The rumour mill

[Straight4ward]

TQM - As I recall was attributed to Edwards Demming. Been around since the early 50's?

Why I find your statement both funny and sad, is RM's total failure to grasp the concept or the ability to implement it despite, no doubt, having spent vast amounts of money on management consultants and training over the years. Tragic.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

TQM - As I recall was attributed to Edwards Demming. Been around since the early 50's?

Why I find your statement both funny and sad, is RM's total failure to grasp the concept or the ability to implement it despite, no doubt, having spent vast amounts of money on management consultants and training over the years. Tragic.

Don't worry in a few years we will be looking back at TQM with fondness as "Six Sigma" becomes the new concept.

[Straight4ward]

Just quoting from my copy of Mullins - Management & Organisational Behaviour;

"Key Elements of TQM;

*a total process involving all operations and management units in the organisation and led from the top;
*the customer as king with every strategy,process and action directly related to satisfying customer's needs;
*a greater emphasis on rational information collection and analysis using modern technology where appropriate;
*an emphasis on a different approach to looking at the costs of poor quality by examining all processes in the organisation which add to costs;
*a greater involvement of people, recognising that they are the great untrapped resource in most companies;
*teamwork as crucially important, involving multi-discipline and multi-level working to solve problems and meet customer needs; and
*the requirements for creative thinking and the ability to think beyond the immediate job or work requirement"

- - - - and you wonder why I find it funny?

[chunk]

TQM - As I recall was attributed to Edwards Demming. Been around since the early 50's?

Why I find your statement both funny and sad, is RM's total failure to grasp the concept or the ability to implement it despite, no doubt, having spent vast amounts of money on management consultants and training over the years. Tragic.

Demming is one of my idols
He would have dismissed the notion that rm practice TQM.

His teachings warn against rewarding only your current best performers as it
rarely indicates future performance.
he also said penalizing workers whos performance dipped had two problems in that it created a blame culture where nobody admitted to mistakes.
and that again performance dips have little predictive value.

Years ahead of his time he was warning us about bonus culture.

[Straight4ward]

Chunk, I think Dingo's legged it. Perhaps he'll be back later to explain why RM and TQM should be mentioned in the same breath.

[dvbuk55]

Well really the only problem I have with it - is the misnomer "Quality" - it may be a lot of things but quality it aint.

[dvbuk55]

Jessica I dont know who has told you that but that is not what I have heard.

Divisional Reps are going to be upskilled on the IWT , Geo route and all the other delivery tools on monday and tuesday.

My understanding is that the union is happy with the contents of both but want to test a couple of issues within a live enviorment.

In terms of the relationship stuff I believe that they had a national deployment group meeting last wednesday and that protentially there is a way forward on some pay issues which will hopefully come out next week. Equally on the phasing in all revisons in big offices there is a protential way forward.

It is true that Royal Mail are disappointed at the lack of revisons being deployed but thats in the main due to their lack of planners and the fact that a lot of divisions are currently undergoing mail centre reviews.

So unless you know something different then no , it is not in danager of coming off the rails.

Upskilled? This is apparently an Australian Company which specialises in training all aspects of everything in large and small companies - other than that it doesn't appear to be relevant to anything except the end result is interesting:


"This course has truely made me self analyse and improve my confidence. It has made a permenant and fundemental change to my working life"

The spelling looks vaguely familiar

[chunk]

Well really the only problem I have with it - is the misnomer "Quality" - it may be a lot of things but quality it aint.

when ever you start cutting costs at any cost quality suffers.

simple equation
more drops and less post people = more mistakes & later deliveries

[baldrick]

Well really the only problem I have with it - is the misnomer "Quality" - it may be a lot of things but quality it aint.

when ever you start cutting costs at any cost quality suffers.

Quality of Service? That ship's long gone, as dingo would say.

[telegram sam]

We are just going through another preference exercise as the MCM wants to wipe out the early shift and do 2C on nights .I don`t get it surely this isn`t cost affective.Apparently this has happened at numerous
mail centres across the country.Wonder if anyone can enlighten me on this ? Is this the beginning of the end for mail centres as it looks like they are not hanging around with the closures.

