- Email: [email protected]
The integrated quality concept
The integrated quality concept An approach to balanced industrial activity M. Boutoussov
Unbalanced industrial development poses well recognized hazards to workers, the firm and the environment. Managers must try to optimize the situation for all three and recognize that pursuit of economic goals alone is short sighted. The paper offers a model to assist such optimization and highlights the importance of feedback in all areas of industrial activity.
A series of industrial catastrophes in both developed and developing countries has encouraged the world community to become more responsive to environmental and occupational safety issues in promoting sustainable industrial growth. The mass media, as well as a growing number of environmental groups, have drawn attention to the dangers of unbalanced industrial development and the need for an integrated worldwide approach to avoid these dangers. A simplified model is presented here as a baseline from which to elaborate a methodology to ascertain the optimum ‘mix’ of environmental and industrial goals. (The problem as a whole is one of multicriterial optimization and is overwhelmingly complicated.) This model is based on the operations of the industrial unit, ie one ‘elementary cell’ within the whole plant or factory, producing either one type of product or a set of similar products.
Model description Figure 1 presents a stylised model of how such a unit functions. (It is assumed that the activity of the whole plant is the total of the cumulative activity of each of its component units.) The key actors in the industrial unit are human being(s) and the manufacturing process. Analysing the way the unit functions as a system we can distinguish three closed loops, or cycles, each of which involves human beings and the manufacturing process. The author is with the United Nations industrial Development Organization, PO Box 300, A-1400 Vienna, Austria. The author thanks MS S. Maltezou and M.H.A. Hamdy (both of UNIDO) and Professor A. Biswas (of Oxford University) for their advice and support.
218
The innermost circle describes the interrelations between the workers as producers and the manufacturing process as the medium that surrounds and influences them. We may call this the occupational or internal environment, under which heads are included labour circumstances in the workplace, the ergonomic and psychological environment in the unit, safety standards etc. These factors influence personnel and form the attitude of the workers to their work. This cycle may be described as the ‘quality of labour’ cycle and covers aspects such as work satisfaction, stress (perhaps caused by lack of safety standards or too fast a work process), tiredness or boredom. Much modern management research is devoted to this aspect of industrial activity but it is still far from being widely recognized or investigated outside management circles. The middle circle, describing the technoeconomic process, is much better known. This deals with how the quality and quantity of goods produced influences human life. The feedback from this cycle is in the form of salaries, profits, socioeconomic achievements etc. These kind of returns may, for the sake of brevity, be called the ‘quality of production’ cycle, having been produced, like a harvest, by the combined effects of quality and quantity. The process described by the outer circle is the environmental impact of industrial activity ie the damage imposed by the manufacturing process on environmental resources such as air, water, soil etc. Here the direct or indirect effects have to be investigated in each case and their influence on human life assessed. The ‘quality of environment’ cycle affects not only the workers of a given unit, but other members of society outside it. All three types of feedback have a bearing, in direct or indirect form, on what may be called the quality of life.
0301-4207/88/03021
B-03$03.00 0
1988 Butterworth
& Co (Publishers)
Ltd
The integrated quality concept
well as developing countries. This short sighted approach neglects all considerations except immediate profit. Between these two extremes lies the optimal solution, which differs from unit to unit. It can be determined only by a thorough examination of the particular circumstances of each unit, which will have a local combined maximum of integrated quality as a function of the three sets of variables. If such a maximum exists it indicates that the whole industrial unit has an optimal overall functioning condition. If no maximum exists which includes reasonable values for all three variables it must be recognized that the industrial unit as a whole is suboptimal. Let us illustrate this statement with simple curves (Figure 2). In Figure 2 all three qualities are represented as the functions of labour intensity I. It is clear that the quality of production cycle Q2 grows linearly with I until saturation is reached for external reasons (such as the capacity of the equipment). Q3 (quality of environment cycle and Q, (quality of labour cycle) fall rapidly with the growth of I. We may speculate that
QI,~ = l/(1 + I)”
Figure 1. The integrated quality concept as a model of an industrial unit. “NDE
= non-destructive
but this needs more detailed confirmation and definition of the value n for each curve. At I = 0 both qualities Q, and Q3 are equal to one, which is reasonable and with I+mQi,s+O, which also meets our requirements. If we assume that integrated quality Qr = Q1Q2Q3 then Q(may be described as the curve with the maximum which 0
evaluation.
Other factors such as education, politics, race and culture also, of course, have a bearing, but these are not so strongly connected with the functioning of an industrial unit. In the context of such a unit we may call the system outlined above the ‘integrated quality concept’ (IQC).
