Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total quality management as a long term approach to management focuses on continuous customer satisfaction and organizational improvement. It aims at using efficient plans and communication to assimilate high quality levels into organizational culture. There are fourteen principles that were proposed by Deming which can be applied by organizations seeking to improve quality and productivity. The first involves continued improvement. This entails making quality improvement a long term objective. Additionally, organizations can apply principles such as adopting new philosophies, avoidance of inspection dependence and using single suppliers. Inspections are unreliable as a source of information, while single suppliers help organizations to attain consistency and subsequently to help in the improvement process. Firms that are forever improving are also predicted to have greater productivity and quality (Zairi, 2013). On-job training, fear elimination and embracing leadership are other principles to be applied in organizations.
Apart from these, Deming also proposes the breakage of barriers through formulation of common visions and interdepartmental collaboration as essential in improvement. Having clear and straight objectives instead of slogans can also help organizations as elimination of numerical objectives does. Additionally, organizations should avoid merit systems which make individuals pride in their work and instead adopt self improvement programs while making employees to work towards common goals. The application of TQM involves consideration of both employees and customers. In any organization, customers are considered the key stakeholders while employees are considered to contribute to firm benefit (Waheed et al., 2013). Maintaining well motivated employees can improve productivity and thus help to deliver the expectations at the end of the workday. Total product improvement results from systematic evaluation of the work processes, constant efforts to meet requirements and the responsibilities of the top management.
References
Waheed, U, W. Ronald, H, & Ralph, H., 2013. Part 3: Concepts of Total Quality Management. McGraw-Hill Professional.
Zairi, M., 2013. ‘The TQM legacy – Gurus’ contributions and theoretical impact’. TQM Journal, 25, 6.
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