Total Quality Management

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  Total Quality Management (TQM)

  Principles, Methods, and Applications

  • Sunil Luthra, Dixit Garg, Ashish Agarwal, Sachin K. Mangla(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  2 Total Quality Management (TQM)

  2.1 DEFINITION OF Total Quality Management (TQM)

  Total Quality Management (TQM) seeks to integrate all organisational functions, such as marketing, finance, design, engineering, production, customer service, etc. to focus on meeting customer needs and organisational objectives.

  TQM is defined as:

  • Total = Made up of the whole.
  • Quality = Degree of excellence of product/service provider.
  • Management = Art of handling, controlling and directing.

  TQM sees an organisation as a set of processes. It argues that organisations must strive to continually improve these processes by integrating the knowledge and experiences of workers. The simple goal of TQM is ‘To do things right, the first time, always.’ TQM is infinitely variable and adaptable. This management approach covers several areas, although it was originally applied to manufacturing operations. For several years, it has only been used in this field. From now on, TQM is identified as a generic management tool, which also applies to services (health and safety), industrial enterprises, and the public sector. There is a series of evolutionary units, with different sectors creating their own versions of the common predecessor.

  Total Quality Management is also defined as a customer-driven process and goals for continuous improvement of business operations. It ensures that all related work (in particular the work of the employees) is directed towards the common objectives of improving the quality of the product or the quality of the service, as well as the production or execution process of the services. However, the focus is on evidence-based decision-making, with the use of performance measures to monitor progress (Deming).

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  Total Quality Management

  Text, Cases, and Readings, Third Edition

  • Joel E. Ross, Susan Perry(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  1 INTRODUCTION TO Total Quality Management

  Total Quality Management (TQM) is the set of management processes and systems that create delighted customers through empowered employees, leading to higher revenue and lower cost.

  J. M. Juran, quality expert

  Total Quality Management (TQM) is the integration of all functions and processes within an organization in order to achieve continuous improvement of the quality of goods and services. The goal is customer satisfaction.

  Of all the management issues faced in the last decade, none has had the impact of or caused as much concern as quality in American products and services. A report by the Conference Board indicates that senior executives in the United States agree that the banner of total quality is essential to ensure competitiveness in global markets. Quality expert J. M. Juran calls it a major phenomenon in this age.1 This concern for quality is not misplaced.

  The interest in quality is due, in part, to foreign competition and the trade deficit.2 Analysts estimate that the vast majority of U.S. businesses will continue to face strong competition from the Pacific Rim and the European Economic Community for the remainder of the 1990s and beyond.3 This comes in the face of a serious erosion of corporate America’s ability to compete in global markets over the past 20 years. As we come to the end of the 20th century, the competitive and trade deficit problems are compounded by the weakening situation in Asian and other global markets. To compete in these markets may require additional efforts in both cost reduction and quality.

  The problem has not gone unnoticed by government officials, corporate executives, and the public at large. The concern of the president and Congress culminated in the enactment of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987 (Public Law 100–107), which established an annual United States National Quality Award. The concern of business executives is reflected in their perceptions of quality. In a 1989 American Society for Quality Control (ASQC) survey, 54 percent of executives rated quality of service as extremely critical and 51 percent rated quality of product as extremely critical.4

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  Quality Control for Dummies

  • Larry Webber, Michael Wallace(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • For Dummies

    (Publisher)

  Continuous quality improvement: This concept means that every worker in the company feels empowered to improve his or her individual processes and is encouraged to recommend changes to larger processes. Each person takes ownership in order to make products right the first time and to stop bad products from reaching the end of the line.

  In this chapter, we cover the basic principles and steps of Total Quality Man- agement and the techniques and tools your company needs to get started. We also introduce the roles of different folks in TQM and show you how to keep the quality process working continuously.

  Total Quality Management in a Nutshell

  Total Quality Management (TQM) is a company-wide, proactive effort to improve quality. Total means that all business functions (engineering, production, marketing, and so on) focus on defining and fulfilling (the ever-shifting) customer needs. Each company tailors TQM to fit its circumstances. The unifying theme is to “do the right things, the right way, the first time.”

  TQM is a result of earlier quality innovations from such eminent experts as W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Philip B. Crosby, and Kaoru Ishikawa. Like all great ideas, it combines the best techniques of each innovator into a “total” program. TQM was the first quality system that taught businesspeople to look to the process steps in order to improve. One of its greatest improvements was the realization that quality had to be moved out of the back office and into everything an organization does.

  In the following sections, we explain TQM’s principles, steps, pros, and cons.

