Before Total Quality Management was first introduced, the traditional style of management was most-commonly used among organizations. However, the limitations of traditional management have inspired many business organizations to make the transition to Total Quality Management (Kokemuller). The transition to Total Quality Management transformed the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” into “Just because it isn’t broke, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved” The management style a company employs sets the tone of their culture, which largely impacts the operations of those within the organization, their reputation, and their customers.The cultures of traditional and modern management are completely opposite in nature. The mission of the traditional management style is to maximize the return on their investment through mass production.
With a product-oriented focus, customer requirements aren’t their highest priority and may even remain unclear at times. Due to the short-term objectives of an organization implementing traditional management, quality improvements rarely occur since the increase in production costs would deduct from their current profit.Orders are placed with whichever supplier can give the organization the cheapest price at the time, regardless of the item’s quality or their previous suppliers. The quality of each product is inspected by a separate unit, the quality control department.
Inspection occurs once the production process is complete, allowing products or services with minor defects or deviations to still be considered acceptable. Because quality depends solely on production, low quality is due to employing poor laborers. The traditional management style involves an authoritative and directive form of leadership (Kokemuller).A manager’s job is to solve top-level problems, control and plan their production, and enforce orders to his or her employees. The structure of the workplace holds employees to strict standards of professionalism and performance, creating a lack of communication and a clear separation between management and their employees (Kokemuller).
Employees are assigned restricted and specialized jobs, which are to be completed as an individual effort. Management doesn’t allow employees to take part in critical decision making because they feel they’re non-ambitious, hate their job, and lack the business intelligence required (Kokemuller).In order to prevent the loss associated with idle workers, surplus inventories are necessary to ensure a continuous process (Academy for Leaders). Employees will receive blame and a punishment of some form, upon the arrival of a problem, which is then resolved on an individual basis rather than as a group effort. On the other hand, the overall mission of an organization implementing TQM is for continuous improvement and either meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
Fulfilling customer desires is the main priority, which is achieved through perfecting the processes related to the quality of their products and services. Customer surveys, focus groups, feedback forums, interviews, and other techniques are important to identify and understand these desires. The organization’s objectives consist of a balance between the short-term and the long-term. Improving quality is a process that occurs continuously, regardless of the size or costs, because higher quality creates higher profits.
TQM strives to design a process that’s “mistake-proof” and does the job right the first time. The relationship between the organization and their supplier is viewed as a long-term partnership, which is based upon trust, reliability, and quality. The inspection of a product’s quality isn’t completed as a separate process, which is known to deteriorate the relationship between the production workers and the quality control inspectors. Instead, source inspection allows each individual employee to check their own work, ensuring the job was properly completed at the source (Heizer).
Quality depends on all employees within the organization, the suppliers, and the distributors, as well as, the design, all phases of production, delivery, and the after-sales service. Low quality is due to poor labor management, as studies have shown that approximately 85% of quality problems have to do with the materials and processes, not with the employee’s performance (Heizer). With TQM, managers are open, encouraging, coach their employees, remove barriers, and build trust. The role of top-level management is the driving force behind TQM, responsible for creating the culture of the organization.Management and their employees have an open relationship built upon trust, communication, shared values, and cooperation.
Employees are expected to share feedback on job-related experiences and are actively involved in establishing company policies, procedures, and department goals (Kokemuller). Rather than assigning specific tasks, employees are assigned general positions and work as a team with other employees. Employee empowerment and quality circles allow employees to be involved in critical decision making, which improves their work ethic by giving them a sense of involvement and responsibility.Inventory is delivered just-in-time because an inventory surplus increases the cost of quality.
When a problem arises, it’s identified and resolved systematically as a team effort. There are several individuals responsible for the transition to Total Quality Management. Today, we call these individuals “quality gurus. ” Quality gurus significantly contributed towards the rise of quality with their leadership, dedication, and by teaching their theories to rest of the world.Although, there are several others to discuss, the most popular quality gurus include: Dr. W.
Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph M. Juran, Armand V. Feigenbaum, and Philip B. Crosby.
