Individual Contributions to Total Quality Management - Essay Example

Individual Contributions Total Quality Management

Introduction to TQM

Total Quality Management (TQM) refers to a management approach to offering services to customers through the involvement of all employees in the continuous improvement of the production process. It combines management and quality tools that are geared towards improving business and minimizing losses that result from wasteful products. It can be further defined as a philosophy that integrates all functions in an organization such as marketing, design, engineering, finance, and production function to focus on achieving customer satisfaction as well organizational goals. From the view of TQM, an organization is a collection of several processes which should be continually maintained and improved through the knowledge and experiences of employees. TQM is a viable approach to the long-term performance of an organization achieved from an endless dedication to customer service and expertise (Hashmi 2007).

TQM is based on eight principles. It is customer-focused, process-centered, based on continuous improvement, and concerns involvement of employees. Furthermore, TQM is a systematic and strategic approach and an integrated system that values effective communication and decision-making based on facts (Westcott 2013). Many companies all over the world including those in the fashion industry have incorporated TQM in their production activities and service delivery. The fashion industry includes making and selling of fashionable wear such as leather products, and textile attire. TQM is applied in improving quality through quality planning, quality, control, and quality assurance. There will be a discussion of the personalities that have contributed to Total Quality Management and how these personalities have made many other people and organizations think about the concept TQM as a means of improving the quality of their products. Among the influential personalities, Deming is a significant contributor to TQM.

Deming’s Contribution to TQM

Total quality management (TQM) is a broad concept that goes beyond controlling product quality. It is not just a philosophy, but a technique that has been widely discussed. This idea was first used in Japan while the country was recovering from World War II. Edwards Deming is one of the first people to implement TQM. He was the first American to come up with TQM ideas, theories, and techniques which were first rejected in the United States. However, his thoughts were warmly embraced in Japan and incorporated into most Japanese companies during the postwar period. Thus, Deming is greatly accredited for the country’s fast recovery after the World War II. Total quality management was used in the United States thirty years after it was implemented and today, it is widely used in Japan. Deming's ideas became a center of interest in various companies in America only after it became more difficult for the country to compete with Japan in the early 1980s. In a nutshell, Edwards Deming is considered the father of TQM (Amanor-Boadu & Martin 1999).

Nature of Deming’s Contribution

Deming’s system of quality management was mainly philosophical. It aimed at continuous improvement of quality in management. Deming believed that the transformation of an entire company depends on quality assurance. According to Deming’s philosophy, an organization should consider fourteen points that point out to the actions that lead to the achievement of TQM (Petersen 1999). The fourteen points are summarized below:

The constancy of purpose: Deming holds that organizations should be constant in their mission to increase the quality of products and services. He defines the primary role of a group as being constant in business and provision of jobs; this can be achieved through activities that aim at making money such as research, maintenance, continuous quality improvement, and innovation.

Adoption of new philosophy: organizations should transform into “learning organizations.” Companies should also embrace the theory of zero acceptances to negativism and mistakes.

Independence to mass inspection: organizations should create quality products as a way of eliminating mass inspection.

End to awards on price: Deming suggests that organizations should put an end to awarding its business based on price. Instead, they should minimize total costs and aim at becoming single suppliers.

Constant improvement of product and service systems: Deming believes that development of quality is not straightforward. The management of an organization is vested with the obligation to devise ways of reducing wastes and improving quality.

Institute training: another way of managing and improving the quality of products and services is through training of an organization’s employees.

Institute leadership: for an organization to improve on quality, organizational leadership must be based on management by objectives.

Driving out fear; employees tend to be afraid of asking questions or taking positions. Deming believes that loses that arise from fear are immense. He states that the feeling of security is necessary for assuring improved productivity and better quality. Departmental barriers: there are barriers between various units and departments in an organization such as conflicting goals. These barriers hinder teamwork and problem-solving strategies. Breaking these barriers is crucial for better quality management an organizational performance.

Elimination of workforce slogans, numerical targets, and exhortations: commitment to customer service and better product quality is better achieved through the formulation of own slogans and objectives by the employees.

Elimination of work standards: numerical quotas should be eliminated because they only depend on numbers and not techniques or quality. They could lead to high costs and a high degree of ineffectiveness.

Barriers to quality: obstacles to employee satisfaction must be removed by an organization’s management as they can hinder good performance. Such restrictions include faulty equipment, misguided supervisors, and defective materials.