  The guiding principles

  Total Quality Management requires your company executives’ ongoing commitment to change. Rather than being the duty of a “quality department” in some distant, dark back room, quality improvement becomes everyone’s business. To be considered total, quality has to permeate all levels of the organization. Here are the TQM principles:

  Management commitment:

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  Construction Management

  New Directions

  • Denny McGeorge, Patrick X. W. Zou(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Of all of the concepts outlined in this book, TQM is one of the broadest and most wide ranging. In some ways it is an umbrella under which many other concepts are encompassed. As with other concepts in this book, there is no single accepted definition of TQM. Rampsey and Roberts [8], define TQM as:

  … a people focused management system that aims at continual increase in customer satisfaction at continually lower real cost. TQM is a total system approach (not a separate area or program), and an integral part of high level strategy. It works horizontally across function and department, involving all employees, top to bottom, and extends backwards and forwards to include the supply chain and the customer chain.

  (Interestingly, the construction industry invariably uses the word ‘client’ as opposed to ‘customer’ to describe a purchaser of good services, perhaps on the basis that ‘client’ has more sophisticated connotations than ‘customer’. In Webster’s Dictionary [9], these words are given as synonymous with one another.)

  In our view Rampsey and Roberts’ definition encompasses the fundamental principles of TQM. First, TQM must be a total approach to quality. Whereas in the past quality was concerned with parts of the organisation, such as the final product or customer relations, TQM is concerned with the whole system as an integrated unit. Second, TQM is ongoing. Whereas in the past quality was viewed as a system that could be put in place to improve certain sections of the product or organisation, TQM is a continuous process. The view is now taken that, however good a system has become, it can always be improved further. Finally, the goal of TQM is customer satisfaction. In the past, quality systems have been aimed towards improving products, not customer satisfaction. These are not necessarily the same thing, since it is possible to improve a product without realising that it is not in fact what the customer wants.

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  New Wave Manufacturing Strategies

  Organizational and Human Resource Management Dimensions

  • John Storey(Author)
  • 1994(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  6 Total Quality Management Patrick Dawson Total Quality Management (TQM) is a widely used strategy for increasi ng organizational flexibility and employee commitment to change. It originated in America, was developed in Japan and is now forming a central part of strategic decision-making in companies in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia and New Zealand. Unlike quality circles, TQM is not viewed as a purely operational technique for improving shopfloor partic ipation but, rather, is seen as a method for integrating programmes of operational con-trol with the strategic management of a company. In this way, TQM has developed from a series of specific tedmiques, such as the use of Statist ical Process Control, to the complete management of intra-company relations and the creation of policies and practices aimed at securing employee in-volvement (Dawson, 1994). The 1990s have seen a movement away from Total Quality Control (TQC) which, following Feigenbaum (1961), had a strong associat ion with production, towards the management of organiza-tional culture and the enlisting of all parts of an organization in the systema-tic effort for quality (Hames, 1991). The emphasis is now on the involvement of all levels of employees, in all different types of organization, for the purpose of continuously refining the process of service and product delivery with the aim of improving operational efficiencies and increas ing employee com mitmen t at work (Macdonald and Piggott, 1990). Quality issues are no longer rest ricted to production departments or manufacturing companies, but are the concern of the whole gamut of public and private enterprises who wish to enhance their system of employee relations, reduce operational inefficiencies and increase their competi tive position (Ballantyne, 1992; Dawson and Patrickson, 1991).

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  Quality and Risk Management in the IVF Laboratory

  • Sharon T. Mortimer, David Mortimer(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  20 Chapter 3: Quality and quality management Participation: It is vital that leaders go to the source to see the facts for themselves; having all the right facts is essential for making the right decisions, creating consensus, and making sure goals are attained at the best possible speed. Effective leaders have and show respect for their people, and employ a management style that can be defined according to two simple principles: Respect: Taking every stakeholder’s problems seriously, and making every effort to build mutual trust. Taking responsibility for enabling other people to achieve their objectives. Teamwork: Developing individuals through team problem-solving. Developing and engaging people through their contribution to team performance. Leadership in general is considered in more detail in Chapter 12 “Human resources”. Total Quality Management While there are many definitions of TQM, they all share the common perspective of it being a philosophy rather than a simple management procedure. It must be seen as a process of improvement beyond the status quo that then extends into an all-encompassing program of developing, and fostering, the desire for change and improvement throughout the entire organization. TQM is an all-encompassing quality system. It includes QC, QA, and QI within a perpetual reiterative process, but it is still based upon the foundations of inspection and audit (see Figure 3.2). TQM must be seen as a long-term goal, there are no short cuts or quick fixes in implementing TQM. There is no tool or technique that can be seen as a panacea for all the problems and woes of an organization, no turn-key systems that can be plugged into an organization’s pre-existing management structure.

