Customized Quality Assurance Methodology Based on Design Thinking for Chronic Quality Problems

Modern day organizations used Total Quality Management (TQM) tools to effectively address the quality issues which are sporadic but most of the time chronic wastes were often neglected for the want of realistic and feasible solutions. However, Design Thinking (DT) approach were highly useful in solving those chronic quality issues in a most creative and innovative way. The main aim of this paper is to design and demonstrate the usefulness of a customized quality improvement methodology based on combining the power of DT and TQM tools. Also, through a case study on addressing the chronic quality issues in the LPG plant, the effectiveness of combined DT and TQM tools were demonstrated. This combined tool set will offer quality managers an effective and efficient way to solve their chronic quality issues. Quality improvement strategy-based design thinking coupled with TQM was found to be highly effective in reducing the AOQL from 10 to 4%, resulting in only fewer rejections of the lots in the LPG bottling plant. In addition, it was quite evident that with the application of DT along with the TQM tools paved way for better product development phase, employee commitment and cycle time compression to achieve greater efficiency and operational excellence.