 25 min of admission,
otherwise emergency charges are levied off. It has increased the patient’s satisfaction up
to 83%.
ii. Employee: Employee gets repeated health check-ups. They are committed towards
employee’s health and safety. All employees in regular touch with patients have
additional testing and training for their safety. This led to satisfaction in areas like
satisfaction due to benefits, satisfaction due to voice in decision making, satisfaction by
employee recognition.
iii. Community: They provide community residents with free health screenings. They have
a health education program based on the guidelines of the government, They regularly
donate huge amount of money for the welfare of the community.

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3. What processes does RJ maintain to stay abreast of recent developments? Discuss the
emphasis it places on the philosophy of continuous improvement.
It is well known to all the organization that continuous disruption and modification in service
and constant improvement in technology is the key to succeed. Here at RJ Hospital same
philosophy has been kept in mind of every person working for them. In order to focus on
continuous improvement, RJ constantly study the dynamic market and identify all the need of
today’s customer. They also focus on the future needs. They study the trends in the industry,
patient preferences, doctor referrals further analyse and capture it in a database called VoC
which is used to design service improvements. RJ Hospital also utilizes a 5-Star Service
Standards. These standards give commitments to customers and co-workers, it leads to courtesy
and etiquette in treating a patient and safety awareness for the employees. They have adopted an
integrated ICT system which helps the hospital to share essential information for daily
operation. This information can also be helpful in modifying the day to day operations and
decision making which will improve the key processes and help in better strategic planning. The
technological development has them in revolutionizing new technologies which will serve as the
future of health care this includes digital radiology, bar coding of medications, electronic patient
medical records and computerized physician order-entry systems. They are not only focused on
only the adoption of new technology but for the sake of continuous improvement they have
partnerships with physicians, they have made steady improvement in the routine processes,
facilities, technology and training and with all this they are able to reduce the overall mortality
rate. The hospital has also been performing much accurately so that the infections and
medication errors is among the lowest in the nation. This all practice also proves their emphasis
on the continuous improvement.

4. Discuss the social obligations served by RJ. Does this promote advancing satisfaction
levels? RJ Hospital is a private and a not-for-profit acute-care hospital. They are serving more
than 250,000 residents in PennState area. They have always shown a social obligation towards
the community which is reflect in their innovative commitment towards excellence which can
be seen in the area of services improvement by daily planning and mapping resource as per the
need of a patient, processes improvement by adopting ICT system and modifying the daily
operation and investing in technology like digital radiology, barcoding medicines, etc. A few of
their programs like the 12/25 program which is focused on the consistency of providing the
service such that every emergency patient sees a nurse and a physician within 12 minutes and 25
minutes respectively or the patient’s emergency ward charges will be waived off.

They also show a deep commitment towards the community concern and are actively involved
in the social welfare. RJ Hospitals provides free health screenings to more than 600 community
residents in a month. They also provide health education to more than 120,000 people annually.
The education program is designed as per the guidance received from State Health Board and
International Health and Wellness Organization. They have been continuously donating for the
welfare of the people and their donations to community have been increased from $ 70,000 to
$130, 000 between 2012 and 2018. This social welfare has been fruitful to the organization as it
can be explained by an example of the cardiology department, here the market shares rose from
16% to 30% from 2012 to 2018 and they have been observing similar growth in the other
departments as well. They have grown over this period of half a decade but its near competitor’s
market shares has remained the same or in a declining mode during the same period. Also, they
have observed increase in its volume in the emergency department. They have become volume
leader in the area. Not only increase in the cash flow but also, they have improved the

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 satisfaction of patients as well as staff and the attrition rate are only 2-3%. Thus, it has helped in
promoting satisfaction level.
5. Technology is part and parcel of process improvement. Discuss the methods that RJ has
used to adopt technology and the subsequent results.
They have adopted an integrated ICT system which helps the hospital to share essential
information for daily operation. This information can also be helpful in modifying the day to
day operations and decision making which will improve the key processes and help in better
strategic planning. The technological development has them in revolutionizing new technologies
which will serve as the future of health care this includes digital radiology, bar coding of
medications, electronic patient medical records and computerized physician order-entry
systems. They are not only focused on only the adoption of new technology but for the sake of
continuous improvement they have partnerships with physicians, they have made steady
improvement in the routine processes, facilities, technology and training and with all this they
are able to reduce the overall mortality rate. The hospital has also been performing much
accurately so that the infections and medication errors is among the lowest in the nation. This
patient centred focus has led to increase in satisfaction (up to 83%) with the emergency
department. This has exceeded national benchmarks in 2016. Also, the patient satisfaction with
the nursing staff has improved from 60% to 80% from 2011 to 2016 due to adoption of new
technology.

Answer-2
Suppose you are asked to design a book on quality engineering (currently used in engineering
majors) so that it can be used to quality professionals in industry to meet their training needs
as well as other majors such as business, mathematics and science etc. The planning team has
identified the following customer groups: professors, students, professionals and publisher.
They also identified 6 HOWS which is given in following tables.
HOWS (order is from left to right)
Statistical Mgmt. topic Formula Complete Real-world Colour &
Fundamentals Derivation examples examples Glitz
and Methods
Identify at least two WHATS for each customer group and then construct a house of quality
showing the strength of relationship between WHATS and HOWS. Also identify the top
important design features. You may use the following rating scale 1-10, 1 stands for least
important and 10 stands for very important. For the roof of the house, you may use the
following symbols. (No competitor analysis is required).

