Total Quality Management Case Study

Launching a new product always comes with certain risks as well as significant financial impact. The design and development of the product, marketing the product and implementing processes to produce it all incur costs even before the product can be produced and sold to customers. It is essential to mitigate risks so all the up-front costs do not go to waste. The team at Interface has assessed common risks associated with product launches to proactively address and mitigate those risks for the launch of the World Woven collection.

The most common risk for any product launch is to forget about marketing until it is too late. (Schneider & Hall, 2011). To combat this, a marketing sub-team was formed. The team members of the sub-team were

The project manager instilled trust with her team by effectively managing their work and their perception of how they contributed. By doing this, she demonstrated integrity, which is another building block of TQM. Leadership and teamwork were also displayed by this team. The team champion acted as a mentor to the project manager, supporting her in effectively managing a team of employees who did not know each other at the onset. Because of this effective cascading leadership, the diverse team was able to come together and successfully execute not only one product launch, but an entire product line. A big piece of the project champion and project manager strategy for managing the team was recognition, another element of TQM. However, the most important aspect of TQM is communication. Communication was expertly executed through consistent and timely meetings with team members. This meant all team members were on the same page at all times and clearly knew what it was they were responsible for and when it needed to be completed. It also meant that a team of supporters were readily available to provide feedback and assist when needed. This focus on good communication trickled-down to the communications with customers through the marketing plan. All current customers received the pitch prior to the physical product launch as a courtesy and included an invitation to get a sneak peek at the new products. This was done to re-open lines of communications and foster the relationship. It proved to be a good strategy as several customers acted on that offer. (Padhi,