Total Quality Management, TQM, is a method by which management and employees can become involved in the continuous improvement of the production of goods and services. It is a combination of quality and management tools aimed at increasing business and reducing losses due to wasteful practices.
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management approach that originated in the 1950s and has steadily become more popular since the early 1980s. Total Quality is a description of the culture, attitude and organization of a company that strives to provide customers with products and services that satisfy their needs. The culture requires quality in all aspects of the company’s operations, with processes being done right the first time and defects and waste eradicated from operations.
TQM is a method for reducing errors in production, increasing total production during a given time frame and giving customers greater satisfaction. Although slow to be adopted, TQM is today one of the cornerstones for modern manufacturing, distribution and retail sales businesses.
TQM is defined
As a management philosophy that seeks to integrate all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, and production, customer service, etc.) to focus on meeting customer needs and organizational objectives.
The simple objective of TQM is “Do the right things, right the first time, every time.”
TQM is now becoming recognized as a generic management tool, just as applicable to service and public sector organizations. TQM is the foundation for activities, which include:
- Commitment by senior management and all employees
- Meeting customer requirements
- Reducing development cycle times
- Just in time/demand flow manufacturing
- Improvement teams
- Reducing product and service costs
- Systems to facilitate improvement
- Line management ownership
- Employee involvement and empowerment
- Recognition and celebration
- Challenging quantified goals and benchmarking
- Focus on processes/improvement plans
- Specific incorporation in strategic planning
Principles
Total Quality Management,” a term commonly used incorporation and business management. TQM is a customer-focused approach that involves several principles for effective business management and prevents defectsand quality issues within acompany. These principles include leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, analysis, human resources, process management and seeing business results.
1. Leadership
Structuring your system of organized leadership within a business will enhance overall management and productivity within a company. Full commitment is needed at the top of the business hierarchy.
2. Strategic Planning
Having a focus and a strong perspective on quality in production and in work levels allows personnel at all ranks to constantly plan for improvements. Awareness of a desire for perfection in workplace operations and an emphasis on consistency, stability and steadiness will help to promote production processes for creating products and managing customer satisfaction. Strategic planning also encompasses quality control.
3. Customer & Market Focus
Understand how your marketing and personnel influence customer satisfaction. Customer and the satisfaction of the customer that makes your attempts worth the effort.
4. Information and Analysis
There should be time set aside to spend measuring business data and the continuity of the level of organization within the company. Information on how a business is performing can help to eradicate bad practices and favouritism. It is important to have a long-term goal for profits, production quotas and growth of the business that all members of the team understand, and to spend less time focused on the short term.
5. Human Resource Focus
Employing the people who will most carry your team toward an overall goal of customer satisfaction is key to the functioning of any business. Prevent problems before they occur by continually evaluating personnel and processes within the company. Evaluation will keep the company from investing resources and time into processes that cause errors and problematic wasted efforts
6. Process Management
Keeping a team focused on the functional operation of work systems and devising plans that help employees to be educated and well-trained in their particular fields will allow for the company to grow and flourish. Have a definitive mission for the company and aim for the continual satisfaction of customers while maintaining motivation and satisfaction in team members.
7. Business Results
Improving different areas of business models will help companies to see overall improvement in customer service within the company, product performance, finances within the business and customer satisfaction Other expected benefits of streamlining efficiency in the workplace include improved organization, better feedback, better performance standards, increased economic growth, increased customer loyalty, brand recognition, improved products and better-offered services.
Time quality work is the first key principle of TQM theory. The principle philosophy for this is, “If we do not have the time to do things right the first time, how will we have the time to do it right a second time?”
There is no single theoretical formalization of total quality,“…discipline and philosophy of management which institutionalizes planned and continuous… improvement … and assumes that quality is the outcome of all activities that take place within an organization; that all functions and all employees have to participate in the improvement process; that organizations need both quality systems and a quality culture.”
