Total Quality Management and Its Aspects - Assignment Example

Total Quality Management: This paper is based on the comprehensive discussion of Total Quality Management (TQM) and almost every aspect of this special type of management, especially how it can be applied at different levels, is meticulously tried to be covered. The overall productivity of any organization depends on properly running management, and TQM is all about improving the quality of management to the point where customer satisfaction is ensured. TQM is the name of a planned approach that is intended to implant necessity of quality in all organizational processes from the core management systems that are focused on achieving various goals and objectives in addition to ensuring customers’ satisfaction to the supplier relationships and motivation needed to maintain rapport between the members of an organization. The bedrock of TQM is based on reducing different errors happening during production process that are capable of tarnishing consumer’s satisfaction. Basically, it illuminates the way to make the idea of customer-defined quality possible, so that the other competitors in the market cannot take advantage of the poor quality. Introducing the concept of quality is not the effort of just one person but, its concept began to form when the competition in the business world became quite fierce and each organization made quality its top priority, and that also gave quality a strategic meaning, with the result that presently TQM is the concept that is broadly used to define quality. The process of TQM can work practically with effective results, only if everybody involved in maintaining the highest quality knows how TQM actually operates. The basic structural plan of TQM is organized by senior management generally and implemented by those who have to cope with the strategies involved in the production area like supervisors and employees. So, almost everybody in an organization at every level is involved in this process. Ensuring that everything is operating well is the core strategy involved in operating TQM intelligently. According to Chryanthou (2010), TQM works well when everything is made to focus on customers’ needs and the type of quality preferred by them is tried to be achieved. Quality errors should be reduced so that the businesses make customers the centre of attention. Agreeing on different plans, all of which focus on customers, is the main way TQM operates successfully. That is because the concept of quality, itself, is centered on truly meeting the expectations of customers. Considering this, it can be said that TQM is broadly a customer-focused concept that should be manipulated to handle the competition in the market. TQM can be distinguished from ordinary or traditional management systems in many ways. Firstly, if the concept of TQM is philosophically studied and deeply scrutinized, it is concluded that it emphasizes on struggling for continuous improvement since it is a philosophy of ceaseless improvement. Ceaseless improvement reflects the ongoing change in the way quality is observed by the customers, and struggled to be incorporated in the products by the management. TQM strongly goes against setting a particular level of achievement, and then directing every effort toward achieving the established standards that are unchangeable. This is because quality is defined by customers, and that is a continuously changing or rapidly reshaping definition. The management system of an organization has to be very flexible in its approach if it wants to meet the customers’ expectations and ensure their satisfaction by offering them the quality in products that they desire. According to Reid & Sanders (2005, p. 147), in stark contrast to the customer focus approach that defines TQM, traditional management models were not that much preoccupied or constantly worried about upgrading the level of quality, instead, they struggled to maintain the same level of quality, once achieved. TQM, on the other hand, stresses on reaching new horizons that target on reducing the number of errors which are a hindrance in the path of quality. Performance can never be made perfect of course, but taking steps to continuously improve it, is all TQM is about. This is understandable that the choice and desire of people can never stay the same forever and no company or business can be distinct in the market if it does not make the choice of the people its number one priority. That is the reason why TQM is considered people-oriented. Seven things lay down the foundation for TQM. These are “customer focus, continuous improvement, employee empowerment, use of quality tools, product design, process management, and managing supplier quality.” (Reid et al. 2005, p.147). Among these, customer focus and continuous improvement in relation to TQM has already been illuminated. Employee empowerment means that each employee working in an organization is given full authority to detect and identify the quality problems. This encouraging attitude makes every employee involved in achieving the quality standard that is preferred publicly. TQM stresses on the importance of rapport and teamwork to achieve various goals and targets and ensure the supply of high quality products. The team approach of TQM stresses on weekly meetings to discuss the quality problems and design