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  Advanced Design Concepts for Engineers

  • B.S. Dhillon(Author)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Another important factor involved in improving product quality is the commitment of top management to show consistent enthusiasm so that the employees seriously consider the importance of quality. There are many differences between traditional quality assurance manage-ment and TQM. Thus, for the effective practicing of the TQM concept, a proper understanding of such differences is essential. Table 8.1 presents the compari-son of traditional and Total Quality Management [3,7]. 8.3 TQM PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS Broadly speaking, TQM is based on two fundamental principles: customer satisfaction and continuous improvement. Customers could either be internal 154 T O T A L Q U A L IT Y M A N A G E M E N T or external, but the external customers are not part of the organization man-ufacturing the good/product or service. The use of the “market-in” concept allows a strong customer orientation that recognizes that every work process is made up of stages. In turn, during each stage, customer input is sought for determining the changes that should be made to better satisfy the customer’s requirements [ 11 ]. Continuous improvement is an important factor to meet the quality challenge. In fact, Tom Peters [12] stated, “Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence— only in constant improvement and constant change.” The incremental improve-ment and maintenance tasks are accomplished through process improvement and control. In any case, with respect to TQM, management performs two func-tions: ( 1 ) continuously makes improvements to methods and procedures used currently through process control and ( 2 ) directs efforts to achieve important advances in concerned processes.

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  Public Productivity Handbook

  • Marc Holzer(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Total Quality Management and customer focus 669 A. Customer Focus The underlying assumption of TQM is a focus on the customer. It is assumed that the customer is the judge of quality, and productivity improvement, in principle, does not exist without customer satisfaction. Customers include both internal (employees) and external customers (citizens). Internal customers receive “any work output in the service or production process,” and external customers purchase the product (McGo-wan and Wittmer, 1997). Therefore customer satisfaction is the utmost priority of any organization. Both employee and citizen satisfactions are important elements with which to measure productivity and performance in any organization. B. Continuous Improvement Another important assumption of TQM is found in the emphasis on continuous improvement. In fact, all productivity improvement programs require feedback from both employees and citizens on a regular basis. Continuous improvement includes: “(1) enhance value to the customer through new and improved products and services, (2) reduce errors, defects, and waste, (3) improve responsiveness and cycle-time performance, and (4) improve productivity and effectiveness in the use of all resources (McGowan and Wittmer, 1997, p. 313).” As Swiss (1992, p. 358) points out, “Quality is not a static attribute; it is a constantly changing target because it represents a delighted customer.” It should also be noted that continuous improvement focuses on input and processes rather than on output (Swiss, 1992; Carr and Littman, 1990; Scholtes and Hacquebord, 1988). The assumption here is that focusing more on processes and input will eventually lead to productive outcomes, thereby achieving productivity improvement. C. Top Management Commitment and Leadership In order for any organization to be successful in productivity improvement, top management commitment is always a necessary first step (Holzer and Callahan, 1998; Lee, 2000a).

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  Operations Management

  An Integrated Approach

  • R. Dan Reid, Nada R. Sanders(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  TABLE 5.3 Concepts of the TQM Philosophy Concept Main Idea Customer focus Goal is to identify and meet customer needs. Continuous improvement A philosophy of never-ending improvement. Employee empowerment Employees are expected to seek out, identify, and correct quality problems. Use of quality tools Ongoing employee training in the use of quality tools. Product design Products need to be designed to meet customer expectations. Process management Quality should be built into the process; sources of quality problems should be identified and corrected. Managing supplier quality Quality concepts must extend to a company’s suppliers. TABLE 5.3 The Philosophy of TQM 145 current procedures, collect data, and identify problems. This information should then be studied and used to develop a plan for improvement as well as specific measures to evaluate performance. • Do The next step in the cycle is implementing the plan (do). During the implementation process managers should document all changes made and collect data for evaluation. • Study The third step is to study the data collected in the previous phase. The data are evaluated to see whether the plan is achieving the goals established in the plan phase. • Act The last phase of the cycle is to act on the basis of the results of the first three phases. The best way to accomplish this is to communicate the results to other members of the company and then implement the new procedure if it has been successful. Note that this is a cycle; the next step is to plan again. After we have acted, we need to continue evaluating the process, planning, and repeating the cycle again. Benchmarking Another way companies implement continuous improvement is by studying business practices of companies considered “best in class.” This is called bench- marking. The ability to learn and study how others do things is an important part of continu- ous improvement.

