Updated June 30, 2023
Introduction to What is Total Quality Management
Everyone does work, and any work does not wait for any specific person to respond but the involvement of individual to raise the bar of given work. And why the bar is raised?. Only because of the contribution that the individual can make to lift the ‘Quality’ of work.
Quality is the most important benchmark that separates a successful firm from an unsuccessful one.
Understanding Total Quality Management
So before understanding total quality management, let us first understand:
What is Quality?
“Quality defines to a parameter which draws the line between superiority and inferiority of product or service”. It defines the current product from its competitor. Quality plays an important role in the business market. As it is the most important parameter that helps to place your product over others. If anyone in the market wants to stand out, they need to focus more on the quality than quantity of the product.
How to Measure or Adjust or Implement the Quality Measures of any Department
To measure the quality standard of a firm, there are certain methods that are defined, and with the help of these tools (quality management tool), we are able to break it down into small bits and pieces. Let see more of it.
What is Total Quality Management?
Total quality management was started in 1954 in Japan; says, “Total quality management is an organized structural tool that focuses on continuous quality improvement of product and services by using the continuous feedback system.”
or
“TQM can be summarized as a management system for the customer-focused organization that involves continuous improvement of the process. It uses strategy, data, and effective communication to integrate a quality discipline into the employee and organization”.
After its start, it has been developing and can be implemented in almost any sector/organization such as governmental organizations, schools, e-business, etc. The objective of total quality management is doing things right in the first phase and then repeat it over and over again, So that the firm does not have to invest in bad finance in the first place, for example, warranty and maintenance. It can be put into the business by setting a separate department or just by following certain rules for some specific process.
8 Principles of Total Quality Management
Basically, TQM is broken down into 8 steps/pieces. We will discuss each one of them step by step.
1. Focus on Customer
For any business to run, customers have the last call, any decision that has to be made in the conference room or management table has to go in the market, and customers have the last call because ‘ideas can be as big as you can think, but the last stop is customer satisfaction. Ultimately Customers have the last call on the quality whether they want it top or medium or at least work for them. No matter what type of methods, up-gradation, the design you are updating the product into, at last, the customer decides whether the efforts were worthwhile or not.
2. Employee Involvement
It is said that employee is your first customer they participate toward a single goal with all their mutual efforts and hundred percent involvement of employee can only be achieved after fear has been removed from the organization. To attain this type of environment, empowerment should be there in the workforce, and a good working environment is a must as well. If these two are achieved in the workforce, then the high-performance work system will encourage continuous improvement and maintenance of a good quality product.
3. Process-Centered
A fundamental part of total quality maintained is process thinking; although the customer has the last saying in the quality of a product but to maintain the given quality standard, it has to meet the standards set by product manufacturing experts. A process is one of many customer reviews taken into consideration, then converting those steps product and serve it to a customer. So, all in all, it is good to say that any process which needed to be successful has to be process-centric.
4. Integrated System
Although the different organization has different levels in their operation work (horizontal and vertically structured department) but to connect them all, we use TQM. As in any system, if there is a problem in establishing a proper connection between two departments, then it will make the whole system disassemble. Therefore connection the veins of a system and proper TQM should be applied in it.
5. A Strategic and Systematic Approach
Any system stands only because of the planning that is happening at the management level; the critical part of management is to achieve the organization’s vision/mission with a systematic and organized approach. And the quality comment is always integrated into it as a core component.
6. Continual Improvement
Any company stands and grows on the idea that it will grow itself continuously by improving the product quality and workflow. So that the customer, as well as the employee, are satisfied. A major part of TQM is associated with raising an organization creatively and analytically, which will help the firm to stand way ahead in the race to Epitome.
7. Decision Making on Fact-Based
Though we all know that the customer is the one who drives the decision-making of a firm, the people who first make the decision are the ones responsible for taking the shot. So the people who take the management decision should look into the data first so that they have a clear picture of what is going in the system, and with that, they can make a much more good decision.
8. Communication
It is the most basic thing of all the process, social fixtures, etc. Without communication, there is no way a proper quality system can be established in the business because it is necessary to communicate to find the problem and dissolve them and also for increasing the quality eventually over time. It all helps in motivating the employees to their individual goals.
Conclusion
These values are operated to such effect in some organizations that firm makes these rules their organizing principle. And we can take these rules in any department of our life to increase our own efficiencies.
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