Essay/Term paper: Total quality management

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Marketing

A new progression being used in many

organizations is labeled Total Quality Management (TQM).

This approach involves guaranteeing that an organization

functions with a commitment to quality and continuous

improvement in meeting its consumer's needs. With any

type of change there will always be a number of bumps in

the road which slow down the process that can help a

company increase the workers morale, production, profits,

and an over all positive environment to conduct business.

The pressures of the cut-throat market place has push

companies' backs against a wall and to compete on a

global scale new ideas have to be explored. The purpose

of a TQM program is to amplify the effectiveness of the

organization. During an age of downsizing and restructuring,

many American companies are determining that they must

learn to manage more effectively. The management is

running on an older system which add to workers that call

out more sick days and abuse the companies production

procedure. Organizational problems decoding means that

all members of an organization participate in cultivating a

vision and improving the corporate cultures. In any change

program you must comprehend where you are before you

can chart a course for where you want to be. Therefore,

before executing TQM, or another program it is important

to add the total value of the organization in terms of its

current quality or performance class and too define the

level of performance or quality you wish to achieve. One

will never achieve total output for any given input, but with

simple steps that can add dollars to the bottom line with an

increase of production one can get close. Organization

diagnosis contributes information which allows a faster

reacting organization to emerge, one which can deal

proactively with changing emphases. Organization

examination is often mentioned as the most critical element

in the TQM process. With this technique utilized a

company can measure all aspects of its output in relation to

the mass input. These all include all external and internal

inputs from the accountant to the delivery truck driver. All

members and service providers must be looked at so as to

acquire a complete overall view of the performance of the

given organization. The steps that a company takes

towards Total Quality Management in the beginning only

adds the real value of having such a new system in place.

Organization's are transforming and will continue to do so

in order to survive in this complex environment. Because

change is occurring so rapidly, there is a necessity for new

ways to manage focusing on product quality and individual

involvement. TQM is a type of an approach to managing

work focusing on the evaluation of industry processes. The

development of a quality energized culture and the

empowerment of employees, for the purpose of continuous

improvement of products and philanthropies. Since TQM is

a powerful new management technique requiring deepened

employee participation, the first step is a climactic change in

corporate culture. Any successful adjustment in corporate

culture will depend upon the active consultation and

involvement of the management team. An important

component in developing a high performance organization

is the identification of areas for improvement or concerns.

Total quality management has been defined as the guidance

of activities involving improving the quality of the

organization's product or service. TQM involves moving

toward collective excellence by integrating the desires of

individuals for growth and development with organizational

goals. TQM is a philosophy and a set of guiding standards

for continuous improvement. TQM applies human

resources and analytical tools to concentrate on meeting or

exceeding customer's current and future needs. It integrates

these resources and tools into management efforts, by

providing planned, efficient approaches to improving the

total organization, so that it is more customer oriented,

quality conscious, adjustable and attentive. Total Quality

Management has become a cardinal concern of

management. Much of this attention was initially focused on

the auto establishments which experienced declining sales

and increasing product disappointments. Companies in

numerous other industries also became concerned. Some

of these ideas were original explored in this country in the

'80s due to deficient sales and decrease in market share.

Both of these can denote death for even considerably large

companies like General Motors. It was GM that

characterized a major role in introducing TQM here with

the Saturn car. GM decided that since they might lose

some valuable market share due to an expansion in

Japanese car sale, that they should study the extraordinary

way that this old world culture seemed to put quality autos

on the market. GM found that the Japanese had less middle

management and more teams of employees that were self

governed. The teams were responsible for the perfection of

the products that were made, instead of having quality

control inspectors. The teams were given the authority to

hire and fire its members. With this innovative knowledge,

GM tried an experiment that became the Saturn car. To

this day the Saturn car assembly is still seen as an

experiment for GM to use and harvest some of the

inspirations so as to enhance its other factories. Thus, the

Total Quality Management system was subsequent made

mainstream with the idea creeping into all types of

organizations. There are several widely recognized key

characteristics of TQM systems. First, for a system to be

TQM it has to be organization wide. Which determines that

the production line is a natural and obvious place to

increase quality but it also takes place in all areas of the

business. This includes the superior CEO to the mail room

clerk. Second, the top managers must visibly adhere the

new TQM control system. If any of the workers were to

contemplate that the upper management was not taking the

virgin guidelines seriously then you are more inclined to

have chaos. To help arrest the bucking of the system to a

slow trot, a simple type of reward system is put in place to

reward team associates and for the insurance that there will

be continue support. Third, everyone in the organization

has a customer which could be the adjacent guy on the

production line or remote to the organization. This is a

crafty way to get the personnel enthusiastic about pleasing

the guildlines of the company. Forth, doing the job

expeditious and right the first time is important. Instead of

relying on product inspection, the employee should be

responsible for the quality of the product that is conceived.

Finally, the most important aspect for an organization is to

let the team members know that each one of them is

respected and valued. This again goes for the entire chain,

from the internal to the external vendors and suppliers.

More and more organizations are concluding that

employees are no longer satisfied with simply filling a slot in

the organization chart. Everyone in the organization has a

voice and is allowed to speak on all issues. Today's

managers are being challenged to provide leadership in new

and changing environments. Customers, competitors,

employees, and stockholders are all placing anxieties on

management for innovation and change at a rapid pace.

Change is a scorning process. Every organization exists in a

endless state of adapting to change. Downsizing changes

are usually caused by external competitive forces, whereas

other changes to work operations emerge as a result of

shifting forces within the organization. Many management

theorist feel that authoritarian or political forces, adapting to

this increasing rate of change and therefore become

reactive organizations reacting drastically after problems

come to light. The GM company for example, continues to

focus on quality, cycle time reduction, and teamwork in a

change process that most companies can only try to

emulate. Ten years after initiating a quality change program,

TQM is still being used to invigorate the company. The

Saturn car company is a continued success in the auto

industry. It should be noted that Saturn has yet to pull in an

over all profit, but the high sales has GM looking at the car

company in hind sight. GM has taken what it has learned

from Saturn and applied it to the other lines of cars. How

can you measure the value of such information? So because

of this new approach the TQM company lives on as a

modern day experiment, which by today's terms is not so

experimental. GM has emerged to meet these changing

forces is termed Total Quality Management (TQM) Total

Quality management may be defined as an organizational

strategy of commitment to improving customer satisfaction

by developing techniques to carefully administer output

quality. TQM is not so much a special technique, as it is an

aspect of a reinvented corporate culture with a healthy

commitment to improving quality in all organizational

approaches. Reference: