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Contribution of total quality management (TQM)

on organizational success

I.H.S.T. Susiriwardana
Contribution of total quality management (TQM) on organizational success

Introduction

In recent times, organizations have experienced a period of great change in their markets and
operations. International as well as domestic competition has meant that many organizations have
faced an increasingly turbulent and hostile environment. The pace of technological change has
quickened to lightning speed, customers have become more demanding and competition has
become more intense and sophisticated. These pressures are added to both regulators and consumer
groups. Good quality performance has always been a key strategic factor for business success but
it is now more than ever required to compete successfully in the global markets of the twenty-first
century. Many organizations have adopted a range of improvement approaches in response to these
forces. It can be seen the growing adoption of a range of quality and management systems
standards, the emergence of total quality management (TQM), business process re-engineering
(BPR), business excellence, performance excellence, Lean thinking, Six Sigma, statistical process
control, etc. The battle weary could be excused from taking a rather jaundiced view of this ever-
lengthening list of ‘quality’ offers but, by and large, they share many of the principles and elements
that are found in TQM (John. S, 2014, p.3).

In order to be a competitor in the global market, companies must study the leading examples of
quality. The key to success as identified by these examples is to recognize the importance of
innovation and quality. The concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) should be the driving
force behind the changes taking place within today’s organizations (Sohal and Terziovski, 2000).
History of TQM

The backgrounds of TQM can be traced from production quality control ideas early in 1920. Total
quality management (TQM) was primarily developed in Japan, and its origins can be traced in the
work of the Juran, Deming, Ishikawa, Feigenbaum and Crosby and on the rise and control of the
Japanese automobile industry in the world markets.

In the 1940s, Japanese products were perceived as cheap, low imitations. Japanese industrial
leaders recognized this problem and aimed to produce advanced high quality products. They
invited a few quality leaders, such as Deming, Juran, and Feigenbaum to learn how to achieve this
aim.

In the 1950s, quality control and management developed rapidly and became a main theme of
Japanese management. Quality circles started in the early 60s. A quality circle is a volunteer group
of workers who meet and discuss issues to improve any aspects of workplace, and make
presentations to management with their ideas. The term ‘total quality’ was used for the first time
in a paper by Feigenbaum at the first international conference on quality control in Tokyo in 1969.
The term mentioned to wider issues within an organization.

Ishikawa have mentioned ‘total quality control’ in Japan, which is different from the western idea
of total quality. Due to his explanation, it means ‘company-wide quality control’ that involves all
employees, from top management to the workers, in quality control. In the 1980s to the 1990s, a
new phase of quality control and management created. This became known as Total Quality
Management (TQM). Having observed Japan’s success of employing quality issues, western
companies started to introduce their own quality initiatives. TQM, developed as a catchall phrase
for the broad spectrum of quality-focused strategies, programs and techniques during this period,
became the center of focus for the western quality movement.

TQM is a description of the attitude, behaviors and culture of the organization that focus to provide
quality products and services to its customers and satisfy their need. The culture requires quality
in all aspects of the organization’s operations, with things being done right the initial time, and
waste and defects eliminated from operations. TQM is a management viewpoint that seeks to
integrate all organizational functions to focus on meeting customers’ needs and organizational
objectives (Hashmi, 2004). Different researchers have different findings, related to effects of TQM
practices and applications. A number of researchers determined that TQM implementation has
effect on firm’s business performance, whereas others stated that it does not lead to improvements
in firm’s business performance. According to Harnesk and Abrahamsson (2007), TQM has
imbedded contradictions, for example manipulation versus empowerment, socialism versus
individualism and standardization versus innovating learning. But nowadays mostly researchers
are emphasis on quality management programs for organizational development and getting
maximum output in this competitive world. According to their findings, an effective model of
success for companies is total quality management, which is customer based set of management
policies that deliver quality to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. (Sajjad, 2012)

Application of TQM

There are several definitions for the quality that has been expressed by several authors. Juran, an
early doyen of quality management said, quality is the fitness for purpose or use. Quality
vocabulary- 1987 has defined the quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product
or service that bear on its ability to satisfied stated or implied needs. The recent studies defined,
quality is a dynamic state associate with products, services, people, process and environments that
meets customer needs and expectations and help produce superior value (John. S, 2014, p.4)

Total quality is an approach to doing business that attempts to maximize an organization’s


competitiveness through the continuous improvement of the quality of its products, services,
people, processes and environments. TQM is an integrated system of tools and techniques that
focuses on continual improvement of organizational processes to deliver high quality products and
services, along with the constant attainment of customer satisfaction. (David, 2010, p.7).