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  The Theory of Culture-Specific Total Quality Management

  Quality Management in Chinese Regions

  • Carlos Noronha(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Each of these principles is translated into practices using two core concepts. To delight the customers, customer satisfaction and internal customers must be emphasized. Management by fact is achieved by applying appropriate internal quality measurement methods and focusing on business process management. People-based management is through teamwork. Managers of an organization must also ensure that every- thing necessary is in place to allow people to make quality. Finally, continuous improvement emphasizes on prevention and the continu- ous improvement cycle. Some common ingredients from the key elements suggested by the various writers on quality are identified and fitted into the four- dimension model described earlier. This constitutes a comprehensive framework of TQM to be used in the present study. It is depicted in Figure 2.4. ISO 9000 Quality System Certification It is not easy to measure how successful an organization’s quality man- agement is because TQM is clearly more a philosophy than an instru- ment. Therefore, one usually focuses on whether an organization has achieved some form of internationally recognized award or certifica- tion. However, it should be noted that any form of quality award must be made up of criteria which are bound not to perfectly reflect an organization’s maturity in TQM. Nevertheless, influential quality awards and certifications such as the Malcom Balridge National Quality Award (MBNQA) in the United States, or the ISO 9000 International Standards for Quality Management are under constant review and revi- sion to accommodate the ever widening arrays of quality concepts. For example, the ISO 9000 family of standards are revised every five years, and the latest revised version commonly known as the ISO 9000: 2000 or the millenium edition was recently published in December 2000. The Deming Application Prize is probably the earliest award of its type.

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  Handbook of Systems Engineering and Management

  • Andrew P. Sage, William B. Rouse(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Interscience

    (Publisher)

  7 Total Quality Management JAMES L. MELSA 7.1 INTRODUCTION If we don’t change our direction, we might end up where we are headed. —Chinese Proverb

  It is critical that institutions begin to think about the directions in which they are headed and where those directions might lead them if they don’t change. Quality improvement and cycle-time reduction are no longer fads or slogans , but have become the survival issues of today. This chapter begins with some information on why quality improvements and cycle-time reductions can be critical to organizational success. The four stages of the quality movement are described with an emphasis on why “inspection,” in all of its forms, cannot guarantee outstanding quality. The basic tools and concepts of Total Quality Management (TQM) are presented. Section 7.2 explains how quality programs are no longer isolated aspects of a corporation, but have become embedded into the very fabric of the corporate operation. Stated another way, quality management is about the quality of the management not the management of quality. The use of quality systems such as ISO 9000:2000 and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) are discussed in Appendixes 7A and 7B.

  The U.S. Government Accounting Office’s review (House of Representatives: Management Practices, 1991) of 20 companies that were among the highest-scoring applicants in 1988 and 1989 for the MBNQA indicated that the companies that adopted quality management practices experienced an overall improvement in corporate performance , including better employee relations, higher productivity, greater customer satisfaction, increased market share, and improved profitability.

  Each of the companies studied developed its practices in a unique environment with its own opportunities and problems. There were, however, common features in their quality management systems that were major contributing factors to improved performance. These features included corporate focus on meeting customer needs, management that led the way, the empowerment of employees to seek continuous process improvement, a flexible and responsive corporate culture, fact-based decision making, and partnerships with suppliers. It is important to note that many different kinds of organizations benefited from putting specific Total Quality Management (TQM) practices in place; however, none of these companies reaped those benefits immediately. Allowing sufficient time for results

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  Operations Management

  An Integrated Approach

  • R. Dan Reid, Nada R. Sanders(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Employees are rewarded for uncovering quality problems, not punished. In TQM, the role of employees is very different from what it was in traditional systems. Workers are empowered to make decisions relative to quality in the production process. They are considered a vital element of the effort to achieve high quality. Their contributions are highly valued, and their suggestions are implemented. In order to perform this function, employees are given continual and extensive training in quality measurement tools. To further stress the role of employees in quality, TQM differentiates between external and internal customers. External customers are those that purchase the company’s goods and services. Internal customers are employees of the organization who receive goods or services from others in the company. For example, the packaging department of an organization is an internal customer of the assembly department. Just as a defective item would not be passed to an external customer, a defective item should not be passed to an internal customer. Team Approach TQM stresses that quality is an organizational effort. To facilitate the solving of quality problems, it places great emphasis on teamwork. The use of teams is based on the old adage that “two heads are better than one.” Using techniques such as brainstorm- ing, discussion, and quality control tools, teams work regularly to correct problems. The con- tributions of teams are considered vital to the success of the company. For this reason, compa- nies set aside time in the workday for team meetings. Teams vary in their degree of structure and formality, and different types of teams solve different types of problems. One of the most common types of teams is the quality circle, a team of volunteer production employees and their supervisors whose purpose is to solve qual- ity problems. The circle is usually composed of eight to ten members, and decisions are made through group consensus.

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