TQM in SABIC and KSU

by

Acknowledgement

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible .

DECLARATION

I, [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University .

Signed __________________ Date _________________

Chapter One :Introduction

Total quality management (TQM) is an influential philosophy of management, but it is also a hodgepodge of ideas and practices meant to help organizations function more effectively. While there is reasonable agreement about what TQM includes—customer satisfaction, quality as a strategic concern, systematic measurement, continuous improvement, and teambased organization—there is no single TQM school. The ideas that make up TQM were developed and popularized by a number of scholars, practitioners, and consultants, most prominently W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993), a professor of statistics and quality control at New York University whose “fourteen points” are akin to the Ten Commandments of the quality approach. The term TQM itself took hold in the 1980s, the best-known in a series of labels (among them statistical process control, companywide quality control, total quality control, Six Sigma, and the Baldrige model) going back to the 1930s in the United States and the 1950s in Japan. Different thinkers and organizations emphasize different aspects of the TQM amalgam—from those who stress precise and systematic measurement (with its image of top-down control) to those who stress motivation and empowerment (with its image of workplace democracy). These different perspectives have sharply contrasting implications for leadership. But the many flavors of TQM share a simple premise: In a market economy, organizations must satisfy their customers or lose them to competitors.

History

TQM was born in the 1930s, with the application of statistical methods to the measurement of work tasks. The rigorous study of work calls to mind the inventor and engineer Frederick Taylor's notions of scientific management in the first decades of the twentieth century, but in the 1930s statisticians like Walter Shewhart developed more sophisticated ways of measuring work, using statistical control to measure the variation in any task or output (for instance, the number of errors in fabricating a thousand telephone receivers). Shewhart devised techniques to calculate acceptable numerical limits for any given task, allowing researchers and managers to pinpoint problem areas and explore possible causes in poor work design, materials, training, or other factors. During the 1940s, Deming began to apply Shewhart's methods (for instance, in the design of the 1940 federal census), but the United States' unrivalled postwar dominance meant that few U.S. business leaders felt any impetus to adopt or even learn such seemingly arcane statistical techniques.

Deming's ideas, however (and those of likeminded thinkers such as Joseph Juran) found fertile ground in Japan, which had been devastated by the war. In 1950, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers established the Deming Prize, ...