Introduction
The strategy of quality management is the key survival challenge for businesses in 21th century. The phenomenon of total quality management as competitive advantage and added to the discipline that many elements of the total quality management can play a vital role in creating competitive advantage for a business. Proactive businesses understanding the need of quality management in current competitive landscape are employing greater tactics to avail the benefits of quality management as survival strategy.
Some of the early practitioners of the concept have not only enjoying the sustainable growth due to cautious focus to the quality measures but also left the landmarks as the developed guiding tools for businesses to manage quality. Among them one of the leading business group, who is cautiously practicing quality measures is Procter and Gamble. The company’s vision and purpose is highly aligned with the philosophy of delivering superior quality to create greater value for consumers (P&G, 2014a). The document presented below is an effort “to explore and elaborate the quality management practices of the Procter and Gamble”.
Quality Management Strategy in P&G
Procter and Gamble is the leading global consumer good business entity, which was initiated in 1837 by two partners Williams Procter and James Gamble. The company is one of the remaining Successful handful businesses of early 18th century. With the life of almost 175 years, the company is still leading the universe of consumer goods due is focused approach to make changes in human life by offering greater value in terms of leadership, trust and quality (P&G, 2014b). The approach is aligned with the vision-based principal of total quality management approach which suggests that vision possesses a directional importance to the success of organization and defines organizations’ focus towards quality management (Sallis, 2014).
Scanning the strategic statements of the company, the focused approach towards quality maintenance and emphasize on quality measures to produce greater value can be sensed significantly. The measure of quality is not only proclaimed by the company but also practiced by continuously improving defined set of practices. For the purpose of translucent adherence among overall business cycle, the company’s policy defines the involvement of quality measures in each and every element of the company’s conduct including products to processes and consumers to people of organization. Below presented is the core strength definition circle of the company.
(P&G, 2014c)
The core strengths company defines implies the company is practicing the total quality management approach to maintain its business which highly directed towards the disciplinary philosophy of total quality management. According to Yusof, & Aspinwall, (2000) quality is either not only about the generic inspection practices during manufacturing or not only about the technical discrepancies and design measures. Rather, it is about the total approach that is adopted by businesses to compete in the market with quality delivery of benefits.
Additionally, Sallis (2014) highlighted that total quality management refers to the management philosophy of emphasizing on continuous improvement via variety of internal and external activities. The key practices of quality management include design and redesign products, control and monitor processes, costs improvements, solution to consumers’ requirements and effective team building (Sallis¸2014). Above depicted company’s strength cycle simply elaborates the matter of fact that company’s conduct is highly in alignment with the core total quality management principles and philosophies.
P&G’s TQM Practices
In accordance with the strengths model of the company presented above, below elaborated are the key practices that company undertakes to employ quality management tactics in the business. As reported, company highly invest in the research and knowledge collection about it consumers base with the purpose of understanding consumers requirements. The indication is towards the customer-focused principle and customer-driven excellence philosophy of TQM discipline (Oakland, 2014).
Secondly, claiming to be innovation leaders, company focuses on continuous innovation in terms of designing and redesigning products. The company maintained that innovation investment of the company is around two times higher than of its competitors. Investing in continuous innovation is another important measure of the principles of TQM which implies the continuous improvement strategies of businesses in which philosophy of remain room of improvement is highly focused by the company (Goetsch, & Davis, 2014). Organizational and personal learning as well as managing for innovation are the philosophies that are underlying in taking that measure.
Company claims to achieve higher revenues from innovative new products this implies that quality is the measure of increasing performance drivers including profitability of a firm. In addition to that brand-building the integrated part of the system which is the outcome of collective philosophical measures of the total quality management. Company always innovates to lead the market via different benefit-oriented brands which imply the focused approach of achieving end-results by creating value.
Company practices “Go-to-the market” activities in order to research and learn about the market trends, needs and requirements. Employing management by fact philosophy of TQM, company employs data based analysis to approach to a right solution for any of the underlying matter. Finally, company integrates entity by practicing proclaimed scale measures and maintains that they value individuality but unity. This can be elaborate further as company values unanimity of the entity for the purpose of creating value while also values the individual potential of the units to allocate business resources.
TQM Techniques and Tools Practiced by Procter and Gamble
According to Kanji, & Asher, (1993) company recognized the need of quality management practices for the purpose of sustainability and initiated to practice the concept lies in the total quality management discipline. The author maintains that the adaptation of quality management by the company was highly appreciated and accepted by the managers of the company and CEO of that time maintained that quality management is now the part of our long-term strategy. The CEO proclaimed that “Benchmarking” consumers and customers satisfaction is one of the adopted TQM techniques. Jha and Joshi (2007) maintained that benchmarking is an external tool of TQM which refers to replicate the best customer satisfaction practices.
For the purpose of implementation of TQM practices by employing effective tools, Procter and Gamble undertook a four stage process. Five major elements of the process was to intended strategic moves, 3 years short term targets, annual millstones achievement plans, managerial reviews and results. The program was deployed with the lucid view of leadership thus there are evidences that company is practicing quality building through leadership.
