FREE ESSAY ON TQM

TQM

Total Quality Management
By Jeff Russell
A new type of structure is being used in many organizations today. That structure 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 over all positive environment to conduct business. The pressures
of the cutthroat market place has pushed 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 adds 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 of 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 to
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 diagnose 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 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
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 this
purpose of continuous improvement of products and philanthropies. Since TQM is a powerful
new management technique requiring absolute employee participation, the first step is a
climatic 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 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
originally 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 shares due to
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 for GM to use and harvest
some of the inspirations so as to enhance its other factories. Thus, the total quality
management system was subsequently made mainstream with it 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 mailroom 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 new guidelines seriously then
you are more inclined to have chaos. To help stop people from causing too many problems,
a simple type of reward system is put in place to recognize team associates and for the
insurance that there will be continued 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
guidelines of the company. Forth, doing the job expectations 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 employees 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 an endless state of
adapting to change. External competitive forces usually cause downsizing changes, whereas
other changes to work operations emerge as a result of shifting forces within the
organization. Many management theorists 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 improve 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 hindsight. 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 strategy 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. 
Bibliography
Bibliography
Beecroft, GD (1999) The role of quality in strategic management Decisions, v37 i6
Heapy, MS. And Gruska, GF. (1995) The Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award- A
Yardstick for Quality Growth Addison -Wesley Publishing Company 
Kuger, V. (1999) Towards a European definition of TQM- a historical review The TQM
Magazine v11 n4 p257
Marsh, J. (1996) The Quality Toolkit- a practical resource for making TQM happen
www.GM.com