Quality Management

Quality Management

Quality Management

Introduction

Quality Management (TQM) is an organizational process that actively involves every function and every employee in satisfying customer's needs, both internal and external. TQM works by continuously improving all aspect of work through structured control, improvement and planning activities that are carried out in concern with guiding ideology that focuses on Quality and Customer Satisfaction as the top priorities (Burrill & Ledolter, 1999). The purpose of this paper is to research three separate organizations representing three different economic sectors, and provide a description of the need for customer driven Quality in each organization. Additionally, construct a comparison matrix outlining the differences between the strategic roles of Quality Management (TQM) within each of the organizations/sectors.

Defining TQ

Quality management (TQ) is engaging all the members of an organization in an attempt to continuously enhance product and or service Quality to attain customer satisfaction. Quality can be defined as meeting or exceeding customer expectations. To succeed in this endeavor, these customer expectations must first be identified. Then, services or products must be developed to meet customer needs; processes for creating the services or products right the first time are designed, results are assessed, and these concepts are extended to suppliers and distributors. One company that has successfully implemented TQ and established itself as an industry leader (Melynyk, 2005).

Benefits

Improved customer satisfaction and product Quality

Increased production throughput

Improved communications within the company

Reduced operating costs

Decreased scrap and rework defects

Discussion

Quality management is a philosophy that makes Quality values the driving force behind leadership, design, planning, and improvement initiatives. It is the belief that for a company to have long-term financial success they must produce Quality products that the consumer will keep coming back to purchase. This philosophy first became popular to the American society when companies began to notice how much it was working for the Japanese. In Japan Quality has always triumphed over quantity (Heller, 2006).

Because of this the Japanese manufacturers began taking a lot of the American market in the automobile industry and also the electronic industry. American companies took a look at how much business they were loosing and decided things needed to change. This is when companies first started to implement the Quality management philosophy. An American named W. Edwards Demming pioneered Quality Management, commonly referred to as TQ. It is an integrated management system for enabling organizations to apply Quality throughout everything they do. TQ focuses on building Quality into all activities, products and services that the organization is involved with through the participation of all levels and functions of the organization. And challenging conventional wisdom, it emphasizes continually improving things that aren't yet broken. Some key elements of TQ include a strong customer focus, top management commitment, performance measurement and reporting systems, systems and process orientation, employee involvement and a proactive, long-term perspective (Heller, 2006).

The benefits of TQ Businesses have realized significant benefits by adopting some or all elements of TQ. Proven benefits include improvements in customer satisfaction and retention, ...