Total Quality Management the Importance

Total Quality Management The Importance of Total Quality Management Continuous Quality Improvement and Quality Circles The concepts of Total Quality Management (TQM), continuous quality improvement and Quality Circles (QC) form the foundation of many company's efforts to continually improve their internal processes, procedures, systems and organizational structures so that customers' expectations are met or exceeded. The common thread that unifies each of these techniques is the modifying or augmenting of organizational processes and procedures so that over time the organizational culture becomes more attuned to customers' needs.

In aligning a corporate culture to customers' needs, continuous improvement becomes possible and increases in importance over time. These three quality initiatives of TQM, continuous quality improvement and QC circles are all critical for companies to improve their enterprise-wide quality management programs over time. Each of these concepts is discussed and analyzed from the context of their value to business.

Total Quality Management (TQM) From a strategic standpoint across an organization, TQM looks to unify everyone's efforts in the common pursuit of high levels of product and service quality on behalf of the customer. TQM is often considered a foundational element from many organizations from the standpoint of unifying their quality management and compliance programs across all divisions and business sectors (Sanders, 2010).

Empirical studies that have measured the contribution of TQM to long-term organizational performance indicate that the greater the level of shared task ownership and shared results, the greater the long-term change to an organizational culture and it ability to perform at a consistently high level of performance (Sanders, 2010).

TQM's greatest contributions to organizations is in the framework's ability to enable greater cross-functional communication, more efficient process definition and management, enabler greater levels of supplier management including supplier audiences and also integrate more customer feedback into daily operations of a business (Moosa, Sajid, Khan, Mughal, 2010). Over time TQM frameworks have also been responsible for greater levels of transformational leadership occurring in organizations as managers have greater focus on a shared corporate vision than they would have otherwise had (Lopez-Fresno, 2010).

TQM then acts as a framework for galvanizing the many diverse areas of an organization together in pursuit of the common objective of attaining a high level of product or service quality and exceeding customers' expectations in the process (Moosa, Sajid, Khan, Mughal, 2010). In conclusion, TQM's value is in defining a suitable framework for organizations to coordinate their quality management and compliance strategies, while at the same time taking the lessons learned and creating an effective strategies based on the insights gained (Lopez-Fresno, 2010).

Due to these many benefits, TQM has become a de facto standard for organizations who compete in industries were quality and timeliness of response with customized products and solutions is a critical success factor, including aerospace and defense (a&D) (Sanders, 2010). TQM is also pervasive throughout highly regulated industries including medical devices.

Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Like TQM, Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is heavily dependent on measuring the performance of a company from the perspective of its customers or clients; this approach to quality management is based on the premise that meeting or exceeding customer requirements is essential for profitable growth.

CQI varies from TQM however in that the frameworks, techniques and programs assume that improvement must be iterative and continual, and that there is no endpoint or culmination to the improvement process as the changes are eventually integrated into the system or process itself (Sanders, 2010). CQI follows a methodology of first defining the specific areas for improvement most needed in a company. This is often done through Six Sigma-based analysis including an analysis of variations against preliminary metrics of performance.

The next phase of the analysis also relies on Six Sigma as it looks to define all areas of known variation or possible causes of aberrations in performance over time of a given process (Highfill, Mcasey, 2010). Once this has been completed, business analysts work to define a CQI Action Plan, which defines how the processes can be permanently improved to meet or exceed customer requirements.

The action plan also includes intensive levels of variance analysis of existing processes against industry best practices including cost, performance, and customer satisfaction-level benchmarks as well. All of these metrics are taken into account to define the optimal level of process re-engineering efforts and strategies to ensure each process that is re-engineered has the highest potential for success. The organizations who are best at CQI also concentrate their efforts on change management initiatives and programs during this third step in the process.

Companies who excel at their CQI-based programs and initiatives make the necessary investments in change management strategies and programs early so their employees and management teams have the opportunity to share ownership in this key process area (Parast, 2010). Studies of CQI programs critical success factors point to change management as being the single most important element in achieving the original goals of any quality management program, as without employees' support any program will fail over time (Parast, 2010).

Once change management strategies have been put into place the senior management teams often works with the business analysts and quality improvement teams to define an action plan for accomplishing the goals of the program (Parast, 2010). During this step it is best to also include the key employees most affected by the change, as they will be called upon to manage the process-related modifications and improvements to the systems and procedures over time.

This step is also critical to include the employees most affected by the CQI-based change to ensure they also buy into and support the measurement plan, with the next phase of a successful CQI initiative. Once measurement has been done, the senior management, process re-engineering experts and analysts and employees most affected by the change often meet to define the change management strategies to keeping the quality initiatives in place (Parast, 2010).

This is a critical step as it begins to engrain the quality initiatives throughout the company and makes the process of change must easier to accomplish over time. These steps taken together are what are required for any CQI initiative to succeed over the long-term, as they must include change management principles in addition to permanent change to key process areas to succeed (Highfill, Mcasey, 2010).

Quality Circles One of the recurring foundational elements throughout all quality improvement concepts and frameworks is the need for having employee involvement and buy-in for each to be successful (Parast, 2010). The concept of quality circles is predicated on this concept of employee involvement and the ownership it enables throughout an organization over time (Glassop, 2002). Quality circles concentrate on taking on difficult, complex problems.