A new type of structure is being used in many organizations today. That structure is labeled Total Quality Management (TQM). This approach involves guaranteeing that an organization functions with a commitment to quality and continuous improvement in meeting its consumers needs. With any type of change there will always be a number of bumps in the road which slow down the process that can help a company increase the workers morale, production, profits and over all positive environment to conduct business. The pressures of the cutthroat market place has pushed companies backs against a wall and to compete on a global scale new ideas have to be explored. The purpose of a TQM program is to amplify the effectiveness of the organization.
During an age of downsizing and restructuring, many American companies are determining that they must learn to manage more effectively. The management is running on an older system, which adds to workers that call out more sick days and abuse the companies production procedure. Organizational problems decoding means that all members of an organization participate in cultivating a vision and improving the corporate cultures. In any change program you must comprehend where you are before you can chart a course of where you want to be. Therefore, before executing TQM, or another program it is important to add the total value of the organization in terms of its current quality or performance class and to define the level of performance or quality you wish to achieve. One will never achieve total output for any given input, but with simple steps that can add dollars to the bottom line with an increase of production one can get close.
Organization diagnose contributes information which allows a faster reacting organization to emerge, one which can deal proactively with changing emphases. Organization examination is often mentioned as the most critical element in the TQM process. With this technique utilized a company can measure all aspects of its output in relation to the mass input. These all include external and internal inputs from the accountant to the delivery truck driver. All members and service providers must be looked at so as to acquire a complete overall view of the performance of the given organization.
The steps that a company takes towards Total Quality Management in the beginning only adds the real value of having such a new system in place. Organizations are transforming and will continue to do so in order to survive in this complex environment. Because change is occurring so rapidly, there is necessity for new ways to manage focusing on product quality and individual involvement. TQM is a type of an approach to managing work focusing on the evaluation of industry processes. The development of a quality energized culture and the empowerment of employees, for this purpose of continuous improvement of products and philanthropies. Since TQM is a powerful new management technique requiring absolute employee participation, the first step is a climatic change in corporate culture.
Any successful adjustment in corporate culture will depend upon the active consultation and involvement of the management team. An important component in developing a high performance organization is the identification of areas for improvement or concerns. Total quality management has been defined as the guidance of activities involving improving the quality of the organizations product or service. TQM involves moving toward collective excellence by integrating the desires of individuals for growth and development with organizational goals. TQM is a philosophy and a set of guiding standards for continuous improvement.
TQM applies human resources and analytical tools into management efforts, by providing planned, efficient approaches to improving the total organization, so that it is more customer oriented, quality conscious, adjustable and attentive. Total quality management has become a cardinal concern of management. Much of this attention was initially focused on the auto establishments, which experienced declining sales and increasing product disappointments. Companies in numerous other industries also became concerned. Some of these ideas were originally explored in this country in the 80s due to deficient sales and decrease in market share. Both of these can denote death for even considerably large companies like General Motors.
It was GM that characterized a major role in introducing TQM here with the Saturn car. GM decided that since they might lose some valuable market shares due to expansion in Japanese car sale, that they should study the extraordinary way that this old world culture seemed to put quality autos on the market. GM found that the Japanese had less middle management and more teams of employees that were self-governed. The teams were responsible for the perfection of the products that were made, instead of having quality control inspectors.
The teams were given the authority to hire and fire its members. With this innovative knowledge, GM tried an experiment for GM to use and harvest some of the inspirations so as to enhance its other factories. Thus, the total quality management system was subsequently made mainstream with it creeping into all types of organizations. There are several widely recognized key characteristics of TQM systems.
First for a system to be TQM it has to be organization wide. Which determines that the production line is a natural and obvious place to increase quality but it also takes place in all areas of the business. This includes the superior CEO to the mailroom clerk. Second, the top managers must visibly adhere the new TQM control system. If any of the workers were to contemplate that the upper management was not taking the new guidelines seriously then you are more inclined to have chaos.
To help stop people from causing too many problems, a simple type of reward system is put in place to recognize team associates and for the insurance that there will be continued support. Third, everyone in the organization has a customer, which could be the adjacent guy on the production line or remote to the organization. This is a crafty way to get the personnel enthusiastic about pleasing the guidelines of the company. Forth, doing the job expectations right the first time is important.
Instead of relying on product inspection, the employee should be responsible for the quality of the product that is conceived. Finally, the most important aspect for an organization is to let the team members know that each one of them is respected and valued. This again goes for the entire chain, from the internal employees to the external vendors and suppliers. More and more organizations are concluding that employees are no longer satisfied with simply filling a slot in the organization chart. Everyone in the organization has a voice and is allowed to speak on all issues.
Todays managers are being challenged to provide leadership in new and changing environments. Customers, competitors, employees, and stockholders are all placing anxieties on management for innovation and change at a rapid pace. Change is a scorning process. Every organization exists in an endless state of adapting to change. External competitive forces usually cause downsizing changes, whereas other changes to work operations emerge as a result of shifting forces within the organization. Many management theorists feel that authoritarian or political forces, adapting to this increasing rate of change and therefore become reactive organizations reacting drastically after problems come to light.
The GM company for example, continues to focus on quality, cycle time reduction, and teamwork in a change process that most companies can only try to emulate. Ten years after initiating a quality change program, TQM is still being used to improve the company. The Saturn car company is a continued success in the auto industry. It should be noted that Saturn has yet to pull in an over all profit, but the high sales has GM looking at the car company in hindsight. GM has taken what it has learned from Saturn and applied it to the other lines of cars. How can you measure the value of such information’so because of this new approach the TQM company lives on as a modern day experiment, which by todays terms is not so experimental.
GM strategy to meet these changing forces is termed Total Quality Management (TQM). Total Quality Management may be defined as an organizational strategy of commitment to improving customer satisfaction by developing techniques to carefully administer output quality. TQM is not so much a special technique, as it is an aspect of a reinvented corporate culture with a healthy commitment to improving quality in all organizational approaches. Bibliography:BibliographyBeecroft, GD (1999) The role of quality in strategic management Decisions, v37 i6Heapy, MS. And Gruska, GF. (1995) The Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award- A Yardstick for Quality Growth Addison Wesley Publishing Company Kuger, V.
(1999) Towards a European definition of TQM- a historical review The TQM Magazine v11 n4 p257Marsh, J. (1996) The Quality Toolkit- a practical resource for making TQM happenwww.GM.com