1
Features of the concept It is evident that all changes imposed on the manufacturing process (improvements in technology, changes in production rate) and on the human beings who participate in this process (degree of professional training, kind of management etc) may have different results in different circles. To take an extreme example, the degree of pollution would be minimal and the quality of environment maximal as a function of production rate I when the industrial unit was not operating at all (see Figure 2, curve es(Z)). Likewise, occupational standards are at the highest value when no manufacturing activity is occurring. The curve of the quality of labour circle has its maximum when production rate, or labour intensity, is nil (see Figure 2, curve Q, (1)). This situation, however desirable from the viewpoint of the pure environmentalist, is hardly a serious candidate for consideration. The other extreme case occurs when all circles except the productive are neglected. This is the purely technocratic approach and is unfortunately found in developed as
RESOURCES
POLICY September
1988
c
IOx
I
Figure 2. Curves of the effect of the quality of labour cycle (Q,), quality of production cycle (Q) and the quality of environment cycle (Q.) on labour intensity I at the industrial unit with little safety and environmental monitoning.a “0, (quality of life) has a small maximum at lower values of 1.
219
The integrated quality concept
Figure 3. Curves Q,, Qz and Q3 with developed and environmental monitoring systems.a
safety
aHigher values at 0, and 10Dtare now available.
represents the most optimal conditions for the operation of an industrial unit. If we discover that the maximum of Q, occurs near values of I which cannot provide the volume and quality of products needed to secure the viability of the enterprise, then we must recognize the fundamental unsuitability of the industrial unit. It is not uncommon for those in charge of an industrial unit, motivated by survival and the search for profits, to purposely increase the productivity rate over the values of Zap,. This can automatically have dangerous consequences. Even if the managers of the plant are able to estimate the short-term and long-term effects of their decision, they do not consider that, in accordance with the general theory of functions, the further away from the extremum (I = I,,J the faster is the decrease of Q, caused by further labour intensification (ie dQddl). N ear the maximum dQjdl = 0 occasional changes in I do not generally have significantly bad side effects. The main contribution which our concept offers to our understanding of this subject is that all three cycles have quite different response periods. For example, all changes in the interrelations between human beings and the manufacturing process occur within days or weeks. An increase in the speed of the assembly lime will produce tiredness, safety problems and new faults over such a time span. On the other hand, the environmental cycle normally has a characteristic response time of years and decades.
220
Environmental impacts were previously ignored not because they did not exist, but because the cumulative effect of long-term industrial malfunctioning was necessary before pollution from industrial units could be recognized as such. The middle cycle has a response time of about a year, which is sufficient to recognize the technoeconomic effect of any changes within the industrial unit (say technological innovation). The system outlined in Figure 1, with its three different response times, has a high potential for destabilization. This process may, in turn, take different forms and occur at different times, from a slow decrease of the integrated quality of life due to the effects of technoeconomic obsolescence or environmental degradation to technological catastrophe destroying thousands of human lives at once. Several countermeasures may be suggested to prevent system destabilization. Pollution prevention and safety measures must be imposed; in many cases this has already been done, notwithstanding the economic, technical and managerial complications this has caused. In terms of our system, the implementation and putting in place of antipollution devices (eg filters, precipitators etc) and safety equipment (automated controlling devices and alarm networks) provides a less steep fall of curves (2, (I) and Q(I) within a certain limited range I, of labour intensity (Figure 3). These changes in the behaviour of factors lead to an immediate change in the form of the product Q, - the maximum on curve Q,(r) is increased and shifts to a higher value of labour intensity. A better integrated quality of life can be provided at higher productivity, which in many cases is the economic justification for initial investment in antipollution and safety programmes. The other way of improving industrial unit stability is based on the application of regulation theory. It is well known that to stabilize a system strong feedback should be organized so that all shifts in parameter values can be registered and the proper adjustments to the functioning of the system undertaken. Quality control is one such feedback system within the technoeconomic circle. Quality control enables goods to be compared with the prescribed standard and provides an indication of the technoeconomic performance of the industrial unit. It highlights flaws in the production process and may prevent faulty goods reaching the market, so staving off economic misfortune. So quality control plays a stabilizing role for at least the middle circle of the system. Needless to say, similar feedback systems should be developed for the other circles. Wide expansion of different non-destructive evaluation technologies, environmental engineering methodologies and industrial telemetry networks would provide, at least in principle, a way of organizing industrial activity to ensure the highest quality of human life possible at given natural, climatic and economic conditions.
