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Total Quality Management Essay, Research Paper

Total Quality Management (TQM) has become a driving force in many organizations in the business world today. For a company to remain competitive, quality must remain a priority. A strong commitment to quality, and customer satisfaction programs are essential for a small business to compete against both smaller and larger competitors. Total Quality Management has completely changed the way that business is carried out worldwide. T.Q.M. has taken several of the old theories on how to conduct a business and thrown them right out the window, the T.Q.M. philosophy has taken business to a whole new level. Total Quality Management refers to a quest for quality that involves everyone in an organization. T.Q.M. manages the entire organization to excel in all dimensions of (Product and Service) quality. The Total quality Management philosophy incorporates the whole organization in a continual effort to improve quality and customer satisfaction. Total Quality Management is based on the belief that the people who are closest to the job best understand what is wrong and how to fix it. Management has the responsibility at all levels to work on the systems in which goods or services are produced. Total Quality Management (TQM) is an organizational approach to customer satisfaction involving customers, people, and the continuous improvement of processes. There are many other good definitions that all have one primary objective: achieving customer satisfaction by involving customers. T.Q.M. intuitively recognized the importance of bringing an organization and the individual together through team and process. Total Quality Management is the central role of blending organization and individual performers and competitively meeting their customer?s needs. If quality does not meat the standards of companies? customers it can have very negative impact on the company. It can mean a loss of future business, liability, and an increase in overall costs. A dissatisfied customer will tell an average of 19 others.

Continual Improvement

In order for American companies to remain competitive with foreign competition they must improve the overall quality of all their products. There are many business people in America who are still under the notion that quantity is more important than quality. These companies will soon learn that cutting costs without improvements is futile. Companies must look to improve quality by better management of design, engineering, testing, and by improvement of process. An understanding of variation is important to the success of Total Quality Management. One of the major shifts in thinking that is part of total quality is that it is economically desirable to work toward minimal variations rather than adopt some acceptable level of quality. With a larger emphasis on quality, organizations will soon see that costs go down and productivity goes up over the long run. The continuous improvement uses a process that follows the plan-do-check-act cycle. The situation is analyzed and the improvement is planned (Plan). The improvement is tried (Do). Then data is gathered to see how the new approach works (Check or study) and then the improvement is either implemented or a decision is made to try something else (Act). This process of continuous improvement makes it possible to reduce variations and lower defects to near zero.

One of the first phases in total quality management requires a system that puts all employees to work and reduces variation using simple but powerful tools referred to as the seven quality control tools. These tools are used to maintain good quality if it exists and to continuously improve it if it doesn’t. Motorola for example started with defects or mistakes that were measured in terms of percentages. As they continuously improved they raised the bar of performance to Six Sigma quality. (Less than 3.4 mistakes or defects per one million opportunities)

When implementing T.Q.M. companies must be careful not look for quick-fix solutions that address the symptom, and not the root cause. It takes longer but it’s worth it. Companies must not punish people for discovering problems. They must celebrate problems as opportunities to improve, and avoid over-confidence. The minute that the organization believes that the TQM project is complete, a competitor will catch up. Organizations must always look for improvement. Every step in every process must be analyzed to determine why it exists and what value it has. It must check quality regularly. Anything not measured will “backslide” to the next lowest equilibrium point. Solving quality problems that interfere with schedule and costs is the best way to ensure that it will improve all three.

In order for companies to continually improve they must have very accurate and strategic plan and goal set. Strategic planning is a process that determines the future of an organization. The processes that produce good results are standardized and documented. The documented processes are followed. If the process is changed the documentation is changed. If an organization lacks this standardization, then improvements tend to slip. Without standardization’, variation is increased rather than reduced. Goal setting determines resources allocations needed. Having a well-proven process for strategic planning and goal setting makes the effort more efficient. It assures that a strategic plan will provide a frame that will shape the organization?s future, and will help align their efforts for a better performance. An important part of improvement is Teamwork. Good team activity includes a clear definition of project.

Team Approach

Most companies survive with large inefficiencies and unnecessary costs because they have reached a point with large enough sales that these problems may not be readily apparent. If employees are encouraged and

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