Total Quality Management (TQM) is a comprehensive business strategy that is becoming popular among businesses today. There are two things that set it apart from the traditional model of management. This model focuses more on the customers, and it makes its decision based on solid facts and evidences . Compare to the traditional model, TQM goes over and beyond quality assurance and quality control. Since the focus of this strategy is the customers, TQM is market driven. It involves all the stakeholders of the organization beginning from its own workforce to the suppliers, the distributors, the investors and the customers .
The concern of TQM is to identify the needs of the customers and work towards satisfying that needs. However, this model states that working towards this objective is not only limited to the management team. It is a collective effort of everyone involved in the whole business process. This includes all the employees working for the organization, the suppliers who provide the raw materials, the distributors deliver the items to the customers, the investors who provide the financial machinations, and even the customers who provide the organization with the needed feedback. The condition is to monitor the operation and improve whatever is necessary.
There are several contributors to the constant improvement of the Total Quality Management model. Among those would include Philip Crosby, Joseph Juran, and Shigeo Shingo. Each of them provided a thorough explanation of what TQM is all about and how it could work for organizations. For Phil Crosby, TQM is a technical function that needs to be explained to the management if only to arrive at a standard definition or order of things. Thus, Crosby believes that problems are most likely to arise if: (1) people within the organization do not have the proper knowledge about the details of the job or the operation, and (2) if the people conducting the business would not monitor the operations . For Crosby, anyone who is engaged into the business should have the proper knowledge and so have the right attitude inorder to success.
Joseph Juran has a different approach. Juran recognizes individual differences, therefore, suggesting that no two organizations have the same needs. He asserts that there could never be uniformities among business organizations and suggest that uniqueness is an inherent characteristic of an organization . Juran made this claim because according to him organization varies in functions, levels and product lines. Thus, he said that must companies find a universal thought process that would fit all these differences together.
Shigeo Shingo developed the Poka-Yoke and the source inspection system . According to Shingo, the poka-yoke is an approach that would deter an individual from committing common mistakes simply through the process of mistake proofing . For example, An organization should keep and store a soft copy of all important documents. Therefore, to achieve quality there is a necessity to assure that all information are retrievable, and the common mistakes can be averted.
Overall, this gives the distinction that total quality management is encompassing because it covers every aspect of business operation. However, product quality is limited only to a particular unit in which the objective is simply to establish control. No room for improvement is open or available for product quality.
Work Cited
Hoyle, David. Quality Management Essentials. Oxford, United Kingdom: Butterworth-Heinemann Publishing, 2007.
Pfeifer, Tilo. Quality Management: Strategies, Methods, Techniques. Munich, Germany: Carl Hanser Verlag Publishing, 2002.
