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Role of Knowledge Management in a Holistic View of Quality

Shahnawaz Muhammed

2732 Kendale Dr Apt 203

Toledo, OH 43606

419-474-9034 (H)

smuhamm@utnet.utoledo.edu

Shahnawaz Muhammed (B. Tech, Calicut University, India) is currently a Ph.D.

candidate in Manufacturing Management and Engineering at the University of Toledo,

Toledo, Ohio.

Toledo Chapter,

APICS ID # 1524372

Full-Time Graduate

Parag Dhumal

2920 Kendale Dr Apt 201

Toledo, OH 43606

419-530-4056(O)

pdhumal@utnet.utoledo.edu

Parag Dhumal (B.E in Industrial Engineering, Nagpur University, India; MS in Industrial

Engineering, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio) is currently a Ph.D. candidate in

Manufacturing Management and Engineering at the University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio.

Toledo Chapter,

APICS ID # 1328088

Full-Time Graduate

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Role of Knowledge Management in a Holistic View of Quality

ABSTRACT

This paper discuses the need for a holistic quality and develops a framework for

such a holistic perspective of quality. Further, a model of holistic quality enabled by

knowledge management is presented. Its implications are discusses and future endeavors

needed in this direction are suggested.

INTRODUCTION

Quality has become an all-encompassing concept rather than being limited to the

realm of operations for successful organizations (3). It is no more about just reducing

waste in the process of manufacturing a product or service; rather every single activity in

an organization is coming under the scrutiny of quality. And such a shift in the approach

towards quality is happening due to the technological feasibility and ability of the

information systems that is enabling individuals to map their activities to what is

expected by the end-user. This new approach in organizations about quality is calling for

a rethinking of how quality is viewed. Quality is to be no more restricted to certain

attributes of a product or a service; rather it has to be seen in the context of other

organizational activities and in the perceptions of the end-user, and this calls for viewing

quality with a holistic perspective.

Traditionally quality literature has been dominated by the varied approaches and

techniques for meeting or exceeding the level of quality expected by the customer (12,

21, 8, 15). But the major underlying thrust of all quality endeavors are based on the

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perception that quality is a dynamic concept and a continuous effort in improving the

quality is necessary. Though much of these efforts are based on the philosophy of

continuous improvement and TQM, mixed results are reported about the impact of such

quality programs in organizations. Such ambiguous results are the result of either

halfhearted implementations of such programs or implementations that lost its bigger

purpose in the finer details and techniques of such implementations. For example the

TQM programs though supposedly being a “Total” quality management program, many

organizations where content with the totality of merely involving all individuals directly

related to production in their program. While narrower focuses such as the one above,

and the ones much narrower than that is desirable and necessary in some circumstances,

when a whole quality program gets limited to such narrow focuses it will be at the

expense of attaining less than desirable results at the organizational level.

After a short discussion of quality and the need for a holistic perspective of

quality, we identify the key dimensions of quality within an organization. How using

these dimensions it is possible to have a holistic perspective and at the same time

organizations can focus on improving their operational efficiencies will be discussed.

Some tools and techniques that are available for such an implementation of quality is

touched upon and a model for holistic quality in organizations is proposed. Further, how

knowledge management enables such a perspective of quality and how it enables its

implementation in organizations are discussed, and a model involving these constructs is

presented. Finally the implications of such a perspective of quality are discussed to

conclude the paper.

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PERSPECTIVES ON QUALITY

The dictionary definition of quality is: A characteristic or attribute of something;

property; a feature (Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 1993). Other definitions

include excellence and superiority. A business-oriented definition is “The extent to which

a product, service, or organization does what it is supposed to do- how closely and

reliably it satisfies the specification to which it is build” (5, p. 466). In a meta study of

quality, TQC and TQM, Kemper identifies six characteristics of quality as a process:

effectiveness, efficiency, leadership, management, assertiveness and cooperativeness

(22).

Definitions of quality from some of the quality gurus include:

• Fitness for use (20)

• As a way of life (12)

• Conformance to requirements (9)

• (minimum) loss imparted by the product to society from the time the product is

shipped

• A way of managing the organization (15)

• Correcting and preventing loss (Hoshin)

• Meeting customers’ (agreed) requirements, formal and informal, at the lowest

cost, and first time every time (17)

Such wealth of perceptions about quality indicates the importance and the

richness of quality in the literature, in the minds of individuals, and in the practical world.

Organizations are made or broken because of their perception towards quality. While

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organizations can find niches by focusing on certain product qualities (18), if they lose

focus of the market dynamics and their organizational strengths and weaknesses they are

bound to lose in the long run except by pure luck. If quality is such an important factor in

organizations and their focus needs to be increasingly broader to understand the

implications of their actions, then we require a holistic perspective of quality too.

