Introduction
The Deming Prize, named after Dr. W. Edwards Deming, was established in 1951. To reconstruct Japan’s economy after WWII, the Japanese government encouraged the formation of industrial organizations. This initiative resulted in the formation of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). JUSE gathered experts and executives from Japan’s key sectors to achieve this goal by exchanging best practices for quality improvement. Dr. Deming was named an expert by JUSE to educate and coach executives, engineers, and academics in the industrial sector on quality control following his commissioning by the United States Army to help with Japan’s postwar enumeration. His strategies were extensively adopted, culminating in greater production, enhanced quality, and cost savings. As a result of the worldwide awareness of the excellent quality attributed to Japanese goods, demand increased.
Deming’s Philosophy
The award recognizes achievement in comprehensive quality management and is given to people or organizations who effectively integrate statistical and managerial thinking, resulting in improved products and services. Deming’s management philosophy is based on the idea that leadership and management are essential components of the quality management system. Aluaddin and Yamada (2019) characterize the Deming concept as the Deming Prize’s defining attribute, stating that the technique fosters self-discovery inside an organization, establishing sustained improvement practices and ensuring organizations stay competitive even when management changes. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) is included in the concept, which encourages systems and procedures that enable individuals and organizations to develop (Aluaddin & Yamada, 2019). By adopting the SoPK principles, management may create policies and standards that help lower costs by decreasing waste, combating employee turnover, and increasing customer satisfaction.
Deming’s 14 points for enhancing organization quality highlight techniques managers should employ to increase efficiency and productivity. These strategies are guided by long-term preparation, eradicating reliance on monitoring, on-the-job training, and education. Others are quality-driven by cross-functional workgroups, removing output motivated by fear of executives and providing great leadership toward a quality-focused culture (Institute, n.d.). The PDCA cycle (plan-do-check-act) continuously improves processes and products by planning, doing, checking, and acting (Engineers, n.d.).
The Deming Prize consists of four main categories. The Deming Prize for individuals or groups is given to those who have made an outstanding contribution to both TQM, and the application and dissemination of TQM, The Deming Distinguished Service Award for Dissemination and Promotion Overseas is given to individuals who made an outstanding contribution to the dissemination of TQM during an evaluation period of 3-5years, The Deming Prize given to organizations that have implemented TQM suitable for their management philosophy and business strategies and The Deming Grand Prize given to organizations that maintain and continuously develop the level of TQM within their organizations for more than three years after winning the Deming Prize (Engineers, n.d.).
Assessment Process
Compared to other quality awards, The Deming Prize’s assessment and evaluation procedure are unique. JUSE Scientists and Engineers administer the procedure, which entails JUSE selecting examiners with experience in quality management to access and assess whether a business has effectively implemented Quality Management in its operations (Kiran, 2017). The organization must first submit a written overview detailing its quality management system in great detail. If the firm passes the documented assessment, the company is subjected to an onsite inspection (Engineers, n.d.). Examiners make judgments based on the assessment criteria and submit their results to the Deming committee. Institutions that satisfy eligibility requirements pass the test.
Benefits of the Deming Prize
To win the Deming Prize, organizations must demonstrate how senior management utilizes and implements Total Quality Management (TQM) principles and the quantitative results of TQM to the company (Sachdev, n.d.). In their objections, organizations cited the Deming Prize’s influence on quality management and continuous improvement. Toyota, for example, entered the Deming Application Prize in May 1965. The effectiveness of TQM measures was visible in the flawless manufacturing process of the third generation Corona (Toyota, n.d). To encourage quality control with stakeholders and business partners, build basic management systems without focusing on forms, and improve overall planning and long-term perspective, Toyota received the Deming Prize.
Organizations can achieve several outcomes by improving their quality consciousness, including increased productivity as a result of better understanding their current quality levels and setting goals to improve the quality of their processes or products, lower costs as a result of a continuous focus on TQM, and organizations can reduce costs while still incorporating quality into their product development processes (Sachdev, n.d.).