Following are the table of WHATs and the Customer Group:

SR. NO. WHAT’s CUSTOMER GROUP

1 Reasonable / Low Price Students
2 Simple Language Students
3 Glossary and Keynotes Students
4 Business Case Study Professor & Professional
5 Real life Examples Students & Professor
6 Solved and Practise Problems Students & Professor
7 Reliable Author Professor
8 Aligned and Formatted text Publisher
9 Reading Comfort Publisher
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 10 Appropriate Fonts Publisher
11 Graphical Publisher & Students
12 Global / International Examples Professional
13 Fundamentally Rich Professional
Following is the House of Quality for the above stated problem:

All the changes have been mentioned the direction of change and Statistical Fundamentals and
Methods, Formula Derivation, Complete examples & Real-world examples is more desirable by
customers.

Answer-3
Select a firm (change the name) and list three or four key success factors (eg. advertising,
distribution, engineering, sales etc.) for that industry. Which firm (s), in your opinion, would
be appropriate to benchmark? Why?
From a mobile phone industry, I want to discuss about a smart phone company called Bapple Inc.
this is the biggest brand in this industry and the main factor of success for this company is it
constant strive towards innovation.

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The key success factors are:
1. Innovation: In this 21st century, innovation is the main pillar of success for a technology
company and smartphone industry completely depends on technology innovation. When we
particularly talk about this company it has been observed and proven that they add a new
innovative feature in every new model. They started with the best camera every in their 4 th
model. They have developed and independent environment for a mobile phone operating
system. They very the first company to add a biometric scanner in the phone. They have
delivered a twin camera phone which can take a DSLR type photos. They have successfully
launched a face recognition technology and there are many more features to be added in the
upcoming models.

2. Marketing and Branding: They organize two launch programs twice a year in fall and
spring every year where they introduce the latest models and feature of their product. This
event has a vast coverage and is broadcasted in the entire world. This also creates a hype
around the world. They are well known for their branding strategy. They have an apple logo
and a premium design of their phone which displays its premium-ness in the mind of the
customer.

3. People-skills and manufacturing: They have a well-trained staff which solve any customer
problem within 24 Hrs of generating an issue. They have service record of delivering within
2 hrs. They have hired world’s best engineering and are given full autonomy for new
technology development. Moreover, the entire phone is designed in the company and all
those parts are manufactured all over the world. Finally, they are assembled in house.

4. Distribution: The firm has built up a solid conveyance model for making its items
accessible all around on a similar date. They have various assembling offices over the globe
which production and supply units to the stores before the dispatch of the gadget to ensure
early adopters and lovers and effectively get their hands on the model they wish to utilize
and they might not need to settle on their decisions. This gives a serious positive picture
about the firm when those impacts talk about the item to the intrigued clients.

Following are the main companies of the industry which has some features to be a benchmark for
the industry:
1. Apple: It is known for its features, innovation and design.
2. Samsung: It is known for its wide range of product and capacity to quickly distribute it new
product and efficient supply chain.
3. Blackberry: It well known for its network receptivity.
4. Nokia: It is well known for its strength, low cost and long battery backup.
5. One-Plus: it is one of the consumer’s favourites which has emerged as a strong competitor to
other brands. It is first android phone which never hangs and has a very fast processor which
is available at low cost compared to other similar product.
6. VIVO & OPPO: They produce devices that look like the high-end models of market leader
but are not as expensive.

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 Answer-4

Examine your experience at a public utility centre or agency of your choice (eg. post office)
and describe your perception of the quality of the service. Suggest some TQM approaches that
might help the agency to improve.
When talking about the personal experience at any agency of office, I would like to highlight my
experience at the Passport Office of India. The entire process of issuing a passport took
approximately 1 month. The process is as following:
1. Online register and apply on the website of passport office.
2. Mention the required information and schedule an appoint as per the available slot.
3. Now once the individual is reached to the passport office there are 5 waiting chambers.
4. In the first room we are explained on how to arrange the documents.
5. In second room on the basis of appointment a token number is issued.
6. In third room there are two different waiting places. First, a preliminary documents
verification takes place and they collect first copy of xerox. Secondly, we have to wait for
our picture to be clicked.
7. In fourth room there are two-time document verification and they collect one more copy of
documents.
8. In final room we have the present the original documents and the final verification takes
place.
9. Post this, we have to wait for police verification which take 15-20 days.
10. After the verification is completed it takes 10-15 days to receive passport.
In this entire process, I entered the passport office at 9 AM and the entire process was complete at
3.30 PM. It took 6.30 hrs for the entire process.
Now, analysing the entire process we can easily reduce this entire process to just 12-15 days. The
common wastages observed in the entire process is the wastage of Time, Paper as a resource and
improper allocation of employees.
Here, in order to improve the quality of the existing process we can use 5 WHY, Value Stream
mapping as a lean tool. We can also use process mapping, a six-sigma tool, for the process
improvement. We have already identified the wastages that take place in this process earlier. Now,
during the value mapping of the process we need to define the flow of material but here in case of
service the client is moving in the value chain. Thus, there are multiple verification taking place
which can be reduce to just 1 verification desk. Looking at the process map of the issuing process.
They can adopt the system used by the RTO of the country. They can transfer the partial process to
a digital platform. Improving the IT will lead to reduction in the paper wastages. While applying for
the passport a website can be redesigned such that an individual upload all of his document’s soft
copy. Also, a token is automatically issued at the time of application thus one more process is
reduced. Now when he reaches the passport office based on the token number, they start with
clicking a picture and simultaneously verify the documents at the same place. They attest the copy
after verification. Thus, at the next chamber they have to submit the copy and the passport number
should be issued immediately. Now the same system should be linked to the police database and the

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technology automatically maps the police station based on the pin code. This process can be
completed very next day. Once, the process is complete they generate an online request post
verification and the passport is printing and delivered within a week.

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