Total Quality Management Philosophy

TQM is a management philosophy that seeks to integrate all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, and production, customer service, etc.) to focus on meeting customer needs and organizational objectives. TQM views an organization as a collection of processes. It maintains that organizations must strive to continuously improve these processes by incorporating the knowledge and experiences of workers. The simple objective of TQM is “Do the right things, right the first time, every time.” TQM is infinitely variable and adaptable. Although originally applied to manufacturing operations, and for a number of years only used in that area, TQM is now becoming recognized as a generic management tool, just as applicable in

Customers are becoming increasingly aware of rising standards, having access to wide range of products and services to choose from. There is an ever-increasing demand for quality product and/or services and this global revolution had forced organizations to invest substantial resources in adopting and implementing total quality management strategies.

Total quality management can be summarized as a management system for a customer-focused organization that involves all employees in continual improvement. It uses strategy, data, and effective communications to integrate the quality discipline into the culture and activities of the organization.

Customer-focused, the customer ultimately determines the level of quality. No matter what an organization does to foster quality improvement—training employees, integrating quality into the design process, upgrading computers or software, or buying new measuring tools—the customer determines whether the efforts were worthwhile. Total employee involvement, all employees participate in working toward common goals. Total employee commitment can only be obtained after fear has been driven from the workplace, when empowerment has occurred, and management has provided the proper environment. High-performance work systems integrate continuous improvement efforts with normal business operations. Self-managed work teams are

TQM requires that an organization continually collect and analyze data in order to improve decision making accuracy, achieve consensus, and allow prediction based on past history. Communications, during times of organizational change, as well as part of day-to-day operation, effective communications plays a large part in maintaining morale and in motivating employees at all levels. Communications involve strategies, method, and timeliness. These elements are considered so essential to TQM that many organizations define them, in some format, as a set of core values and principles on which the organization is to operate.

Total Quality Management has many definitions. Gurus of the total quality management discipline like Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa and Feigenbaum defined the concept in different ways but still the essence and spirit remained the same. But the essence has more or less been to develop an approach to problem solving, conformation to standards for customer satisfaction. With management functions getting complex, approaches to managing quality in functional areas are becoming difficult. Organizations, which have successfully use TQM principles, have customer and quality embedded in their corporate