What Is Total Quality Management

>

Total quality management is a management system for a customer focused organization that involves all employee in continual improvement of all aspects of the organization.

Total quality management concepts is an integrative system that use strategy , data , and effective communication to integrate the quality principles into the culture and activities of the organization.

Principles of  TQM

 

1- Be Customer focused :

what ever you do for quality improvement , remember that ONLY customers determine the level of quality , what ever you do to foster quality improvement , training employees , integrating quality into processes management , ONLY customers determine whether your effort were worthwhile.

2-Insure Total Employee Involvement :

This done after you remove fear from work place , then empower employee ... you provide the proper environment.

3- Process Centered :

fundamental part of TQM is to focus on Process thinking.

4- Integrated system :

All employee must know business mission and vision , must monitor the process .an integrated business system may be modeled by MBNQA or ISO 9000.

5- Strategic and systematic approach :

Strategic plan must integrate quality as core component.

6-  Continual Improvement :

using analytical and creative thinking in finding ways to become more effective.

7- Fact Based Decision Making :

decision making must be ONLY on data , not personal thinking or situational .

8-  Communication :

communication strategy , method and timeliness must be well defined.

TQM Implementation Approaches

No one solution is effective for planning and implementing TQM concepts in all situations.

Following are generic models for implementing Total quality management Theory :

1- Train top management on TQM principles .

2- Assess the current : Culture , customer satisfaction , quality management system.

3- Top management determine the core values and principles to be used and communicate them.

4- Develop TQM master plan based on steps 1,2,3.

5- Identify and prioritize customer needs and determine products or service to meet those needs .

6- Determine the critical processes to produce those products or services.

7- Create process improvement teams.

8- Managers should support effort by planning , training , time .... to the teams.

9- Integrate changes for improvement in daily process management and standardizations take place.

10- Evaluate progress against plan ( step 8 )and adjust as needed .

11- constant employee awareness and feedback on status are provided and a reward/ recognition process is established.

Strategies to develop TQM

1-TQM elements approach:

Take key business process and use TQM Tools to foster improvement.

e.g. : quality circles , statistical process control , taguchi method , quality function deployment.

2 - The guru approach :

using the guides of one of the leading quality thinker .

3- Organization model approach :

the organization use Benchmarking or MBNQA as model for excellence.

4- Japanese total quality approach :

companies want to get deming prize use deming principles.

To stay up date with total quality management