plans to deeply analyze them in order to reduce them. Quality tools are meant to raise awareness among employees about the means to achieve quality, since they are heavily involved in maintaining TQM. These include chart diagrams or visual tools that make the employees see a step-by-step production process, so that they can grasp the idea of production in a better way and easily detect the arising problems at different levels. Product design matters a lot when it comes to incorporating quality in a product. Designing a product according to the requirements of customers is never easy, since requirements vary from person to person. Technical aspects of any product are carefully matched with the expectations of customers and then strategies are designed to meet the deficiencies as they originate during this process. Process management deals with identifying the root cause of the quality problems, so that the problems can be eradicated forever. This is a highly reliable tool for quality management. This discussion illuminates all the aspects in which TQM differs from traditional models. Another big difference between TQM and traditional management styles is identified by leanmanufacturingconcepts.com (2008). Their report explains that while TQM is public-oriented, traditional management practices were mainly internally defined. The meaning of quality was not related with the requirements of public and the choice of customers was never the top priority. The standard of quality that was to be maintained in the final products was decided and preferred by the managers of an organization. Quality was not judged by the customers, rather it depended on the workers of the production department, whether they have incorporated hard work and enough hours in manufacturing the products. Organizations did not have to worry about upgrading quality. Thanks to the efforts of many distinguished quality gurus, the concept of quality changed over the years and people began to realize the importance of their own preferences and subtle rejection began to pervade for the quality standard displayed by traditional management practices. Management systems have high level of responsibility when practicing TQM, which is again in contrast to traditional management practices. People used to think earlier that the bad quality products supplied to them was because of the inefficiency of employees, who did not take their work as professionally and seriously as they should, so the final products displayed poor quality. On the other hand, TQM stresses on the involvement of not only employees, but the management systems have even more responsibility for bringing out quality results. “Especially responsibility of the quality goes into the middle level management in the operational level.” (leanmanufacturingconcepts.com, 2008). Now, TQM can be readily applied in health care system and very admiring results can be obtained in this way. Actually, TQM hands over the heaviest duties to the management systems, since they can turn the tables by ensuring the quality output by involving every worker in the system. That is because teamwork is essential for the accurate applicability of TQM principles. If awareness is raised among all the workers who are responsible in some way for creating quality results, miraculous results can be brought in health care system. On the other hand, if traditional management practices are preferred to TQM, patients will always remain unsatisfied because they will never be able to get the kind of treatment they desire, since in traditional management practices, people have to depend on management’s choice. “Traditional management proposes hierarchical and vertical organizational structure whereas in TQM, a flatter organizational structure is adopted.” (Ramachandran, 2010). This is a big difference suggested between TQM and traditional management practices by Ramachandran (2010) with respect to organizational structure. Basically, organizational structure refers to the healthy relationships between different levels of management that collectively encourage the employees to work in harmony and synchronization in order to achieve the goals and objectives. According to Papa (2010), traditional management systems have vertical organizational structure, which has many levels and so the difference between management’s thinking and that of employees enlarges due to which the feedback or response of employees is subjected to minimal importance. Even it is discarded sometimes because the opinion of the management is of utmost importance in vertical organizational structure. The result of continued ignorance shown towards the feedback of employees in traditional management practices is that the devotion of employees starts minimizing gradually and various tasks and objectives are lost during this process, due to which the customers start getting dissatisfied by the faulty results produced. The way employees are encouraged and motivated to detect the quality problems during the production process under the practice of TQM, is not seen in traditional management practices. Flatter organizational structure on the other hand, suggests minimizing the number of levels and all the important decisions related to upgrading the quality and removing the source of errors are taken by considering the open opinions and feedback of the employees as