RESOURCES
POLICY
September
1988
Unbalanced industrial development poses well recognized hazards to workers, the firm and the environment. Managers must try to optimize the situation for all three and recognize that pursuit of economic goals alone is short sighted. The paper offers a model to assist such optimization and highlights the importance of feedback in all areas of industrial activity.
A series of industrial catastrophes in both developed and developing countries has encouraged the world community to become more responsive to environmental and occupational safety issues in promoting sustainable industrial growth. The mass media, as well as a growing number of environmental groups, have drawn attention to the dangers of unbalanced industrial development and the need for an integrated worldwide approach to avoid these dangers. A simplified model is presented here as a baseline from which to elaborate a methodology to ascertain the optimum ‘mix’ of environmental and industrial goals. (The problem as a whole is one of multicriterial optimization and is overwhelmingly complicated.) This model is based on the operations of the industrial unit, ie one ‘elementary cell’ within the whole plant or factory, producing either one type of product or a set of similar products.
Model description Figure 1 presents a stylised model of how such a unit functions. (It is assumed that the activity of the whole plant is the total of the cumulative activity of each of its component units.) The key actors in the industrial unit are human being(s) and the manufacturing process. Analysing the way the unit functions as a system we can distinguish three closed loops, or cycles, each of which involves human beings and the manufacturing process. The author is with the United Nations industrial Development Organization, PO Box 300, A-1400 Vienna, Austria. The author thanks MS S. Maltezou and M.H.A. Hamdy (both of UNIDO) and Professor A. Biswas (of Oxford University) for their advice and support.
218
The innermost circle describes the interrelations between the workers as producers and the manufacturing process as the medium that surrounds and influences them. We may call this the occupational or internal environment, under which heads are included labour circumstances in the workplace, the ergonomic and psychological environment in the unit, safety standards etc. These factors influence personnel and form the attitude of the workers to their work. This cycle may be described as the ‘quality of labour’ cycle and covers aspects such as work satisfaction, stress (perhaps caused by lack of safety standards or too fast a work process), tiredness or boredom. Much modern management research is devoted to this aspect of industrial activity but it is still far from being widely recognized or investigated outside management circles. The middle circle, describing the technoeconomic process, is much better known. This deals with how the quality and quantity of goods produced influences human life. The feedback from this cycle is in the form of salaries, profits, socioeconomic achievements etc. These kind of returns may, for the sake of brevity, be called the ‘quality of production’ cycle, having been produced, like a harvest, by the combined effects of quality and quantity. The process described by the outer circle is the environmental impact of industrial activity ie the damage imposed by the manufacturing process on environmental resources such as air, water, soil etc. Here the direct or indirect effects have to be investigated in each case and their influence on human life assessed. The ‘quality of environment’ cycle affects not only the workers of a given unit, but other members of society outside it. All three types of feedback have a bearing, in direct or indirect form, on what may be called the quality of life.
0301-4207/88/03021
B-03$03.00 0
1988 Butterworth
& Co (Publishers)
Ltd
The integrated quality concept
well as developing countries. This short sighted approach neglects all considerations except immediate profit. Between these two extremes lies the optimal solution, which differs from unit to unit. It can be determined only by a thorough examination of the particular circumstances of each unit, which will have a local combined maximum of integrated quality as a function of the three sets of variables. If such a maximum exists it indicates that the whole industrial unit has an optimal overall functioning condition. If no maximum exists which includes reasonable values for all three variables it must be recognized that the industrial unit as a whole is suboptimal. Let us illustrate this statement with simple curves (Figure 2). In Figure 2 all three qualities are represented as the functions of labour intensity I. It is clear that the quality of production cycle Q2 grows linearly with I until saturation is reached for external reasons (such as the capacity of the equipment). Q3 (quality of environment cycle and Q, (quality of labour cycle) fall rapidly with the growth of I. We may speculate that
QI,~ = l/(1 + I)”
Figure 1. The integrated quality concept as a model of an industrial unit. “NDE
= non-destructive
but this needs more detailed confirmation and definition of the value n for each curve. At I = 0 both qualities Q, and Q3 are equal to one, which is reasonable and with I+mQi,s+O, which also meets our requirements. If we assume that integrated quality Qr = Q1Q2Q3 then Q(may be described as the curve with the maximum which 0
evaluation.
Other factors such as education, politics, race and culture also, of course, have a bearing, but these are not so strongly connected with the functioning of an industrial unit. In the context of such a unit we may call the system outlined above the ‘integrated quality concept’ (IQC).
