Eurasia International’s continued commitment to excellence is to pursue total quality management (TQM). Through the establishment of TQM processes within the organization and the International Ship Managers’ Association or the ISMA , Eurasia can clearly establish its target objectives and the corresponding steps to achieve those objectives.
The ISMA aims to provide quality standards that the shipping industry can benchmark on and follow. However, it could be developed to serve as the shipping industry’s equivalent of the ISO , offering both clients and members with standards to follow or benchmark all shipping operators. It could even evolve to become an accrediting organization whose seal of approval would indicate to customers that a particular ship has conformed to the minimum acceptable standards of quality, sea worthiness and efficiency. It will also document industry practices and thus provide with materials that any member could use and follow to meet such standards.
TQM is a practice developed by Japanese manufacturing companies. The concept became popular in the 1980s. A key component of TQM is employee empowerment and involvement. Workers in various stages of the manufacturing process contribute to the development of standards and modifying processes. They volunteer information and discuss problems and ideas that they have found effective in the work place. They share it with others and a quality management team explores these ideas and determine which ones are the best practices, document these and develop manuals.
Training is an important component of TQM. Eurasia aims to find and train seamen with leadership potential. This is certainly important. At the same, Eurasia may want to consider finding people who can be trained to continually observe processes, take note and document observations, and find ways to improve existing systems. Eurasia should find people who can develop to be continually give feedback even without being asked to. After all, TQM seems to be system reliant on the low-level workers involved in the processes as much as those in supervisory or leadership position.
Works Cited
Hoosain, Amir and Ali Farhoomand. "Eurasia International: Total Quality Management in the Shipping Industry." SME Case series 23 July 2004. PDF.
ISO. "How Does ISO Develop Standards?" 2015. ISO. Web. 1 Feb 2015. <http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards_development.htm>.
Quality Management System Education and Resources. "The Histroy of Quality Management." 2015. Quality Management System. Web. 2 Feb 2015. <http://qualitymanagementsystem.com/total-quality-management/the-history-of-quality-management/>.