well. Management has to involve the employees in all the decision-making processes. The benefit of such a flatter or horizontal organizational structure is that goals are not lost amidst non-appreciative and degrading attitude displayed by the management systems, rather everyone is motivated to be involved in the production process and identify the obstacles in the path of quality. Again, the applicability of horizontal organizational structure as proposed by TQM can have a huge and positive impact on health care system, since that would mean increased awareness and responsibility on part of each employee to remove the quality problems in the treatment and other facilities offered in any health care setup. TQM does not permanently define the lines of authority for all the management levels, rather everyone is almost equally involved in every decision. It is clear now from the above discussion that TQM is a quality-focused management style and clearly, the role of management under this practice is to evaluate the feedback of every employee in all the management levels, and ensure upgraded quality in the products. The role of upper management is integral in TQM, in motivating the employees and encouraging teamwork for every new production. Now this approach antagonizes the approach focused in traditional management models. According to Kotelnikov (2001), traditional management model is a rigid model and the primary role of management as suggested by such models is to define clear boundaries of authority for various levels of management in the production process. Senior managers are only supposed to strictly supervise junior manager sand other workers and dictate them. No worker can take the liberty of suggesting or doing anything on his/her own, that does not match with the orders of the senior management. Monitoring junior workers is the main job of the management in traditional management models and the people who actually invested their efforts in producing new products have no liberty of suggesting innovative ideas. Goals and objectives also differ in many ways in both TQM and traditional management practices. The main goal of TQM is to motivate the entire workforce in an organization for incorporating quality in all the new products and to relentlessly struggle for ceaseless improvement. The nature and importance of both of these goals have already been discussed before. Viswanathan (2008) concisely identifies some of the main objectives of TQM. According to her, struggling to meet the expectations of the customers is the primary objective of TQM. Every worker’s involvement in decision making for never-ending improvement is the second objective of TQM. Third goal is the development of rapport between employees and managers at every level. The healthy growth of an organization depends on these three objectives heavily. In contrast to this, there is little room for synchronization and teamwork in traditional management models. Segmental division or departmentalization at every level is the main feature of traditional management practices and the only way to achieve goals. According to Giannetto & Zecca (2006), traditional models aim at providing people products with a set standard of quality, but they fail to provide employees with the tools that can help them achieve that aim in a better way. The level of awareness and knowledge between TQM and traditional management models also differs. In traditional models, many goals remain obscured and unidentifiable by the employees because they have not been given the right amount of knowledge to reach to those goals. In contrast, TQM lays stress on involving every worker in an organization to remain updated with the standard of quality. Also, TQM focuses on customer satisfaction, and health care systems practicing TQM have to especially careful about satisfying the needs of the patients, since things can be catastrophic otherwise. “TQM practice encourages companies to review their supply chain and establish long-term relationships with preferred suppliers.” (Kinney & Raiborn, 2008, p. 641). Preferred suppliers are those who play an important role in enhancing quality and meeting with the customers’ requirements, thus satisfying them. Suppliers are seen as an extremely important feature in TQM, who can either enhance or spoil customer satisfaction. Development of tight and reliable bonds of firms with suppliers is a very important feature of the philosophy of TQM. According to Duguay, Landry & Pasin (1997), in contrast, firms may have adversarial or conflict-oriented relationship with the suppliers and so they may be kept at arms length, when practicing traditional management models. TQM is a really broad philosophy and its strategic scheme is not limited to an organization and its workers but, it also involves the suppliers. Many times, TQM fails to be established because firms hesitate to introduce changes in their reward systems. Traditional reward systems don’t focus much on customer satisfaction, but they primarily rely on individual performance. The efficacy of TQM is increased by heavily relying on reward systems, so that it has a bigger impact on organizations’ performances. Nadkarni (2001) has identified the importance of applying TQM in health care systems around the world. According to him, only TQM can appropriately meet with the ever-increasing