1
Features of the concept It is evident that all changes imposed on the manufacturing process (improvements in technology, changes in production rate) and on the human beings who participate in this process (degree of professional training, kind of management etc) may have different results in different circles. To take an extreme example, the degree of pollution would be minimal and the quality of environment maximal as a function of production rate I when the industrial unit was not operating at all (see Figure 2, curve es(Z)). Likewise, occupational standards are at the highest value when no manufacturing activity is occurring. The curve of the quality of labour circle has its maximum when production rate, or labour intensity, is nil (see Figure 2, curve Q, (1)). This situation, however desirable from the viewpoint of the pure environmentalist, is hardly a serious candidate for consideration. The other extreme case occurs when all circles except the productive are neglected. This is the purely technocratic approach and is unfortunately found in developed as
RESOURCES
POLICY September
1988
c
IOx
I
Figure 2. Curves of the effect of the quality of labour cycle (Q,), quality of production cycle (Q) and the quality of environment cycle (Q.) on labour intensity I at the industrial unit with little safety and environmental monitoning.a “0, (quality of life) has a small maximum at lower values of 1.
219
The integrated quality concept
Figure 3. Curves Q,, Qz and Q3 with developed and environmental monitoring systems.a
safety
aHigher values at 0, and 10Dtare now available.
represents the most optimal conditions for the operation of an industrial unit. If we discover that the maximum of Q, occurs near values of I which cannot provide the volume and quality of products needed to secure the viability of the enterprise, then we must recognize the fundamental unsuitability of the industrial unit. It is not uncommon for those in charge of an industrial unit, motivated by survival and the search for profits, to purposely increase the productivity rate over the values of Zap,. This can automatically have dangerous consequences. Even if the managers of the plant are able to estimate the short-term and long-term effects of their decision, they do not consider that, in accordance with the general theory of functions, the further away from the extremum (I = I,,J the faster is the decrease of Q, caused by further labour intensification (ie dQddl). N ear the maximum dQjdl = 0 occasional changes in I do not generally have significantly bad side effects. The main contribution which our concept offers to our understanding of this subject is that all three cycles have quite different response periods. For example, all changes in the interrelations between human beings and the manufacturing process occur within days or weeks. An increase in the speed of the assembly lime will produce tiredness, safety problems and new faults over such a time span. On the other hand, the environmental cycle normally has a characteristic response time of years and decades.
220
Environmental impacts were previously ignored not because they did not exist, but because the cumulative effect of long-term industrial malfunctioning was necessary before pollution from industrial units could be recognized as such. The middle cycle has a response time of about a year, which is sufficient to recognize the technoeconomic effect of any changes within the industrial unit (say technological innovation). The system outlined in Figure 1, with its three different response times, has a high potential for destabilization. This process may, in turn, take different forms and occur at different times, from a slow decrease of the integrated quality of life due to the effects of technoeconomic obsolescence or environmental degradation to technological catastrophe destroying thousands of human lives at once. Several countermeasures may be suggested to prevent system destabilization. Pollution prevention and safety measures must be imposed; in many cases this has already been done, notwithstanding the economic, technical and managerial complications this has caused. In terms of our system, the implementation and putting in place of antipollution devices (eg filters, precipitators etc) and safety equipment (automated controlling devices and alarm networks) provides a less steep fall of curves (2, (I) and Q(I) within a certain limited range I, of labour intensity (Figure 3). These changes in the behaviour of factors lead to an immediate change in the form of the product Q, - the maximum on curve Q,(r) is increased and shifts to a higher value of labour intensity. A better integrated quality of life can be provided at higher productivity, which in many cases is the economic justification for initial investment in antipollution and safety programmes. The other way of improving industrial unit stability is based on the application of regulation theory. It is well known that to stabilize a system strong feedback should be organized so that all shifts in parameter values can be registered and the proper adjustments to the functioning of the system undertaken. Quality control is one such feedback system within the technoeconomic circle. Quality control enables goods to be compared with the prescribed standard and provides an indication of the technoeconomic performance of the industrial unit. It highlights flaws in the production process and may prevent faulty goods reaching the market, so staving off economic misfortune. So quality control plays a stabilizing role for at least the middle circle of the system. Needless to say, similar feedback systems should be developed for the other circles. Wide expansion of different non-destructive evaluation technologies, environmental engineering methodologies and industrial telemetry networks would provide, at least in principle, a way of organizing industrial activity to ensure the highest quality of human life possible at given natural, climatic and economic conditions.
RESOURCES
POLICY
September
1988