Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an organized approach for quality improvement along together with product and service specifications to customer performance. TQM is applying to target producing these specifications with zero defects. This makes a worthy cycle of constant improvement for production, customer satisfaction and profits.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is not only adopted by a single person or an employee but all employees can become involved (including top management to shop floor management, in other words total or complete involvement, hence, Total) for the continuous improvement of the production of goods and services within the framework of organizations to strive for excellence in everything they do to achieve best quality standards ( customer satisfaction to the quality, hence, Quality) by it's integrated well-managed (quality can and must be managed with best practiced system or tools hence, Management) system of various best practiced principles, methods. In other words, it is a combination of quality and management tools intended for maximizing business, profits and cut down inefficient applications.

Total Quality Management (TQM) tracked on in the United States in the early 1980s when Hewlett-Packard condemned U.S. chip manufacturers for weak product quality with measure it to with their Japanese competitors. It is light hearted that when W. Edward Deming first commenced TQM the Japanese accepted the philosophy while the U.S. rejected its ideology. During those periods Japanese made progress by adopting TQM with improvement in quality and production. Up till in 1995, ten years after Hewlett-Packard's sudden introducing TQM to the U.S., domestic companies are still stressed to use of TQM.

The need of TQM

In fact earlier the concept of "mass production" was existed in which whatever goods produced became demanded in market i.e. market trend of 'sales oriented' or 'product oriented', here a manufacturer known as king , but completely the opposite scenario is seen today , the market is became "customer oriented" or 'demand oriented' where customer became a king. So, it is obvious to cope up with the various products demand with the great satisfaction of products, ease of delivery and competitive pricing, manufacturers must have to make continuous changes.

So it requires management to access

Assess consumer requirement needs
. Identify present and future consumer requirement
. Design products and services that cost-effectively to match with those needs

World class quality of goods or service delivery
. Recognize the important difficult sections in the process and work on them until they reach zero-defect levels
. Educate employees to operate the new procedure
. Increase successful measures of product and service quality
. Establish motivation supports for quality goals
. Support with a zero-defect philosophy across all actions
. Support of management to lead by example
. Build up opinion or feedback mechanisms to make continuous improvement.

Hence, to enhance productivity; lessen scrap and rework costs; make better product reliability; reduce time-to-market cycles; reduce customer service problems; improve competitive advantage, total quality management approach came in the role.

Hence, Total Quality Management is both a management philosophy and a set of principles that ask for integration of all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, and production, customer service, etc, i.e. from top level to bottom line.) to focus on meeting customer needs and organizational objectives.

It keeps up organization on continuous improvement by incorporating the knowledge and experiences of workers. The simple aim of TQM is "Do the right things, right the first time, every time". TQM is considerably variable and flexible.

Total Quality Management is also considered as a base for actions, which incorporates:

.Complete dedication by senior management and all employees
.Focus on Customer needs
.Decreasing development cycle times
.Just In Time/Demand Flow Manufacturing
.Perfection of teams
.Decreasing product and service costs
.Systems to help expansion
.Line Management possession
.Employee participation and empowerment
.Recognition
.Challenging quantified goals and benchmarking
.Concentration on method / upgrading plans
.Particular merging in strategic planning

Principles of Total Quality Management: The five key principles of TQM are as follows:

.Management Dedication
      Plan (drive, direct)
      Do (deploy, support, participate)
      Check (review)
      Act (recognize, communicate, revise)

.Employee Authorization
      Training
      Suggestion scheme
      Measurement and recognition
      Excellence teams

.Strong Decision Making
      SPC (statistical process control)
      DOE, FMEA
      The 7 statistical tools
      TOPS (FORD 8D - Team Oriented Problem Solving)

.Persistent Improvement
      Systematic measurement and focus on CONQ
      Excellence teams
      Cross-functional process management
      Attain, maintain, improve standards

.Customer Orientation
      Supplier partnership
      Service relationship with internal customers
      Never compromise quality
      Customer driven standards

Total Quality Management: The Concept of Continuous Improvement

TQM is primarily related with constant development and perfection in all work, from top level to the shop floor. It stops from that errors or it can be prevented from various tools or measures. It direct towards continuous improvement in the out come, in all aspects of work, as an effect of continuous improvement of capable people, more and continuous improved processes, and technology and machine capabilities can be achieved for zero defects.

Continuous improvement must goes not only with get better results, but further significantly with enhancing competencies to produce better outcomes in the future. Demand initiation, supply generation, technology, operations and people capability are the five most important areas of focus for competency improvement. Here mistakes made by people, by any fault process can be identified and eliminated and replication can be prevented by varying the process.

Total Quality Management process models and implementation

Initial footstep in TQM implementation is to assess the organization's present pragmatism. Appropriate prerequisite have to carry out with the organization's history, its current needs, impetuous events leading to TQM, and the existing employee quality of effective life conditions. Then after identifying the needs of customer genuine requirements and quality goals appropriate systems etc are projected, further it implemented it to from top level to bottom level.