During Dr. W. Edwards Deming’ life, he created many theories and teaching on quality, leadership, and management. “The System of Profound Knowledge” (SoPK) ties all of these theories together to provide an effective theory of management. When these management principles are applies appropriately, a business can reduce costs through reducing waste and rework, while increasing quality, customer loyalty, worker satisfaction, and profitability (The Deming Institute). The four areas of this theory includes: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology.
Appreciation for a system is based on the need for managers to understand the relationships between functions and activities and the long-tern aim is for everyone to win (QualityGurus). Knowledge of variation urges the importance of understanding variation, process capability, control charts, and their interactions. Theory of knowledge requires that individuals must learn and truly understand before they can achieve. Lastly, psychology explains the difficulty of motivation and management must understand how and what motivates their employees for them to achieve their goal.Also, Deming improved the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) Cycle, which was first introduced to him by his mentor, Walter Shewhart.
He compiled a list of fourteen key principles that management must follow to improve the effectiveness of the organization, which include: http://www. referenceforbusiness. com/management/Or-Pr/Pioneers-of-Management. html After World War II, Dr.
Deming headed to Japan to help improve their quality crisis. Deming’s methods and teachings were so effective; he was the hero that transformed the quality of Japan’s products, services, and management.In addition to writing numerous journals and books, he also founded the Deming Institute. The video link below summarizes Dr. Deming’s greatest contributions to the world of quality, management, and leadership. Dr.
Joseph M. Juran’s is known for his contributions to quality and management, including his quality management trilogy, improving the Pareto principle, introducing the costs of quality, fitness-for-use, and his ten steps for quality improvement. He describes his approach to cross-functional management in terms of a trilogy, which consist of planning, control, and improvement.Quality planning is the process of developing products and services to meet customer satisfaction.
Quality control is the process of taking action on the difference between an organization’s performance goals with their actual performance. Lastly, quality improvement is the process of raising the levels of quality performance. He significantly improved Pareto charts and viewed quality as “fitness-for-use. ” He believed that many quality defects are management controllable, since approximately 80 percent of quality defects result from only 20 percent of the causes (Heizer).Dr. Juran was the first to measure the cost of quality, which is the price an organization pays for not getting it right the first time.
The cost of quality should be analyzed and classified as either failure costs, appraisal costs, or preventive costs. To increase awareness of his theories and principles, Dr. Juran published many books and also founded Juran Institute in 1979. The key element in Juran’s philosophy is that management must show extreme commitment, in order for an organization to continuously improve.Quality guru, Armand V. Feigenbaum, has made significant contributions by defining the system of total quality control, introducing the concept of a “hidden plant,”, and developed his list of the crucial elements of total quality.
Feigenbaum first introduced the concept of TQM, which he called total quality control, defined as “an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance, and quality improvements of the various groups within an organization to enable production and service at the most economical levels, which allows full customer satisfaction” (QualityGurus).His approach changed the focus of quality from the product and its process, to include every area within the organization. His system showed the importance of understanding the organization’s flow of operations and how they subsequently impact one another. Another concept he introduced was the “hidden plant,” which is based on the idea that a proportion of capacity is wasted and extra work is performed in correcting mistakes, hence, there’s a hidden plant within any factory or organization (QualityGurus).
The main elements in Feigenbaum’s philosophy is that “quality is everyone’s job,” quality must be properly managed, and quality is based on the culture management sets. Philip B. Crosby created the concepts “quality is free,” “zero defects,” the “Crosby Vaccine,” and the “four absolutes of quality. ” In his book, “Quality is Free,” Crosby showed managers that doing things wrong made costs increase dramatically and that management was the root cause. The book set off a revolution in corporate thinking by shifting the responsibility for the quality of goods and services from the quality department to the corporate boardroom (QualityGurus).
He felt that management must be committed, supportive, persistent, spell out the objective and what’s needed to achieve it, and do it right the first time “zero defects” (QualityGurus). There is a direct relationship between quality and productivity. As quality improves, the productivity will also improve. On the other hand, a product with poor quality will cause a decrease in productivity. The product must be reworked done over, which wastes time, money, and the resources of the material.
Studies have found that companies with the highest productivity were five times as productive as companies with the poorest quality (Heizer).