But first we need to have a clear concept of quality. Though definitions abound, what

really is quality? In casual usage we see there are two major views of quality. One that

views quality as a characteristic or attribute of something- as in the case when we refer to

“what are the qualities of a hard working person?” we can put foreword some attributes

in this regard such as persistence, commitment, etc. and there is a level of persistence and

commitment that is implied in such a description. The other view of quality is that of

excellence or superiority. By this we mean quality in the sense when we use statements

such as “this is a quality pen”. What this statement implies is that this pen has certain

attributes that we see has having high level of value, such as its smoothness in writing or

the length it can be written without a refill or some such attribute. So in a sense both the

usages of quality are referring to the same concept and can be generalized for a definition

of quality:

“Quality is the level of attributes of a product that the customer values (or the customer

can be made to be interested in) and which a provider (manufacturer) is able to or can

affect.”

In the above definition, product is used as a very general term. For practical

purposes, quality will have to be limited to such values and attributes of products in

which the customer is interested in and which the provider is able to provide. For

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example if a customer demands a pure gold ring green in color, it is not possible to meet

such a demand of the customer due to the inherent nature of gold. It either has to be a

pure gold ring in gold color or an impure gold ring with green color, such as when it is

coated or mixed with other elements. And it doesn’t make sense to drive the organization

in pursuit of a green colored pure gold ring. So the customers’ perception, the

organizational capabilities, and the nature of environment are tightly linked to the

concept of quality. Though most quality decisions are not so simple to discern, the

concept of quality as put foreword earlier show us the limits of quality that the

organizations need to be aware. Other more widely used definitions of quality in the

literature can be seen as definitions or concepts focused on certain aspects of the process

of attaining such a level of values of attributes of something.

NEED FOR A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE IN QUALITY

“...many companies are failing to shift their focus beyond product and process quality

into the arena of quality of relationships, working life, learning and thinking and that

more holistic and people-centered approaches are needed.” (6, p.301)

Earlier works on quality had focused mainly on methodological and philosophical

issues of quality. Methodological issues such as application of statistical techniques to

production with tools such as SPC and SQC, and philosophical approaches such as

continuous improvement and TQM have come a long way to include many such tools and

approaches. The real improvement in quality comes from the understanding of what the

quality program is implemented on and for what purpose (6). Many applications rather

than focused on broader issues such as customer satisfaction, are concerned with

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squeezing more out of what exists, working people harder, or downsizing. A short-term

preoccupation especially when the organization’s survival is at stake is an easy trap to fall

into. Such a concentration can be many times self-defeating and what is actually needed

is a reevaluation of the purposes of the organizational actions (6). What often lacks are

the will, vision and purpose to ask fundamental questions and to relate the organizational

quality initiatives with the broader organizational goals. If the organizational activities

are not properly mapped to what customer values, most quality endeavors are bound to

fail and hence, more attention needs to be devoted to manage customer value and for

delivering what customers actually wants.

Since there is no single recipe for achieving quality (12), a framework to

understand the bigger picture is helpful when focusing on the implementation details.

Such a framework should try to capture the concept of quality in the broadest sense. A

holistic perspective of quality helps in this regard. As the organizations become more and

more connected between internal entities and the external environment, it becomes easier

for the information flow, and for understanding the implications of individual actions and

its impact on the final customer value. Such a development can greatly increase the

breadth with which quality can be perceived.

Dimensions of Holistic Quality

Much of the earlier work that focused on the methodological and philosophical

issues in quality can later be seen to branching into three areas at least at a conceptual

level. This related but distinct branching can be seen as the areas of product/service

quality, process quality and organizational quality. Most of the tools available in the

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quality area can be seen to be related to control and monitoring of the product/service

quality. Process quality focus is a more recent development and involves programs such

the six-sigma initiatives. A focus of quality centered on the whole of the organizational

activities is still a more recent approach and is evident in initiatives such as that is seen in

the evolving criteria’s for Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards, European Quality

Model and the Deming prize criteria’s.

As wider and wider perspectives on quality emerge, we see that each approach

has its own merits and are interrelated. An improvement in process quality is attained

when waste is reduced and the process itself is streamlined to produce products that is of

high quality and is sensitive to the customers changing needs (23). Such a process

improvement should improve the organizational processes by reducing the waste within

the processes and reducing the waste in the output of those processes, ultimately adding

to the bottom line of the organization and hence improving its quality at least in some

dimensions. Such a relationship between the distinct yet related quality perspectives are

shown in Figure 1 to provide a holistic view of the quality. Similar holistic perspective of

quality can be seen in case based studies in the service industry (25).