As decision makers realize the importance of high quality production in establishing and
maintaining a global competitive position, there has been a corresponding interest in research on
quality management. Much of the literature to date has been descriptive; in particular, examining
the practices used by Japanese companies. The limited empirical literature focuses primarily on
describing commonly used quality management practices, in both the U.S. and in Japan. There
have been only a few attempts to empirically relate the use of certain quality management practices
to quality performance and to the overall performance of the organization. For example, Garvin
(1986) studied quality practices and performance in the room air conditioner industry, and Roth,
De Meyer, and Amano (1990) compared the relationship of various quality practices to quality
performance in the U.S., Europe and Japan. Miller found quality programs to be a strong predictor
of manufacturing strength (Flynn, 1995).

The reasons for implementing TQM in organizations is to gain customer satisfaction, improve
quality of products and services, increase productivity and capacity of production lines, boost
employee performance, improve quality-of-work-life balance, upscale market share and command
competitive edge. TQM also addresses unimportant management issues of reduction in production
development time, waste of inventory; work in process, cost, delivery times, employee turnover,
and complaints. According to Davies (2003), Total Quality Management is a management
philosophy, which focuses on the work process and people with the major concern for satisfying
customers and improving the organizational performance. It involves the proper management of
work processes which allows for continuous improvement in all business units with the aim of
meeting or surpassing customer’s expectations. Total Quality Management is related to any
organization irrespective of size and motives.

Continuous improvement

Continuous improvement is one of the core component in TQM. There are a number of tools
available to ensure that continuous improvement is successful, which include: Process
mapping, Root cause analysis, The Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) cycle. Process mapping involves
the understanding of the process that has been identified for improvement. The process must be
mapped to identify the flows that make up the process, including both personnel and activities. This
helps in determining the scope of the process, the interface with other processes, and a starting point
against which improvement can be measured. Root Cause Analysis involves the determination of
the root cause of the problem or quality concern, which can be achieved by data gathering and
analysis. There are three phases that makes up a root cause analysis process; the open phase, narrow
phase, and close phase. The process starts with brainstorming the issue to identify as many possible
root causes, and then slowly reducing the number of possible root causes to number that can be
focused on, and finally coming to a decision on a single perfect root cause.  The PDCA (Plan-Do-
Check-Act) cycle involves planning how the root cause should be improved, following the planned
procedure, checking for changes made to see if they have brought the desired results, and finally
incorporating the changes into the standard operating procedures of the organization (ISQ, 2017).

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is an important tool of total quality management (TQM). Benchmarking enhances


transparency and performance after entering the public domain. A benchmarking is typically seen
as a tool to improve organization’s performance and competitiveness in business life (Kyro, 2003).
According to the research findings of Sajjad, 2012 said that, there is a strong relationship between
benchmarking and customer satisfaction. This mean that benchmarking plays a significant role in
customer satisfaction. When companies will practice benchmarking than quality will be improve
and innovation will occur and in this way customer will be more satisfied (Ugboro, 2000).