Education programs: the programs should be instituted by a company for educating the workforce as well as the management of new techniques that lead to better quality of production and service delivery.

Taking actions for achieving transformation: according to Deming, only a qualified management team can pursue a solid course of action to accomplish the quality improvement mission. This team is a majority of people including employees and managers.

Significance of Deming’s work

Deming’s ideas of TQM have are highly significant both in the past days and in the current business world. Deming emphasized on customer survey, teamwork, and production-line consultations as means of addressing quality issues. His system of total quality management was readily embraced in Japan where company’s management, as well as employees, was well-informed of allegiance and uniformity to their work institutions. The companies began collecting data for statistical measuring and monitoring customer satisfaction. The Japanese firms aimed at producing cheaper and consumer goods of high quality in the United States. Deming considered business organizations as the foundation of societal institutions. He believed that corporations could achieve long-term success only if their leaders focus on and uphold employee contribution to quality. For a company to improve its productivity and efficiency, it must make use of the diverse ideas of its employees (Deming & Edwards).

Deming’s ideas and thoughts have been significant since the 1950s in Japan. However, in the United States, the need to try out on new radical ideas such as that of Deming began as a result of economic influences and not postwar failures. His ideas and thoughts about total quality management have had a significant impact on various companies today. Companies in the fashion industry have also embraced the concept of TQM and incorporated it into their products and services. Such corporations have realized supernormal profits and general business productivity through quality management.

Comparison with others

Apart from Deming, various other people have made significant contributions to the concept of total quality management. Despite that fact, the three most important contributors are those of Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Philip Crosby (Suarez 1992). The quality personalities have inconsistent backgrounds despite the fact that their ideas and thoughts have promoted and emphasized on the need for quality.

Joseph Juran

Juran contributed to total quality management through his literary work, "The Quality Control Handbook." His ideas include management-focused planning, the responsibilities of management towards quality, issues affecting organizations, and the importance of setting targets and goals for continuous quality improvement. His work on the field of quality management emphasized on conducting quality control as the most critical factor to be considered by management control, team. Juran believed that quality is not accidental. According to him, quality planning is an integral part of the organizational quality trilogy which includes quality improvement, quality planning, and quality control. He holds that for a company to attain strategic quality planning; it should select its customers and focus on their needs, measure the quality of products and services, implement and execute a quality process that meets company’s quality goals. It should also produce consistent results that improve its market share and focus on improving its premium prices through minimizing rates of errors in the factory and the office (Juran 1994).

According to Juran, the formula for achieving better quality is setting up of goals and designing plans that can assist the company in meeting those quality objectives. Clear responsibility should also be assigned to meet the set objectives. He also states that rewards must be based on the results achieved. Juran’s quality concept is significant in avoiding today’s most common quality problems that result from poor management and not poor employee performance as perceived by many business organizations within the fashion industry. Companies in the contemporary corporate world must begin their quality improvement training at the senior most level of the organization as it begins with the top management down to the employees.

Philip Crosby

Crosby is one of the most valued contributors to the concept of total quality management. In his book," Quality is Free," Crosby argued that the attention paid to quality and the amount of money spent on improving it tend to bring about more benefits to the company compared to the costs of ignoring quality. Juran and Deming’s philosophies emphasized on quality commitment as a sacrifice. However, Crosby puts extra focus on a more practical method of quality improvement through the assertion that high quality is cheaper and relatively easy to achieve in the long-run. Furthermore, Crosby is the man behind the zero defects program. The program emphasizes on doing things right and a hundred percent recognizable output.

Unlike Juran and Deming, Crosby believes that quality is cost-effective (Suarez 1992). However, just like Juran and Deming, he places the blame for the poor quality of the management other than the organizational employees. Similar to Deming, Crosby also came up with a fourteen point quality program that is more practical other than philosophical. The points provide company’s management with ideas that assist them in managing product quality and organizational productivity.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Deming and the other personalities significantly contributed towards the body of knowledge known as quality management as the primary way of improving organizational performance. Deming’s philosophies on TQM encouraged companies and their management to redesign their quality systems and process to plan, do, check, and act. Like Deming, Juran and Crosby stressed on the need for total quality management. Crosby mainly focused on conformity to set quality standards set up by organizations, which must be in line with the requirements of customers. Total quality management is a concept that should be widely employed by all agencies that aim at improving the quality of their products and services as well as increasing productivity and efficiency.