Goals of Total Quality Management

Keywords: goals of tqm, goal of tqm, tqn goals, tqm barriers

There are basically seven criteria that are significant in this context. They have been mentioned as follows: The first is leadership. This is the most important criterion as an organization’s success is highly judged by virtue of its leadership qualities. In most cases today, it has to be situational in nature. Also, depending upon the degree of motivation, leadership can be judged. Secondly, it is strategic planning. Based on the strategies that a company plans to take up in the future, a company’s operations run. Every function of an organization either short term or long term is based on this concept. Thirdly, it is customer and market focus which has replaced profit as the bottom line for most of the companies today. Information and data analysis is also required to know of the market conditions to take steps in this direction. The company’s future developments in terms of products and services are based on this criterion. Next, is human resource management and development which is required to resolve existing conflicts within the company and improve conditions outside the company as well. Next, in line is process management. The daily activities of every firm are highly complex in nature. It requires adequate process management. All these are dealt by the leaders of the company. Every small pre-requisite must be taken care of so as to ensure that there are no reasons to cross the time limit of delivery of a service. Finally, it is business results. One can’t afford to judge the quality of a certain organization, marketplace, personnel or product without having a look at the business response. It is indirectly associated by the growth in word-to-mouth marketing of that activity or the increment in the gross income.

Obstacles in TQM

The major obstacles that come under way in total quality management have been mentioned as follows:

The strategic plans as mentioned on a number of occasions do not actually meet the product quality goals. In keeping up with the quality, much of the best practices of a company are benchmarked creating a non-significant outcome. Quality takes into account a number of layers in management which are not very friendly to deal within the organization. Measurement of quality is not effective and is generally dependent on customers which make it difficult for a company to define. Also, planning becomes difficult to adopt with the suppliers, so best quality is difficult to establish. On a number of occasions, there are a number of teams do not implement cross-functional teams which restrict a good quality. Also, because the employees are resistant to change, it becomes difficult to employ the best of qualities. Because of lack of resources, the companies do not have adequate training programs because of which the quality expected by the customers is not met properly. Also, compensation from the management is given only after achievement of a landmark which arises to many unhealthy competitions within the organization hence, decreasing quality.

Malcolm Baldridge Criteria

These are a set of guidelines that a number of organizations use these days in order to assess whether they meet a certain level of business excellence. The criteria under this context re often reviewed and as per the needs of the culture, it is adopted. The obstacles in this respect have been mentioned as follows:

The competitive environment: On a number of occasions, a company is not able to meet the business excellence level because of immense amount if competition in the market. It has to adapt itself accordingly getting deviated from its own goals on many occasions. This acts as an obstacle to a highly significant extent in many companies these days.

Strategic Challenges: In this context every management department acts as an obstacle. This could wither be in the form of operations, human resource, marketing, finance or even IT for that matter. The reason is that every department looks to provide its best quality which is not synchronized with the company’s strategies.

Performance Improvement System: Companies tend to deviate from following systematic evaluation in this context. Some of the key processes including organizational learning and knowledge sharing become challenges to be followed. (How to use Baldrige Criteria to implement Total Quality Management (TQM) stay ahead of competitions ?, 2001)

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE THREE MODELS

Deming’s model

As per the definitions defined by all the three models of the total quality management, Deming’s model states that the quality management is the process of continuing to improve the quality after meeting and exceeding the customer’s need and the expectations. Deming’s model further describes the high degree of the senior management involvement for the quality improvement purposes in which the decisions are made in the board room. Deming’s model provides a new and the comprehensive approach to handle the organization or the human enterprises with the systematic view of it. It provides a wide range of advices on the quality planning, quality control and the quality improvement. Deming’s model is more theoretical minded which suggests the theoretical solutions to the problems. The Deming’s approach is to focus on the working of everyone in the organization to accomplish the improvement with the repeated use of the PDSA cycle. (Compare)

Juran’s Model

While on the other hand Juran’s model just takes the “fitness for use” as the basic criteria of the quality improvement and the individual units should perform in such a way in accordance with the specification and the direction so as to achieve that fitness for the use (Compare) The Joran’s model accepts the majority of the quality management problems are due to the poor management rather than the poor work of its lower or middle level management. Juran’s model provides an analytical approach to manage for the quality and focuses on how to handle the quality functions on the basis of that. The production process is defined as a relationship between the customer research, suppliers, design, materials, production, assembly, and the inspection according to the Joran’s model. The Juran’s model is more practical minded suggesting the highly practical and the feasible answers. Juran made the focus on the product improvement and the conformances in the service by reducing the uncertainty and the manufacturing process variations.

