Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management (TQM) gained attention as a response to quality challenges in manufacturing. Total quality management can be defined as creating and implementing organizational processes that motivate, support, and enable quality management in all the activities of the organization. In TQM, processes are systematically measured using statistical techniques, called statistical process control (SPC), to chart the accuracy and productivity of each process.

TQM requires a cultural shift in many organizations to consider the impact of every process on customer quality, with every employee taking ownership and responsibility for quality. Identify customers and what they value at all levels. The top management team must support the quality effort in the organization and should meet regularly with top and potential customers to assess the organization’s products and services. Identify products and services provided. Customers should be asked which products or services they value, how they use those products or services, and what improvements would make the product or service even more valuable.

Flowchart techniques are used to document the actual process in use today, with all its flaws. Employee teams can document processes and point to common problems or errors in the process. Simplify the process. Like quality circles, unnecessary process activities can be combined with others or eliminated to streamline the number of steps required. Continuously improve. SPC charts show the standard variations in the process so that when a process exceeds these levels, action can be taken to understand and correct where errors are occurring.

Management must rely on data (such as quantitative charts) to make decisions rather than making decisions on a hunch or best guess. Critics of TQM point to its high failure rate and presumptive packaging as an employee involvement strategy masking a mechanism for management control through statistics. Supporters, however, point to significant improvements in organizations that have used the TQM approach.