Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2 A Historical Path of the Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1 The Organisational and Productive Model
of Mass Production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2 The Birth of the Japanese Management Systems . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 The Relentless Decline of Mass Production
in the Western Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4 The Recovery of the USA in the 1980s–1990s
and the Proclamation of the Japanese Production Systems. . . . 6
2.5 The American Model of Six Sigma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3 Literature Review Concerning the Comparison of the Systems. . . 9
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4 Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5 Japanese Total Quality Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6 Total Quality Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
7 Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8 Business Process Reengineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
9 Lean Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
9.1 Lean Principles and Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9.1.1 Hoshin Kanri and Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9.1.2 Value Stream Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9.1.3 Lean Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
9.1.4 Lean Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9.1.5 Push and Pull Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9.1.6 Kaizen Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9.1.7 Visual Control and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9.1.8 Takt Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
9.1.9 5s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
9.1.10 One-Piece-Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
9.1.11 SMED: Quick Changeover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
9.1.12 Jidoka: Autonomation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
9.1.13 Kanban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
9.1.14 Total Productive Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
9.1.15 Asaichi: Market Morning: A3 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
10 Six Sigma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
10.1 Six Sigma as an Excellence Management System. . . . . . . . . . 37
10.2 Six Sigma Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
10.2.1 The Six Sigma DMAIC Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
10.2.2 The Roles in Six Sigma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
10.3 Six Sigma and PDCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
11 Discussion and Comparison About the Common Characteristics
of the Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
12 Lessons Learned from the Comparison and Discussion . . . . . . . . 53
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
13 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
14 Agenda for Future Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Chapter 1
Introduction
Japanese Total Quality Control (JTQC), Total Quality Management (TQM), Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Lean Thinking and Six Sigma are quality and operations improvement systems all oriented towards process improvement. They have implementation factors and results in common such as: continuous improvement, customer satisfaction, people and management involvement to mention a few. Nonetheless, the systems also present different and important characteristics due to their different origins and the historic path of implementation inside companies.
The literature itself has considered the systems at different times and in different ways. Six Sigma comes from the USA, it is the most recent system, and along with the Japanese Toyota Production System (TPS) revisited by Womack and Jones (1998) with the new name Lean Thinking, it is still extensively researched and discussed by practitioners and academics (Wedgwood 2006). The literature on TQM and JTQC reached a peak in the middle of the 1990s, although less so with TQM but it is still being researched (Osayawe Ehigie and McAndrew 2005). BPR became very popular in the USA in the early 1990s, since then interest in it has decreased and nowadays only the term reengineering has been inherited (Stoica et al. 2004). Deming’s system has been analysed and discussed less than the other systems.
In the light of this there is a need to better compare and discuss the evolution of the systems, the ways of implementing them, their distinctions and what they share in common. Indeed the main purpose and contribution of this book lies in the concurrent analysis and classification, by the means of a literature review, of the results and critical implementation factors of the six systems. Deming’s Plan- Do-Check-Act (PDCA) model (Deming 1950) has been used to classify the results from the literature review.
The findings will open an interesting debate for future research about the future of the systems and the lessons learnt from their evolutions. The findings could also be a useful comparison programme for practitioners that want to apply the systems or integrate them.