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is a management approach that allows delegating to an external agent operational


responsibility for processes or services previously delivered by an enterprise. It can be defined as
the purchase of a good or a service that was previously provided internally (Swink, 1999). The last
decade showed an evolution in outsourcing processes from traditional to strategic. Outsourcing is
considered traditional if a process not considered critical for the organization is outsourced. This
is the case for activities that do not require specific competencies by the supplier, like canteen
services or cleaning services. Strategic outsourcing is when companies outsource everything apart
from those special activities in which they could achieve a unique competitive authority
(Franceschini, 2003).
Employee empowerment

Employee empowerment is one of the core component in TQM. In TQM organizations, employee
empowerment is operationalized by encouraging employees to respond to quality-related problems
and giving them the resources and authority to do so. Also, employees are delegated authority and
allocated resources to make quality improvement decisions in their jobs. In manufacturing
environments, employees are empowered to accept or reject the quality of work-in-process and
finished work. The empowerment strategy is to free employees from the rigorous control imposed
by instruction, policies, and order and in their place give employees the freedom to take
responsibility for their ideas, decisions, and actions.

In generally held also that empowered employees have higher level of job satisfaction and
performance primarily because of their involvement in goal setting and in making decisions that
affect their work. Blackburn (1993) reported some preliminary evidence of these outcomes in their
study of Baldridge Award Winning Companies. Additionally, Bowen and Lawler (1998) show that
the effectiveness of employment and involvement and participation in decision-making and
improved organizational performance is contingent upon other organizational factors such as
firm’s competitive strategies, technology, and the nature of the firm’s relationship with its
customers.

Customer Relationship

Establishment and maintenance of an open relationship with customers provides an input to the
product design process by facilitating clarification of the customers’ needs and desires. Key to
encourage strong customer relationships is the establishment of communication links between the
plant and customers. Practices include frequent meetings with customers, visits to customer plants,
customer visits to the plant and encouragement of customer feedback on product and service
quality. The relationship with customers is hypothesized to have an indirect effect on quality
performance in three ways. First, by improving initial design quality, a strong relationship with
customers will improve quality performance by reducing the number of engineering after the
design has reached production, thereby reducing manufacturing process variability. Second, the
establishment of strong links with customers is useful in the development of manufacturable
designs, allowing determination of which specifications and tolerances are critical from the
customers’ perspective. Third, customer interaction is likely to lead to the design of new product
features, which better meet the customers’ needs and satisfy customers. (Flynn, 1995)

Contribution of TQM on organizational development

There has been a huge transformation in the way things are done in the developed countries such
as United States of America, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia and Japan.
In the 1980s and 1990s, many companies in the United States, Europe and Japan followed the
quality management approach in order to improve their products and service. As a result, the
companies that implemented the total quality management practice experienced massive savings
in production costs and thus higher returns on investments.

Developing countries such as Nigeria, quality improvement and total quality management in
particular have become very popular for the past thirty years. The strength that generated this
movement is the severe competitiveness of the global market. As the relative decline of the
Nigerian economy expands, industries will continue to throw away the traditional ways of doing
business and focus on efficiency and continuous improvement in order to remain competitive
(Agwu, 2014).

Conclusion

To implement TQM in an organization, the most vital thing is that the top management provides
leadership and support for all quality initiatives that will need to be adopted. Without this support,
the working teams will not be able to work towards quality improvement. In this way, it becomes
very important for every member within the organization to participate in the TQM process. Every
department in the organization should strive to improve the quality of the processes, and in turn the
resulting products/services. It is the top management’s responsibility, and acceptance of
responsibility by major department heads to consider quality as first priority. All quality related
issues and quality plans should be discussed openly in meetings. Furthermore, it is a known fact
that business environment is subject to change, no matter what the industry. And, in order to fight
the immense competition amidst the changing times, it is imperative that organizations adapt to
change. To facilitate the success of TQM, it is imperative that the organization implementing it can
capture the best practices and achieve and maintain a competitive edge in the changing business
world at all times. The total quality effort input into the processes can yield high level of
performance as the output.
References;

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Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………..1-1

History of TQM ………………………………………………………………...3-2

Application of TQM …………………………………………………………….4-3


c Continuous improvement …………………………………………………5-5
B Benchmarking …………………………………………………………….5-5
O Outsourcing ……………………………………………………………….5-5
E Employee empower ……………………………………………………….6-6
C Customer relationship ……………………………………………………. 7-6

Contribution of TQM on organizational development ……………………….7-7

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………8-7
References ……………………………………………………………………….9-9

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