TQM
TQM
DEFINITION:
Total Quality Management (TQM) is an enhancement to the traditional way of doing
business. It is a proven technique to guarantee survival in world-class competition. Only
by changing the actions of management will the culture and actions of an entire organization
be transformed. TQM is for the most part common sense. Analyzing these words.
Total — made up of the whole
Quality — Degree of Excellence a Product or Service provides
Management — Act, art or manner of handling, controlling, directing etc.
TQM CONCEPTS:
The above principles are bandied freely around in the above discussion. Its worth
dwelling with each for a moment.
Be customer–focused means everything you do will be done by placing the customer
in the centre. The company should regularly check customer’s attitudes. This will include the external and internal customer concept.
Do it right first time so that there is no rework. This essentially means cutting down
on the amount of defective work.
Constantly improve, this allows the company gradually to get better. One of the
axioms use by TQM people is ‘‘A 5% improvement in 100% of the areas is easier than a
100% improvement in 5% of the areas.
Quality is an attitude The attidue is what differentiates between excellence and
mediocracy. Therefore it’s very important to change the attitude of the entire workforce
i.e., basically the way the company works company’s work culture.
Telling the staff what is going on means keeping the entire workforce informed
about he general direction the company is headed in typically this includes them briefings,one of the main elements to TQM.
Training and education of the workforce is a vital ingredient, as untrained staff tend
to commit mistakes. Enlarging the skill base of the staff essentially makes them do a wider range of jobs and do them better. In the new system of working under TQM educating the staff is one of the principles.
Measurement of work allows the company to make decisions based on facts, it also
helps them to maintain standards and keep processes with in the agreed tolerance levels.
The involvement of senior management is essential. The lack of which will cause the
TQM program to fail.
Getting employees to make decision on the spot so that the customer does not face
any inconvenience in empowering the employees.
Mailing it a good place to work. In many an organisation there exists a lot of fear in
the staff. The fear of the boss, fear of mistakes of being sacked. TQM program is any
company filled with fear cannot work, therefore fear has to be driven out of the company before starting of TQM program.
Introduce team working, its boosts employee morale. It also reduces conflict among
the staff. It reduces the role of authority and responsibility, and it provides better more
balanced solutions. In a lot of companies teamwork is discouraged, so TQM programs
must encourage it.
Organise by process, not by function. This concentrates on getting the product to
the customer by reducing the barriers between the different departments.
BASIC APPROACH
TQM requires six basic concepts :
1. A committed and involved management to provide long-term top-to-bottom organizational support.
2. An unwavering focus on the customer, both internally and externally.
3. Effective involvement and utilization of the entire work force.
4. Continuous improvement of the business and production process.
5. Treating suppliers as partners.
6. Establish performance measures for the processes.
There concepts outline an Excellent way to run an organization. A brief paragraph
on each of them is given here.
1. Management must participate in the quality program. A quality council must be
established to develop a clear vision, set long-term goals and direct the program. Managers participate on quality improvement teams and also as coaches to other teams. TQM is a continual activity that must be entrenched in the culture it is not just a one-shot program. TQM must be communicated to all people.
2. The key to an effective TQM program is its focus on the customer. An excellent
place to start is by satisfying internal customers. We must listen to the ‘‘Voice of the
customer’’ and emphasize design quality and defect prevention.
3. TQM is an organization–wide challenge that is everyone’s responsibility. All
personnel must be trained in TQM, statistical process control (SPC) and other appropriate quality improvement skills so they can effectively participate on project teams. People must come to work not only to do their jobs, but also to think about how to improve their jobs, people must be empowered at the lowest possible level to perform processes in an optimum manner.
4. There must be a continue striving to improve all business and production processes.
Quality improvement projects, such as on-time delivery, order-entry efficiency, billing
error rate, customer satisfaction, cycle time, scrap reduction and supplier management
are good places to begin.
5. On the average 40% of the sales is purchased product or service, therefore, the
supplier quality must be outstanding. The focus should be on quality and life cycle costs rather than price. Suppliers should be few in number so that true partnering can occur.
6. Performance measures such as uptime, percent non-conforming, absentecism
and customer satisfaction should be determined for each functional area.
Quantitative data are necessary to measure the continuous quality improvement
activity.