demands by patients for cost effective and satisfactory care, and increased awareness of a patient’s immediate needs and requirements. Cost control is partly the theme of TQM, which can be very effective in health care. Actually, by reducing the quality errors, cost can also be reduced by getting things right the first time. No revisions in surgeries, bone replacement procedures, and other complex treatments will be required if struggles will be made for achieving quality in the first go. The real advantages of TQM, that can be termed as long-term, take years to be established and short-term benefits on the other hand, can erupt soon enough. Some of the main benefits include higher rate of productivity, cost control, strong rapport between members of all the levels in an organization, and promising commitment shown towards customers. Understandably, productivity automatically increases when the entire workforce struggles to identify the subtle and conspicuous quality errors and struggles to fight against them. Cost is also drastically saved in this way, since too much money does not go wasted for innumerable revisions made in the production process. When desired goals are achieved the first time, money is saved and that can be redirected toward customers by supplying them high quality products. On the other hand, proponents say that the long-term plans and strategies proposed by TQM are the main disadvantages of this management practice, since they restrict the flexible approach of an organization. Plans may take years to be completed and there is always a chance that goals may be forgotten in such a long time. There should be a quick response to the changing trends of quality, not such responses that take years to be easily noticed by the public. Also, when opinions from all the workers are welcomed, bureaucracy can originate because ideas may be rejected or crumbled. Presently, the application of TQM in the modern business environments of Dubai and UAE is also a worth-discussing subject. Talking about the management style of the hugely popular organization TECOM is especially important in this regard. TECOM is a worldwide conglomerate based in Dubai that chose TQM as its management style since the year it was established. The primary objective of TECOM is “Do the right things, right the first time, every time”. (Dubai Media City, 2005). TQM lays the foundation of all the approaches and activities in all aspects of business. This management practice is considered a very effective management tool by TECOM that is readily applicable not only in management sectors, but it can also bring miraculous and positive results in service and public sector organizations, as well. The philosophy of TECOM matches with that of TQM in that both lay stress on the involvement of every level of an organization to ensure that the requirements of customers are taken care of. Obviously, excellence in the management’s performance and quality in the manufacturing procedure are necessary to produce results as desired by customers. According to Dubai Media City (2005), excellence is the extract of management philosophy that is proposed by TQM. Various business organizations in Dubai and UAE are increasingly seeking to combine together all organizational levels like management, finance, product design, marketing, and customer service to focus on organizational objectives like customer satisfaction through a frame work of quality factors. References: Chryanthou, C. (2010). The pros and cons of Total Quality Management (TQM). Retrieved from http://www.helium.com/items/1299508-the-pros-and-cons-of-total-quality-management-tqm. Dubai Media City. (2005). TECOM’s move towards Excellence & care for Business Partners. Retrieved from http://www.dmc-communityguide.com/dmc/quality_and_customer_satisfaction/ Duguay, C. R., Landry, S., & Pasin, F. (1997). From mass production to flexible/agile production. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 17, 1183 – 1195. Giannetto, D. F. & Zecca, A. (2006). The Performance Power Grid: The Proven Method to Create and Sustain Superior Organizational Performance. Illustrated. John Wiley and Sons. Kinney, M. R. & Raiborn, C. A. (2008). Cost Accounting: Foundations and Evolutions. (7th ed.). Cengage Learning Publisher. Kotelnikov, V. (2001). Traditional Management Model. Retrieved from http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/mgmt_traditional-model.html Leanmanufacturingconcepts.com. (2008). Total quality management vs. traditional management style. Retrieved from http://www.leanmanufacturingconcepts.com/TQMVsTraditionalManagementStyle.htm Nadkarni, H. (2001). Managing the quality in healthcare industry. Retrieved from http://www.expresshealthcaremgmt.com/20010815/tqm.htm Papa, N. (2010). Difference Between Organizational Structure and Design. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/about_6702475_difference-between-organizational-structure-design.html Ramachandran, V. (2010). Total Quality Management in Construction. Retrieved from http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/86518.aspx. Reid, R. D., & Sanders, N. R. (2005). Operations management: an integrated approach. (2nd ed.). John Wiley Publishers. Viswanathan, G. (2008). Total Quality Management. Retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?Total-Quality-Management&id=1092615 Read More