A TQM consist of the following steps

.The company analyses the requirements of its customers,
.The company plans the activities (short-term and long-term actions) to meet these customer needs;
.The company sets up and fixed the processes requisite to provide the products and services required by the customer;
.The company carry out such changes to further improvement in to its processes, products, and services, this process or steps are continued put in to the practice till the zero defect results.

No two organization use TQM in exactly the same way, however, there many Quality inspection stage; from old perception of quality management theory like Quality inspection stage, Quality control stage; Quality assurance stage; to Total quality management stage, there are various TQM models are available, that organizations can use. These include the Deming's Management Approach, Crosby's Quality Management Approach, Juran's Quality Management Approach, Feigenbaum's Quality Management Approach, Ishikawa's Quality Management Approach, Taguchi's Quality Management Approach, and the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, the European Foundation for Quality Management, and the ISO quality management standards etc.

The orientations of TQM are as follows

Customer: TQM's most important section of focus is customer; all the actions are designed according to customer satisfaction

People (Top level to shop floor level): Participation of all in accomplishing customer attentiveness is a key principle of TQM. This is accomplished through Teamwork, Voluntary Activities, Consensus Building, Training, Multi-skilling, Instilling a Sense of Pride, Employee Empowerment and Leadership development.

TQM establishes a contented and well-off environment where all employees are have job satisfaction and are capable to make use of their potential and realize their future prospective.

Process: Highest consideration paid to the process, for producing the product first time right. Problems stumble upon are analyzed, a result is accustomed through teamwork, an action plan is built-up and the executed results are evaluated. The entire process should be made with customer requirement in to focus.

Continuous Improvement: TQM involves a better process thinking approach. It recognizes that everything done at all level is part of a process not any extra burden, it also includes how well each part of the process works and the relationship of each part to the process for constant perfection, e.g. The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle is a continuous quest of quality, which is firmly driven in TQM. According to the need, a variety of methods are implemented for TQM, such as,

. Management Methods: Benchmarking, Pokayoke (Error Proofing), ISO 9000, JIT (Just-in-time), KAIZEN, Quality function Deployment, Total Productive maintenance, Business Process reengineering, benchmarking, 5s housekeeping, Seven Quality Tools etc.
. Analytical Methods: Cause & Effect analysis, Stratification, Taguchi Methods etc.
. Data Collection, Analysis & Display: Bar Charts, Flow charts, Pie chart etc.

Total Quality Management Practice

By adopting the total quality management programme in the organization, it builds strong employee commitment towards organization, improves work culture, improves quality of the product, hence the great retained satisfied customer achievement. The total quality programme varies from organization to organization and industry to industry. Even Total Quality Management is also applicable to academic institutions, construction industry, financial services, and advertising agencies for design, software companies, and library or even in any service industry. Total Quality Management is a never-ending practice rather than a goal; it sets out to change its corporate culture. Here the entire employee involved with it, it is 'Everyone's Job'.

Edwards Deming's 14 points for quality improvement

1. "Generate steadiness of purpose towards development". Substitute short-term effect with long-term planning.

2."Accept the new philosophy". The connotation is that management should really accept his philosophy, rather than just be expecting the workforce to do so.

3."Stop dependence on inspection". If disparity is trim down, there is no need to check manufactured items for defects, because there won't be any.

4."Progress towards a single supplier for any one item." Various suppliers mean difference between feedstock.

5."Make better persistently and everlastingly". Persistently strive to reduce variation.

6."Introduce exercise on the job". If people are insufficiently trained, they will not all work the same way, and this will bring in dissimilarity.

7."Set up leadership". Deming build a division between leadership and mere supervision. The latter is allocation and target-based.

8."Push out fear". Deming observe management by fear as contradict constructive in the long term, because it put off workers from performing in the organization's best benefit.

9."Break down obstacle between sections". A further idea central to TQM is the perception of the 'internal customer', that each department works not the management, but the other departments that use its productivity.

10."Get rid of slogans". One more vital TQM impression is that it's not people who make most faults; it's the process they are operational within.

11."Get rid of management by objectives". Deming saw production objectives as promising the delivery of poor-quality goods.

12."Eliminate barriers to pride of workmanship". Many of the other problems outlined decrease worker fulfillment.

13."Introduce education and self-improvement".

14."The revolution is everyone's job".

It can be concluded that the principles discussed are key in ensuring the success of TQM in an organization and that the supervisor is a huge part in developing these elements in the work place. Without these elements, the business entities cannot be successful TQM implementers. It is very clear from the above discussion that TQM without involving integrity, ethics and trust would be a great remiss, in fact it would be incomplete. Training is the key by which the organization creates a TQM environment. Leadership and teamwork go hand in hand. Lack of communication between departments, supervisors and employees create a burden on the whole TQM process. Last but not the least; recognition should be given to people who contributed to the overall completed task. Hence, lead by example, train employees to provide a quality product, create an environment where there is no fear to share knowledge, and give credit where credit is due is the motto of a successful TQM organization.