Total Quality Management

                     Total quality management (TQM) consists of organization wide efforts to install and make permanent a climate in which an organization continuously improves its ability to deliver high-quality products and services to customers. TQM enjoyed widespread attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s before being overshadowed by ISO 9000, Lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma.

                       Total Quality Management (TQM) is a comprehensive and structured approach to organizational management that seeks to improve the quality of products and services through on going refinements in response to continuous feedback. TQM requirements may be defined separately for a particular organization or may be in adherence to established standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9000 series.

                       

                        In the planning phase, people define the problem to be addressed, collect relevant data, and ascertain the problem's root cause in the doing phase, people develop and implement a solution, and decide upon a measurement to gauge its effectiveness  in the checking phase, people confirm the results through before-and-after data comparison  in the acting phase.

                       Implementing quality improvement is fraught with difficulties and many TQM initiatives run out of steam and lose their effectiveness. We have provided some suggestions about how TQM can be best implemented to ensure that long-term quality improvement is achieved.

What are the main implementation issues in TQM initiatives?

                        

                      To realize that TQM is not a ‘quick fix’ but a long-term approach to quality. Good quality needs to be underpinned by systems with clearly set out goals and guidelines.

The need for top management commitment because TQM involves the whole organisation without top level support any such initiative is doomed to failure. This support usually is evidenced by an executive champion, and a high level steering group.

Implementation of Quality

                        The implementation of total quality is similar to that of other decentralized control methods. In developing TQM, companies need to understand how consumers define quality in both goods and services offered. If a company pays more attention to quality in its production processes, fewer problems are bound to occur when the product is in the customers’ hands. Management should make a commitment to measure the performance of a product relative to its quality through customer surveys, which can help managers to identify design, manufacturing or any other process that has a bearing on the quality of a product or service, and therefore provide an opportunity for continuous improvement.

Conclusion and recommendation

The advantages of TQM have been widely discussed, but the challenges of implementation have received little attention. A quality philosophy is required for the successful implementation of a quality project. This philosophy must facilitate a long-term lifestyle change for a company. Teamwork is the key to involvement and participation. Groups should be encouraged to work closely and effectively, and should focus on quality improvement and customer satisfaction.