[telegram sam]

Well really the only problem I have with it - is the misnomer "Quality" - it may be a lot of things but quality it aint.

when ever you start cutting costs at any cost quality suffers.

Quality of Service? That ship's long gone, as dingo would say.

Too right .It`s all budget budget budget

[Martin Walsh]

Clunk and Straightforward demmings theory was hijacked and replaced by either lean production, human resouce management or what ever you would like to call it.

Royal Mail in the late 80s sent a number of managers to Japan in learn from about TQM and surprise surprise they came back and wanted to introduce Teamworking and continious improvement as well as things like customer first which was designed to by pass the union.

The 1996 Employee Agenda disputes orgins was in TQM and teamworking . During the early 90s we had two conferences in Birmingham on TQM with experts from this country and the states explaining whats has happened in their countries and how to combat that. Really there were only 3 options , one was to accept it and embrace it , the other tactic was to have guarded involement which was about shaping it and the other was to totally oppose it. The CWU choose to oppose hence the employee agenda dispute.

The 2010 Transformation agreement commits the CWU to world class mail and I suggust you look up this project as clearly its heart is TQM, lean production and putting worker against working in a race without a finishing line which is what TQM , or Human resouce management was all about well after demmings intial concept.

World class mail is a real threat not just to mail centres but to delivery offices hence the upper decile concept as you will never reach the upper decile as by the time you get their the other offices who are currently the upper decile would have moved on.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

The 2010 Transformation agreement commits the CWU to world class mail and I suggust you look up this project as clearly its heart is TQM, lean production and putting worker against working in a race without a finishing line which is what TQM , or Human resouce management was all about well after demmings intial concept.

World class mail is a real threat not just to mail centres but to delivery offices hence the upper decile concept as you will never reach the upper decile as by the time you get their the other offices who are currently the upper decile would have moved on.

Which begs the question why did they accept an agreement with WCM at its heart.

[chunk]

Clunk and Straightforward demmings theory was hijacked and replaced by either lean production, human resouce management or what ever you would like to call it.

Royal Mail in the late 80s sent a number of managers to Japan in learn from about TQM and surprise surprise they came back and wanted to introduce Teamworking and continious improvement as well as things like customer first which was designed to by pass the union.

The 1996 Employee Agenda disputes orgins was in TQM and teamworking . During the early 90s we had two conferences in Birmingham on TQM with experts from this country and the states explaining whats has happened in their countries and how to combat that. Really there were only 3 options , one was to accept it and embrace it , the other tactic was to have guarded involement which was about shaping it and the other was to totally oppose it. The CWU choose to oppose hence the employee agenda dispute.

The 2010 Transformation agreement commits the CWU to world class mail and I suggust you look up this project as clearly its heart is TQM, lean production and putting worker against working in a race without a finishing line which is what TQM , or Human resouce management was all about well after demmings intial concept.

World class mail is a real threat not just to mail centres but to delivery offices hence the upper decile concept as you will never reach the upper decile as by the time you get their the other offices who are currently the upper decile would have moved on.

What you say is true Demming took TQM to Japan IN 1950 and helped to found their post war boom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
I have seen many British companies all through the late 80's- 90's and till today trying to cherry pick the concept!
ironic the word total in tqm doesnt suggest thats bits of it are enough.
Sainsburys was an early one adopting "team leaders" and adopting a mission statements then car companies and factories were adopting
"just in time" or "kanban" ordering systems.

I too have problem with the new top 10% policy as its just a mathematical greased pole
You have 10 offices every office has to reach the efficiency of the best one.
its so wrong on so many! levels every village /town is different demographically, and geographically.
some have average postmen age of 50y some 30y.
would anybody be happy if in an office of 10 postman 9 were told that they had to be as fast as the quickest
amongst them.

[Straight4ward]

Out of interest: - where can I read up on the "world class mail" concept? I would be intrigued to know what this holds in store for the industry as a whole and for us as the workforce. I'd be grateful if you could point me to some sources. Thanks.

By the way, human resource planning is not some bastard offspring of TQM it is a completely different animal.