Another aspect of the increasing breadth of quality perspective is due to the nature

of changing work and technological factors. Increasing levels of information and the

interconnectivity possible in today’s organizational environment has enabled

organizations to map their micro level activities to the macro level goals and to goals

further away in their value chain. If we look at the evolution of the quality programs from

quality inspection, planning, management, TQM, six-sigma, and beyond, a trend that is

evident is the increasing amount of information used as the programs have evolved.

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Much research relating the need for a learning organization for holistic quality efforts can

be seen in the existing literature (31, 46, 26, 13). But a real improvement in any of these

programs comes from the proper application of critical information by individuals in their

work and how they translate their knowledge into competitiveness for their firms.

KNOWLEDGE

It is appropriate that a theory related to KM should start with a discussion of

knowledge itself. Most widely used definition of knowledge is that of one that follows

from the hierarchical view of data to knowledge. From this perspective, data is perceived

as just raw numbers and facts, information as processed data and knowledge as the valid

or verified information. This view has had its critics, who argue that the hierarchy is

actually reverse, where even in the collection or identification of elementary data, one has

to be influenced by prior knowledge or thought, and this knowledge when articulated

becomes information, and articulated information when represented in a standard form

becomes data (45,1). Another prevalent view is that of knowledge as justified true belief,

based on the philosophical works of Plato, Descartes, Locke and Kant (33,19).

Process Quality

Product Quality

Organizational

Quality

FIGURE 1: Holistic Perspective of Quality

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Knowledge is also perceived as a state of mind, as an object (4, 49), as process (4, 10,

49), as access to information and as a capability or capacity for interpreting information

and for decision-making based on such interpretation (47). A detailed analysis of the

above perspectives can also be found in Alavi and Leidner (1).

Such varied views of knowledge have different implications for KM systems (1).

Because of perspective changes the emphasis on what has to be managed will change

from artifacts to information systems, and to social systems. But a general understanding

is that, though there is a great deal of emphasis on differentiating between what data,

information and knowledge is, human element is the most critical part of the KM systems

since only the information that can be actively processed in the mind as reflection,

enlightenment, or learning can be used as a competitive tool for effective action (1).

Other similar views of knowledge are as a dynamic human process (32), as expert insight

(10), personal knowledge (35), knowledge as intertwined with human activity and

experience (30).

Such a central role of the individual in exploiting the power of knowledge for

effective action needs to put the spotlight on the individual in developing a theory of KM

in any context. This is not to underplay the relevance of technology in the management of

knowledge, because many aspects of the knowledge capture, organization and sharing

has been made possible by technological developments (14, 42). But the current trend of

equating a technological tool to KM would be a mistake without considering the human

aspect in the equation (30). As Davenport suggested “effective management of

knowledge requires hybrid solutions of people and technology” [11, p.188].

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To understand what knowledge is, it is easier to understand it in relation to data,

facts and information. Hence, the following definitions are adopted for data, facts,

information and knowledge:

Data: States, properties or events of things without relation to one another.

Facts: states, properties or events of things in relation to one another in absolute terms.

Information: perceived states, properties or events of things in relation to one another.

Knowledge: information that has been made aware, comprehended or realized.

In this continuum, wisdom can be seen as the extent of knowledge that an individual

possesses (Figure 2).

In other words, knowledge is information that is internalized by the individual to

provide a capability to potentially act upon a situation. This implies that the knowledge is

a very personalized phenomenon, and that same data could provide varying potential for

action for different individuals based upon their own understanding of the data. It also

means that the depth and breadth of knowledge a piece of data provides depends on the

context the individual places that piece of data in his mental schemata and how it is

linked to other information in the individuals mental map.

An important taxonomy of knowledge that can be seen throughout the literature is

that of a tacit and explicit dimension (35, 36, 33, 32, 1, 11). Though there has been much

research that has tried to categorized the knowledge into tacit and explicit dimension and

understand how knowledge can be converted from tacit to explicit and vice versa (33,1),

Polanyi admits that deprived of its tacit coefficients all explicit knowledge are

meaningless (36). Though this may represent an extreme view, there is much truth in it if

we accept that knowledge is the individuals’ internalized view of information. Because,

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any information that is comprehended by the mind means it has to be related to the

already existing information, and that, more often differs from what is in the mind of one

individual to what is in the mind of another. Thus it may be difficult, if not impossible to

make explicit all the relationship that a person has regarding some information in most

cases. But for practical purposes it may be possible to make explicit a limited amount of

information so as to achieve a limited amount of certainty to conduct a task.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Traditionally, KM has been associated with the processes of creating, capturing,

organizing, sharing, accessing and using knowledge in one form of label or other (43,

41,1, 24). As we have seen earlier, though an attempt could be made to categorize

knowledge into tacit or explicit forms, true knowledge is non-codified and explicit

knowledge without its tacit coefficients is meaningless (36). This dilemma arises from

the fact that human element cannot be separated from knowledge (29, 10). Then,

managing knowledge implies, from an organizations perspective, managing resources in

facilitating individuals to create, capture, organize, share, access and use the knowledge

centered on a purpose. Technology is certainly a factor that has tremendously increased

the capability of humans to perform the different processes in managing the knowledge.