Focusing on individual strategic business units, the TQM strategy implementation was done. for instance, Kanji discussed the success of Soap division in the implementation of TQM strategy. the 3-stage process including long-term vision, strategic developments and deployment. With the measurement criteria for goals and competitive edge achievement as well as managing reviews were the element of deployment strategy. The discussed was the beginning of the Procter and Gamble to getting into the game of TQM. Afterwards, the systems are continuously improving by adopting many of the strategic tools and techniques of TQM.
In addition to that reviewing the current status of company’s policies, the value of quality in the integrated set of activities can be highly observed. The description of ethical measures of the company according to the roadmap given strengthen the sense of company’s practice about quality management.
(P&G, 2009)
The blue, orange and purple elements highly proclaim the delivery of high quality to the customer while the left one are deeply related to the quality maintenance substances including control and management. The diagram presented above and the strengths definition circle is the outcome of practicing “Field-force analysis” technique of the company. The broader review of the policy description of the company highly emphasizes on the quality management techniques including tangible measures like product, packaging, design and control as well as intangible measures including leadership, innovation, and team and consumer value.
The company highly values its quality management practices as a team effort. For the purpose, company always practices integration of functions. For instance, company reveals and accepted that matter of fact that only internal research is not only increasing the costs of the company but limiting the scope internally thus bold decision of internal and external research was integrated to the system with the TQM concepts of learning organization (Huston, n.d.). Further, CISCO reports the adoptability of the P&G towards new practices to bond the global units and maintain the quality management standards.
As reported, the company was facing management issues in the connectedness and communication regard with the international business units. Considering the lack as reported below company initiated a CISCO ERP system implementation and resulted in the achievement of many TQM goals. Further, the achievement of connectedness for the purpose of innovation and empowerment of employees as well as reduction of complexity also addressed efficiency and cost-effectiveness measures of TQM practices. Below depicted is summary of discussed CISCO implementation.
(CISCO¸ 2010)
Reviewing the strategic practices, it can be inferred that company is utilizing a comprehensive amalgam of many TQM philosophies, principles, techniques and tools. In alignment with that sustainability report 2014 demonstrates the product life-cycle view of the company and depicted that phases that are highlighting the inheritance of TQM processes of building life –cycle diagrams for the purpose defining whole process. On e of the product life-cycle defined with the presence of quality management measures is depicted below:
(P&G, 2014d)
As depicted the diagram if assessed on the technical criteria of the TQM practices can be considered as the whole strategic total quality management process of a company which starts from design considering quality elements and ends to the measurement criteria via impact on society. All the approaches discussed above demonstrate the alignment of processes and practices with TQM standards.
Total Quality Management and Six Sigma Criteria
The element of the process is highly aligned with practices of the company depicted above. As reported, company is highly focused to deliver quality value to its customers. For the purpose, company is practicing continuous planning and many of the future goals are presented in the sustainability reports of the company with the vision of gaining value by creating value to the customers (P&G, 2014d). further, company’s actions depicted in the policy document are demonstrating the practices of the company for management and improvement. Finally, the total participation is valued by the company for collaboration of business as well as for the purpose of innovation and reduction of complexity communication barriers as depicted by the action of implementing global ERP system.
In addition to that, below presented is the generic six sigma process that is considered as a widely accepted effective tool of total quality management practices.
(Oakland, 2014)
The generic model depicts the flow of practices that a company undertakes while practice total quality management for competitive survival. Above explained actions of the company are aligned with the practices mentioned in the model. As reported above, company invests around twice on consumer research and practices both internal and external research to define products and innovations for the company in terms of gathered consumer knowledge.
Secondly, company is in the phase of continuous operational improvements. As reported in the above product life-cycle of Pampers as well as explained by the company, the company investigates and develop measures to improve production and manufacturing procedures (P&G, 2014d) thus practicing three middle phases of the six sigma model. Finally, company has controlling measures as depicted by their “policy map” presented above. Further, the policy description document implies company practice strict performance and governance measures to control the process for the purpose of authenticity and effectiveness. Compliance with government measures, authenticity of reporting, obligations to timely feedback and strict standards of environmental, product and social measures are the tools of company to define controlling guidelines of the company (P&G, 2009).
Conclusion
The document presented above is aimed to explore and elaborate the total quality management practices of Procter and Gamble. The literary evidences presented in the paper suggested that quality is not of the more traditional inspection or manufacturing technical term. Instead, in modern scenario it refers to the management of quality of business by embedding whole process under the head of qualitative total quality management discipline.
Total quality management refers to the general strategic and operation practices of a company in a broader sense. General principles and philosophies of the subject undertake the measures of a business from vision to accomplishment of goals and stakeholders to delivery of quality value. Further, there are variety of techniques and technical tools that are utilized by the companies to define quality standards and practice procedures in a sequential manner.
Finally, assessment of the paper revealed that world’s largest portfolio based company is involved in total quality management practices since 1983 by initiating a four-stage program. Afterwards the improvement in the TQM system is highly practiced by the company to remain profitably competitive in the market. The company manages to collaborate the global operations by implementing ERP system which further strengthens the company’s quality management procedures by eliminating complexities. Further, assessment of quality management of the company on generic criteria reveals that practices of the company are highly aligned with the elements and procedures of generic total quality management practices.
References
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