[The following article appears in _The_Public_Sector_Network_
News_, Winter 1995 edition, pages 4 and 5.]

                          QUALITY IN GOVERNMENT

     "Is TQM Dead?" This question was posed in the lead article
of the April 1994 issue of Quality Digest [SysOp note: that
article is available for download from the TQM BBS. Filename:
TQMDEAD.ZIP]. You, too, may be wondering if the buzzword of the
1980s, embraced by companies and organizations large and small,
has bitten the dust. Looking at some of the statistics, one could
easily conclude TQM is in trouble. According to the Quality
Digest article:
O Only 20% of FORTUNE 500 companies are satisfied with the
results of the TQM process, according to a 1992 Rath & Strong
survey.
O A study of 30 quality programs by McKinsey & Co. found that
two-thirds of them had stalled or fallen short of yielding real
improvements.
O A survey of 300 electronics companies by the American
Electronics Association found that 73% had quality programs in
place, but of these, 63% said they had failed to improve quality
by even as much as 10%.
     What or who's to blame? The article refrains from
fingerpointing and offers six rules that determine the success of
any TQM effort:
1. Measure costs--quality must yield a payback.
2. Integrate TQM into your mission--it is essential that quality
be driven by the business purpose of the organization.
3. Use the right tools--and use them appropriately.
4. Balance people, processes, and technology.
5. Don't lose people to teams--an organization must balance
employees' involvement in teams with individual excellence.
6. Allow time to change the organization's culture--it takes time
for TQM to become fully ingrained in an organization's culture.
     The bottom line--whether or not there is a shared definition
of TQM--is that TQM is a philosophy and, as such, is not dead but
is being changed and improved. This change process is expounded
in the August 8, 1994, cover story of Business Week magazine,
"Quality: How To Make It Pay" and corresponds to the first
success indicator mentioned above: Measure costs. 
     The Business Week story cites quality successes and
failures--failures due in part to organizations losing sight of
the customer as they strive for faster processing times and
improved quality. This is amazing, to say the least, when one of
the precepts of TQM is focus on the customer! To turn this
around, a growing number of organizations are starting to refine
the notion of quality-by integrating the concept of "return on
quality" (ROQ). Organizations are beginning to assess the
financial impact of quality improvements with the value being
added for the organization and its customers. This is not a
unique or new concept. Quality guru Philip Crosby speaks about
the cost of quality in terms of measuring monies you're losing
because you're doing something wrong, monies lost as a result of
not doing it right the first time, and how much it will cost to
change or improve.
     There are some detractors of the ROQ theory who believe that
it is a mistake to take a "bean-counter's view of something as
fundamental as quality." But to its advocates, ROQ is getting
organizations back to the concept of customer focus. ROQ starts
with having an effective quality program with a strong foundation
of the basics: process/system knowledge and controls, measurement
systems, and skilled personnel. Next, an organization must
calculate the cost of current quality initiatives, determine
customer needs, focus on those quality efforts most likely to
meet or exceed customer expectations at a reasonable cost,
closely monitor results and roll out successful programs, and
continuously improve.
     Although the ROQ theory may seem more applicable to
private-sector organizations that have an eye on market share and
profits, there is a direct link to those of us in the public
sector. As we craft our quality initiative, we have to be able to
target our improvement efforts on those activities that have
potential payoff, weighing the resource commitments against
results. In our current fiscal environment, we must make sound
decisions to determine which improvement projects have a positive
impact on improving, in a cost-effective manner, the products and
services we provide.

Andrea Lewis, Assistant for Quality Programs California
Environmental Protection Agency 555 Capital Mall, Suite 235
Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: (916) 324-7316 Fax: (916) 322-6005