Total quality management (TQM)
consists of organization-wide efforts to install and make a permanent climate
in which an organization continuously improves its ability to deliver
high-quality products and services to customers [1]. It is a
management approach to long–term success through customer satisfaction. In a
TQM effort, all members of an organization participate in improving processes,
products, services, and the culture in which they work. The methods for implementing
this approach come from the teachings of such quality leaders as Philip B.
Crosby, W. Edwards Deming, Armand V. Feigenbaum, Kaoru
Ishikawa, and Joseph M. Juran.[2]
Total Quality Management 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.[3] It 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.
In the late 1970s and early
1980s, the developed countries of North America and Western Europe suffered
economically in the face of stiff competition from Japan's ability to produce
high-quality goods at competitive cost. For the first time since the start of
the Industrial Revolution, the United Kingdom became a net importer of finished
goods. The United States undertook its own soul-searching, expressed most
pointedly in the television broadcast of If Japan Can... Why Can't We?
Firms began reexamining the techniques of quality control invented over the
past 50 years and how those techniques had been so successfully employed by the
Japanese. It was in the midst of this economic turmoil that TQM took root.
The Primary Elements of TQM
- Customer-focused. The customer ultimately determines the level of quality. No matter what an organization does to foster quality improvement—training employees, integrating quality into the design process, upgrading computers or software, or buying new measuring tools—the customer determines whether the efforts were worthwhile.
- Total employee involvement. All employees participate in working toward common goals. Total employee commitment can only be obtained after fear has been driven from the workplace, when empowerment has occurred, and management has provided the proper environment. High-performance work systems integrate continuous improvement efforts with normal business operations. Self-managed work teams are one form of empowerment.
- Process-centered. A fundamental part of TQM is a focus on process thinking. A process is a series of steps that take inputs from suppliers (internal or external) and transforms them into outputs that are delivered to customers (again, either internal or external). The steps required to carry out the process are defined, and performance measures are continuously monitored in order to detect unexpected variation.
- Integrated system. Although an organization may consist of many different functional specialties often organized into vertically structured departments, it is the horizontal processes interconnecting these functions that are the focus of TQM.
- Micro-processes add up to larger processes, and all processes aggregate into the business processes required for defining and implementing strategy. Everyone must understand the vision, mission, and guiding principles as well as the quality policies, objectives, and critical processes of the organization. Business performance must be monitored and communicated continuously.
- An integrated business system may be modeled after the Baldrige National Quality Program criteria and/or incorporate the ISO 9000 standards. Every organization has a unique work culture, and it is virtually impossible to achieve excellence in its products and services unless a good quality culture has been fostered. Thus, an integrated system connects business improvement elements in an attempt to continually improve and exceed the expectations of customers, employees, and other stakeholders.
- Strategic and systematic approach. A critical part of the management of quality is the strategic and systematic approach to achieving an organization’s vision, mission, and goals. This process, called strategic planning or strategic management, includes the formulation of a strategic plan that integrates quality as a core component.
- Continual improvement. A major thrust of TQM is continual process improvement. Continual improvement drives an organization to be both analytical and creative in finding ways to become more competitive and more effective at meeting stakeholder expectations.
- Fact-based decision making. In order to know how well an organization is performing, data on performance measures are necessary. TQM requires that an organization continually collect and analyze data in order to improve decision making accuracy, achieve consensus, and allow prediction based on past history.
- Communications. During times of organizational change, as well as part of day-to-day operation, effective communications plays a large part in maintaining morale and in motivating employees at all levels. Communications involve strategies, method, and timeliness.
These elements are considered so
essential to TQM that many organizations define them, in some format, as a set
of core values and principles on which the organization is to operate.
TQM encourages participation
amongst shop floor workers and managers. There is no single theoretical
formalization of total quality, but Deming, Juran and Ishikawa provide the core
assumptions, as a “…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.”
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