Baldrige’s Model

The Baldrige’s model which is the most popular model for the total quality improvement takes the overall improvements in all the aspects whether it is the leadership, strategies, planning, etc as the criteria for the quality improvement. The Baldrige’s model desires the visionary leadership, customer driven excellence, personal along with the organizational learning, valuing the employees and the stakeholders, with the prime focus on the future. The Baldrige’s model manages the quality with the focus on the future, managing for the innovation, with the social responsibility towards its customers as well as the employees with the system perspective. The other side the Baldrige’s model combines both of the theoretical as well as the practical mindedness. At the same time, the Baldrige’s approach is to manage the quality through the management by the fact with the help of the combined process of the process management, workforce focus and the business results.

Opinion about the three models

In spite of the fact that all the three models of Deming, Juran and the Seven Diseases model, there is a significant contrast amongst them. While Deming is highly concentrated on leadership and continuous improvement, Juran believed in quality planning, improvement and control. Also, the seven diseases talk of the places where the companies would always make mistakes and get into trouble from the perspective of maintaining a good quality. Here short term profits and mobility of management is of greatest concerns which need to be fought in order to come out successful. One can conclude that Deming’s model is applicable to a huge enterprise where the workforce is highly diverse and also huge. The reason is that this is where formation of trade unions is possible and must be prevented as per Deming’s principles. Also leadership is more widely judged in a voluminous organization. Juran’s model can be applied from the operational and marketing perspective which requires major improvement in quality so as to take the company along. Here, the seven diseases model is applicable in every department of every organization whether big or small. It looks to prevent all problems in individual departments. (Cohen, 2010)

The Best Out of the Three Model

The total quality management is the process of integrating the different systems of the principles, methods and the best practices, that provides the organizations a kind of framework for the organization to strive for anything that the organization want to achieve. The model that best suits to most of the organization in most of the organization is recommended to be the Baldrige’s model for the TQM which is the most popular model prevailing in many of the organizations that combines all the aspects like the leadership, strategies, planning, etc. It leads to the overall quality management of any organization in all the directions which is the most important criteria for the TQM in the today’s world.

Today’s Excellence Awards

The excellence awards are given to the organizations by their respective governments on the basis of its management practices, contribution to the industry and its markets, quality of the products and the beliefs at the highest level with the awareness promotion and practices through the innovative approaches. In the current date, the five most prestigious awards for the management excellence given are Japan’s Deming Prizes, the United States’ Malcom’s Baldrige National Award, the European Quality Awards, the Canada Awards for excellence and the AKAO prizes. (Management awards) In this array of the awards, the Japan’s Deming prize was the first essentially esteemed prize which remained as the most prominent one for the three decades since its establishment in the year of 1950 which aims at examining how efficiently and effectively the organization is able to implement the total quality control measures by having a deep assessment of its quality policies and the activities and measuring its consequences in the part of the improvement in the productivity, quality improvement, reductions in the costs, increased profits & the expansion in the sales. Another privileged award is the Baldrige’s award judge the organization on the basis of seven specific criteria viz. leadership, information and the analysis, strategic planning, human resource focus, process management, business results and the company’s performance, the customer focus and their satisfaction. The European Quality Awards are given on the basis of nine criteria namely the leadership, people management, policy and the strategy, the resource management, process management, customer’s satisfaction, people satisfaction, impact on the society, and most importantly the business results. The Canada Awards for the excellence has seven drivers which are the leadership, planning, customer focus, people focus, process management, supplier’s focus, and the organizational performance. After Japan, the Canada was the second major industrialized country to establish an award in order to honor the managerial practices. The AKAO prize was established by the QFD institute in order to honor the individuals who were successful in making the outstanding contribution to the advancement process of the QFD. It follows the outline of the Deming’s Award but it is different from it and also from the other awards on the basis of only focusing on the QFD and recognizing only the individuals.

These awards have been established for the purpose of encourage the organization to adopt better managerial skills which are generally open for both the private and the public sector organizations.

Learned Lesson

Through this extensive analysis of the various models of the total quality management it was but obvious to learn its several of the basic aspects involved with it which can summarized as the whatever the model may be but it tends to take an approach that seeks to improve the quality and the performances of any organization that will cause the meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customers. It involves the integration of all the quality related functions, tools and techniques and the several of the processes throughout the company. An effective total quality management design looks forward for the overall quality measures used by that organization which includes the design and the development of the quality design, control and the maintenance of the quality, parallel quality improvement, and the quality assurance. For the total quality management to be successful it is very essential for the quality measures to be taken at all the levels including each and every employee in that organization. It is basically the management of the procedures and the initiatives which has the involvement of the principles like the actions anticipated from the top level management as the driver for the whole program of TQM and to create an environment of success, training required for the employees, customer focus, decision making process, methodology and the tools, continuous improvement, company culture, and the involvement of the employees. The three different models designed for the total quality management namely the Deming’s model, the Juran’s model and the Baldrige model were well analyzed with the several of the processes involved in it and their advantages and disadvantages over each other and their feasibility aspect in the different situation. The total cost of the TQM is generally expected to be lower than the benefits it would produce, but after its application in the real world and taking the results in the long term, it is quite beneficial for any type of organization.