Ritz Carlton Hotel Company LLC, has, in two occasions, won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award given by the United Stated Department of Commerce due to its consistent and reliable services. The Ritz Carlton makes history by becoming the first company in the hospitality sector to receive the award. Total quality management has ensured the success of the business and has maintained the integrity of the brand (Boersma & Kingma, 2005).
The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company offers approximately 100 hours of training to its employees and encourages them break away from their duties in order to help a guest whenever possible. The employees are empowered to make positive changes using tools such as nine-step quality improvement teams and guest surveys (Sitch, 2013).
The hotel was able to reduce check-in time by fifty percent through the introduction of the front desk project team. A cross functional team was also able to develop a guestroom child safety program to respond to an increase in family travel. The team conducted researches by interviewing guests so as to create effective products that could ensure child safety (Behl & Joshi, 2007).
The hotel engineers developed a system called ‘Clean and Repair Everything’ that allowed them to have the most defect-free and efficient guestrooms in the hotel industry. Housekeeping supervisors managed to streamlined guestroom inspection process that ensured the guestroom was ready for use whenever a client checked in. To maintain a competitive role, the hotel has conducted constant researches with customers in order to improve its services (Sitch, 2013).
Organizational and cultural issues determine the success of total quality management implementation. The company should be able to integrate organizational business approaches and understand the importance of total quality management (Akkermans & Helden, 2002).
References
Akkermans, H., & Helden, V. K. (2002). Vicious and virtuous cycles in erp implementation; a case study of interrelations between critical success factors. European Journal of Information System, 11, pp. 35-46.
Sitch, A. (2013). The Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award. The Ritz Carlton Magazine. Retrieved from http//corporate.ritzcarlton.co/en/press/kits/baldrige.html
Behl, R., & Joshi, H., (2007). Implementing ERP systems in small and medium scale enterprises in india – challenges & prospects. Allied Publishers Pvt. Ltd., p.136-144.
Boersma, K. & Kingma, S. (2005). Developing a cultural perspective on ERP. Business Process Management Journal, 11 (2), pp. 123-136.