Such a process of managing knowledge, from an individual’s perspective can be viewed

in a framework as shown in the Figure 2.

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A MODEL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND HOLISTIC QUALITY

Since knowledge is information that is comprehended for a purposeful action,

both the factors, that is, right kind of information and individuals to comprehend the

information for a rightful action is needed in the various processes associated with

knowledge management. As we try to conceptualize the different quality efforts into a

frame work of information and people dependence (Figure 3), we see that broader the

quality program tends to be more it is dependent on both these factors, that is, both the

information and its proper application by the people tends to become critical for its

success. Similar approaches trying to link total quality to organizational learning and

hence making the approaches to quality more organismic and holistic can be seen in

McAdam et al. (28).

Capture

Create

Share

Use

Access Purpose

Wisdom

FIGURE 2: Knowledge Management Process

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Another issue, as the quality program becomes broader, is how operationally such

a broad focus can be maintained while trying to implement it at the micro level. This is

not a new problem and many tools and techniques are available in the literature and in

practice. For example in strategic quality management (SQM) initiatives, techniques such

as Hoshin Kanri (Hoshin planning) are used (44). In six-sigma implementations seven

basic tools and seven management tools are most often used. Similar concepts can be

seen in the IS literature too, for example Malone talks about current day managers whom

he calls cyber-cowboys, where they are highly interconnected and make decisions locally

based on the global information that has been made available due to their

interconnectivity (27).

Hoshin Kanri is a method of linking strategic objectives to the operational level

activities it “translates the strategic intent into the required day-to-day behavior (2, p.18).

It is widely used in Japanese industry and in many successful American corporations

Quality mgmt

Quality circles

Quality Inspection

Holistic Quality

TQM

Six-sigma

Quality planning

Inform

ation dependence

People dependence

FIGURE 3: Quality Approaches in an Information and People Dependence

Framework.

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such as Intel, HP, P&G, Texas Instrument, and Florida Power & Light. Major principles

of Hoshin Kanri are:

• Aligning the organizational goals with environmental changes

• Focusing on strategic gaps

• Working with others to develop plans to close the gap

• Specifying methods and measures to achieve strategic objectives

• Making cause-effect linkages visible, and

• Continuously improving the planning process

In six-sigma implementation, the seven basic tools represent tools to deal with more

qualitative data and are perceived to be helpful in the daily operations of an organization.

While, the seven management tools have a broader focus and are perceived to be tools for

management and planning (38). But in all of these approaches and techniques what

makes a competitive difference for the organization is, what information is available and

how it is used by the individuals to affect product, process and organizational quality,

FIGURE 4: Role of KM in a Holistic Perspective of Quality.

Process

Quality

Product

Quality

Organizational

Quality

Knowledge

Management

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which is a really a question of how knowledge is managed in the organization. From such

a perspective the extent of knowledge management could be expected to positively

impact the product, process, and organizational quality in an organization (Figure 4). A

conceptual model of knowledge management in holistic quality is proposed by mapping

these relations onto the holistic quality model proposed earlier.

IMPLICATION AND CONCLUSION

The conceptual model proposed in this paper is a call to view quality in a broader

context and approach it from a more comprehensive perspective. Knowledge

management is expected to be a major factor in the successful implementation of such a

holistic quality perspective. Further investigation is needed to develop appropriate

measures for the proposed framework, and empirical support would strengthen such a

holistic view and the role of knowledge management in it. Further, extending the

framework to include entities beyond the organizational limits may be important as

organizations become more collaborative and organizational boundaries become fuzzier

(40).

The existing measures relevant to each of these constructs could be used as a basis

of initial investigations. For example many frameworks and measures exist for the

product (18) and service quality (34). Others have also proposed integrative

product/service measure (7) that could be used as a basis for the product quality in this

model. For process quality, qualitative measures such as defects per million observations

(DPMO) are widely used in initiatives such as six-sigma. Other multidimensional

perceptual measures may be developed for the current mode. Organizational quality has

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to be multidimensional due its broad focus, and measures that is based on the Malcolm

Baldrige Award or the European Quality Award, could be used. For example, Rao et al.

have proposed a measure for international quality management, which is based on the

Malcolm Baldrige Award criteria that could be used for the organizational quality (39).

Measures related to the extent of knowledge management should capture the different

KM processes such as the extent of information use, sharing, capture, creation and access

and should also consider technological and human aspect of knowledge.

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