1I.INTRODUCTIONOver the last decade, the goal of organizations has been to provide a high level of quality of products and service at the lowest cost in order to reach customers' satisfaction and to be the most competitive.Quality has become crucial in the success or failure of organizations.The increased emphasis on quality has lead many of them to adopt a Total Quality Management Approach.1.1DefinitionTotal Quality Management (TQM)Total: Every person in the organization is involved, including customers and suppliers and other stakeholders. Quality is everyone's responsibility.Quality: Customer requirements are met exactly (Getting a product with no defects, on time and at a competit ...view middle of the document...
It's important that employees are more involved in the decision making process of the business. After they are the people who are working directly with the customer. Therefore they are the first people who notice when there are problems or a need of improvement things.1.2. Brief History of TQMTQM was developed in the mid 1940s after World War II and has been one of the most influential management methods used over the last 30 years. In the beginning it was only used in the manufacturing sector but since has been adopted in many types of organizations.Dr. Edward Deming is one of the fathers of TQM.The initial concept of TQM was to use statistics to achieve quality at reduced costs.Dr. Deming hardly convinced American firms to adopt TQM but his management methods were successful in Japan.Indeed, Japanese industries were producing quality whereas the Americans were focused on the quantity to the detriment of the quality.That is why Japan quickly gained an important success with their high quality products at a low price.In order to compete and survive, the rest of the world had to take in consideration Deming's concept and adopt the same methods as the Japanese.3II.TQMThe concept of TQM is -" No matter how good an organization has become, there is alwaysroom for further improvement."- "The means to satisfying the customers."- "Doing things right the first time and every time."-"The means to sustaining business excellence."-"Treating staff the same way as the customers."2.1The Four Revolutions of Quality ManagementIn their book "A New American TQM - Four Practical Revolutions In Management", the authors interpret TQM as " an evolving system of practices, tools, and training methods for managing companies to provide customer satisfaction in a rapidly changing world "( Shiba et al: 1993).4a)Total Participation: Employees are key deliverables in creating a dynamic management system. It is their job to present the company to the customer andtherefore it is essential they obtain the skills to do this, such as team-building andcustomer care.b)Continuous Improvement: A company should always be looking to improve its processes. It should continually raise the bar each time a goal is met to accommodate the ever changing needs of the customer of the 21st century.c)Focus on the Customer : The customer is the building block of every company. For management system to be effective it is essential to focus on the customer. Customer concerns should be integrated into the companies business plan to enable end product satisfaction as there is no better form of advertisement than a happy customer.d)Societal Networking: Apart from a companies internal audience, another major source for the improvement of business ideas is social networking. This is the set of companies, customers, and suppliers are associated with every organization, that can learn from the experiences of these groups. In developing these valuable resources into a comprehensive management strat...
