----------------------------------------------------Business Index & ASAP------ AUTHOR(s): Vasilash, Gary S. TITLE(s): TQM/SPC: get a buy-in or watch them bug-out. (Total Quality Management/Statistical Process Control programs of Kline and Company Inc.) Summary: Kline and Co Inc is a business consultancy firm specializing in Total Quality Management/Statistical Process Control (TQM/SPQ) programs. According to Pres Matthew Kline, these two concepts still remain to be mastered by most companies, including those that think they already have but have actually not. Kline cites lack of management support, disregard of mid-managers and first-line supervisors, and insufficient knowledge as reasons for the failure of TQM and SPQ programs in these companies. The consultant believes that these problems can be resolved if the cultural shift that accompanies such initiatives are adequately addressed. Thus, Kline and Co provides not only technical assistance but also organizational support for its clients. This means that the people side of such an undertaking are taken into consideration, aside from the technical aspect. Production p54(1) Oct 1993 v105 n10 DESCRIPTORS: Total quality management_Technique Statistical process control_Technique Business consultants_Services His name is Matthew Kline. He's a consultant. President of Kline and Company (Chicago). He's been in the business of consulting since 1979. Companies that have employed Kline-developed training programs include Boeing, Carrier, Ford, GE, H-P, and 3M. He's refined a niche--which he calls "TQM/SPC"--since 1988. They're the conventional--now, one would think, traditional--acronyms, signifying Total Quality Management and Statistical Process Control. Why should anyone be interested? Aren't people, circa 1993, tuned-in to those concepts? Haven't there been legions of consultants going through American manufacturing facilities waving a banner for at least one of those processes for the past several years? Kline admits it's so. But then he adds a somewhat startling set of figures: "Data I've seen indicates that 75 percent of American companies say they have a TQM program in place." Pause. "I suppose they do think that." Another pause. "But of that number, only 20 percent are succeeding. The other 80 percent give up within two years, due to a lack of results." So why aren't the programs working in a greater percentage of the companies that are trying to make them work? Kline rattles off answers: * Lack of management commitment * Neglect of middle managers and first-line supervisors * Inadequate understanding of TQM and SPC, and of the trainer. Essentially, Kline says, it is an issue of marketing. Of selling. Of getting "buy-in" throughout the organization, from the shop floor to the corner office and every place in between. Yes, there are some mechanics, some methodologies that are fairly cut-and-dried. Filling out control charts, for example. People must understand such things as, say, variability reduction. And so on. The basics. The fundamentals. But Kline thinks that one of the difficulties in making TQM/SPC work, thrive, or otherwise provide results goes directly to the method of implementation. That is, in most operations there is undoubtedly a consulting group that comes in with sharpened pencils and a stack of control charts and manuals. They set to work, explaining how to fill in the blanks, how to make the charts and even interpret them. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you. Still, Kline maintains that there is a cultural shift, or a thinking change, involved in full-blown TQM/SPC, which isn't addressed by the straight-on technical run. "We take a more holistic approach," he says. "We do the technical side of things and the people side." For example, take the plight of the middle manager. That person, as a result of an ordinary TQM/SPC program, may find him- or herself in an extremely uncomfortable position. That is, the top people in an organization are likely to buy-in with little resistance, given that they can see some healthy consequences in the vicinity of the bottom line. The workers on the floor will buy-in because they realize that they are finally being given some opportunities to make some of the changes and decisions that will affect what they do. But the people in the middle are left with the prospect of having to give up the authority that they have worked so hard to attain in the old F.W. Taylorist regime. Do you think they're happy? Would you be? So, Kline explains, there is a need to help the middle ranks to take on new roles, as in becoming coaches rather than master sergeants. Unless these people issues are addressed, Kline says, there is a likelihood that the people who don't buy-in will inhibit the growth of the program. They're perceiving themselves as being struck. They'll strike back. So the program won't work. About this "TQM/SPC" term that Kline uses. It is a combination of the soft and the hard, of the organizational and the technical. But, Kline admits, it isn't meant to be a limiting term. Design of experiments, quality function deployment, kaizen, and those other things emblazoned on the banners of consultants across the land also fall within its purview. Whatever works, works.--GSV