Comparison
The Deming Award states that the customer’s wants must define excellence, and it is critical to satisfy those expectations and foresee them. Additionally, since quality is multifaceted, it is hard to describe it based on a single consumer’s feature or desire. According to Lasrado and Pereira (2018), quality refers to the characteristics of an item that match customer criteria and thus guarantee that the user is satisfied with the goods and the condition is defect-free. The fundamental distinction with the Deming Award is apparent in the premise that it is oriented towards the soft components of quality control. For instance, a mindset of quality, collaboration, and employee involvement in the standard of goods. Another key difference of the EFQM Excellence Award is that focus is largely devoted to stringent factors in quality management, including standardization, control, and the analytical tests used to evaluate the value characteristic of goods or services.
The TQM is a set of processes and strategies used to eliminate discrepancies in delivering a service and the manufacturing process to increase dependability, quality, and efficiency. The EFQM Excellence Award incorporates tangible and intangible aspects into its criteria. They typically define TQM as a bridge between two traditionally unique management strategies, such as science and interpersonal affiliations. Despite the lack of a universally agreed-upon definition, it can be said that the TQM principle is now solidly established and taking form as an academic branch (Permana et al., 2021). These core principles include but are not limited to rational decision-making, the accountability of senior leadership, enhancing product and service quality, incorporating all staff in the project, and paying close attention to customer feedback.
Quality is dynamic since customers’ needs and perceptions are always evolving. Hence, the MBNQA Award approach to comprehensive quality control includes many critical things. This model is centered on TQM core values, with the primary distinction being that businesses that successfully incorporated a quality management mechanism earned the designation of an excellent business model. However, they were required to demonstrate their expertise in the sector of quality via the mainstream press and different open seminars. The prize organizers were essential to expand the unique knowledge to more companies and boost the US economy (Lasrado & Pereira, 2018). Sometimes, leadership’s goals do not match the company’s abilities, such as the absence of the necessary resources. The primary causes for the failure of the quality management system are a vagueness of organizational objectives, a shortage of timescales for program execution, and an absence of proper knowledge of consumers and rivals.
Although the influencing mentioned above factors have made significant contributions to quality management science, the difficulty of designing and executing MBNQA fundamentals that satisfy the objectives and goals of a specific business remains. Notwithstanding the relevance of the elements of these theories, they cannot address all of the issues that have lately become more important as a result of rising quality demands and the rapid speed of research and technology (Luthra et al., 2020). Since these frameworks were developed and refined to address particular organizational issues, executives must compare them to the company’s objectives and responsibilities before using them.
More importantly, it is necessary to align the deployment procedures and future quality management with the company’s financial and strategic strategies to maximize the expected benefits. In other words, adopting a technique to the organization’s strengths and shortcomings is critical in formulating and applying a quality management system (Toma & Marinescu, 2018). An additional critical success component is the firm’s management and personnel being motivated simultaneously. All of this enables individuals to overcome the primary challenges associated with creating a quality management system and creating the best quality management system possible using current approaches.
Table 1: Summary of the Models’ Key Principles
Conclusion
The Deming prize ranks as one of the most prestigious awards and is widely esteemed as the gold standard for quality-driven organizations. Organizations or individuals that challenge the Deming Prize to build new approaches to quality management that meet the needs of their business and their customers and the market they serve. In summary, both EFQM and MBNQA incorporate ISO 8 Management, a commonality between the two methodologies. In principle, they are distinct in that invention and outcome are not accounted for in the ISO. As far as a systems perspective is concerned, MBNAQ is more effective than EFQM.
The Deming Prize is consistent with earlier approaches. It welcomes both MBNQA’s systems-based approach and EFQM’s process-based management, considering that the company is accountable for providing high-quality goods and services. The Deming Prize model leaves management style to the company, allowing firms to pick the best appropriate model while being consistent with their organizational strategy. Thus, it is crucial to acknowledge that although the EFQM Excellence Award has undergone significant modifications, it still embraces a broader set of interests than the Deming Awards and MBNQA.
References
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