Total Quality Management
Meaning & Definition
Total Quality Management
Total quality management is a management approach founded on a set of beliefs that aim at continuous improvement of product and process integrity. TQM is underlined by the belief that quality is the responsibility of all parties involved in the production process, and so ensuring consistency and quality requires input and buy-in from everyone. Practices and systems include cross-functional product design, process management, supplier quality management, customer involvement, information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-functional training, and employee involvement.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is Total Quality Management?
TQM is a management approach where an organization aims to deliver maximum customer satisfaction by consistently improving the production process and the quality management with the involvement of the whole team.
What is the objective of Total Quality Management?
The main objective of Total Quality Management is to make sure that the customer is getting full value for the service or product they are investing in. This means that teams will be focusing on producing products or services that are superior in quality and, hence, require all-hands-on-deck.
What are the 8 principles of TQM?
Total Quality Management works on several principles, including:
Focus on customer needs
Commitment from all employees
Making the process efficient
Integrates systems
Improvement on a continual basis
Adopting a strategic and systematic approach
Basing decision-making on facts
Communicating extensively
What are the 10 elements of TQM?
The 10 most basic elements of Total Quality Management are:
Commitment to delivering the best in quality
Focus on customer satisfaction
Preventing the existence of defects
Setting measurement parameters for quality
Actively creating corrective action plans
Extensive improvement
Acknowledging high quality
Training for the better
Involvement of everyone on the team
Benchmarking to attain new heights
What are the advantages and disadvantages of TQM?
Advantages:
Being goal-oriented causes an increase in productivity
Strengthens the company’s market image
Helps enhance public presence and put the team in the limelight
Improves employee morale
Helps with maintaining job security and job satisfaction
Disadvantages:
TQM is a management tactic that asks for a lot of meetings and planning efforts.
Bringing quality in the picture would also lead to a lot of unplanned expensive.
These kinds of efforts may take a long time to show actual results.
Everyone will undermine or discourage everything creative that you will bring to the table.
What is the most important element of TQM?
The most element of Total Quality Management is the board of the leadership. Since leadership is the strategic foundation behind adopting various resources and processes to excel in the eyes of the employees, they need to be highly flexible and put processes into motion that will help the employees quickly get in line with the larger, mutual goals.
Who are the key players in TQM?
The key players in TQM are the Customers whom we want to impress, the employees who will work on the improvement processes, and the suppliers who will be providing higher quality products for you to work with.
What Is an Example of TQM?
In the year 1945, TQM was adopted by Toyota. To improve its production process and bring some efficiency into the system, Toyota adopted the Kanban system to attempt their tasks. They kept inventory of their resources and perfected what they had. Thus, delivering quality products.
