Quality Management Total Quality Management

Quality Management

Total Quality Management in International Business

Total Quality Management (TQM) and the resulting processes, strategies and techniques are having a significant influence on how international business is structured, completed and supported. Quality is now the most difficult company-wide differentiator many organizations aspire to attain because it requires a constant, intense commitment to improve and constantly set higher standards of performance. Total Quality Management (TQM) is a concept that is very strategic in nature, integrating the roles of product development and design, customer service, field service, engineering, finance, production, supply chain management, and operations into a concerted strategy of delivering a continual increase in the quality of products produced and services delivered. Implicit in this definition is the fact that quality needs to be seen as the dominant unmet need of the customer; in fact that quality is the most critical need of the customer. This holds true across both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces served. Some of the companies who have implemented TQM include Ford Motor Company, Intel Corporation, Motorola and Toyota Motor Company with their Toyota Production System (TPS) according to Gilbert (1992). Each of these organizations have been successful in their efforts to create sustained quality improvements using TQM due to their commitment to integrating quality management techniques into all core processes. This ability to coordinate quality management efforts throughout organizations at the process level, specifically synchronizing with manufacturing, marketing, engineering, R&D, sales, purchasing and human resources attain their process and product quality objectives according to Hyde, a. (1992). This integrative nature of quality management as a corporate strategy serves as the foundation for lasting change in these companies mentioned, and most importantly re-aligns and sharpens the focus of each process to be more aligned with the customers' need for continual improvements. In this respect then quality becomes the long-term differentiator these companies wanted relative to their competitors.

The quality management process is comprised of the principles of management commitment, employee empowerment, fact-based decision making, continuous improvement and customer focus together form the foundation of TQM, according to Martin, L. (1993). The critical organizational departments involved in any TQM effort include the procurement and sourcing, manufacturing and production, fulfillment, marketing, sales, and service, all of which form the value chain of how organizations produce, sell and service products. The major actors or participants in the process are first and foremost the purchasing and procurement, and supply chain departments of an organization, which must have a specific set of quality standards to inspect and measure the level of quality of raw materials and components used in production. Second, the manufacturing and production staffs must be completely aligned with the objectives of any TQM program for it to succeed according to Ishikawa, K, (1985). Marketing, Sales and Service all must be specifically aligned with the core values of TQM, have processes for setting and achieving expectations with customers, all the while keeping gross margins and profitability in check