Total Quality Management

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Total Quality Management: Still a Key to Excellent Performance

Why TQM Has So Much Staying Power in Business

If you have a degree in business, an MBA or other masters degree or have been a manager for some time, you are no doubt familiar with many management theories, strategies and techniques. Over the years, many have become trendy, only to fizzle and begin to collect dust on the bookshelf and in the board room.

Others have maintained consistent respect for decades, and for good reason. Those management strategies that continue to gain favor with the business community have at least one thing in common; they are based on principles that work across most or all industries.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a good example of a theory that has become a common buzzword, but has since settled into a consistent role as an effective management strategy that works. Even if companies don’t implement every aspect of the formal theory, they gain positive image, effective branding and industry and consumer respect.

What Does TQM Try to Achieve?

TQM has a rather simple objective: To provide a company’s customers with products and services that they want or need.  If this goal appears to be overly basic, that is the intent of the strategy.

Achieving this goal can easily become complex and challenging for many reasons. TQM, in its details, has many features, components and recommended procedures and mindsets. Yet the simplistic beauty of TQM theory remains viable.

Primary goal number two is to achieve high quality in all facets of company operations. Unless you are a manager for a company that has been granted a monopoly, you understand that these two desired achievements can pose monumental challenges. Facing stiff competition, rapid technological changes, expanding governmental regulations and the unstable vagaries of the global economy, these objectives are often easier to understand than to implement.

However, the beauty of TQM can be compared to the wise quote, “Shoot for the moon, because even if you fail, you’ll be among the stars.” Making a sincere effort to achieve these two objectives is almost guaranteed to improve your company’s operations, image, customer relations, product development and standing in its industry.

TQM Components and Features

There are volumes of information about TQM and its implementation. This piece is not focused on serving as an implementation manual, but as a primer to help you decide if TQM is for you and your company. Some key components and features should spark or tone down your interest upon further study.

The key component of a TQM program: All staff and management become directly involved in continuous improvement activities. TQM should not be compared to a weekend strategic planning session, a two-week seminar on customer relations or a week of meetings explaining new policies and procedures. It could be compared to a thought and focus modification, affecting all workplace activities to achieve high quality.

Activities are seldom the same for staff and management. Equality of focus requires different activities targeted to levels of authority and responsibility. For example, here are some common TQM activities, which are typically assigned to the appropriate employees, teams or departments.

• Customer satisfaction improvement
• Management commitment to excellence
• Timely manufacturing and production
• Recognition and celebration activities
• Benchmarking to track progress toward strategic goals
• Specific goal brainstorming and adoption
• Reduced product costs while maintaining quality and availability
• Developing improvement strategies for all operational areas
• Consistent strategic planning on a macro and micro level

There are also some basic TQM principles assigned to management and staff. In their simplest form, they are assigned to each group:

Management

• Plan
• Do
• Check
• Act

Staff

• Train
• Suggest
• Measure
• Build teams

From this base, you can build activity and decision trees to achieve the details of company goals and objectives. Depending on your industry and organization there might be subcategories involving process and financial controls, statistical tools, customer partnerships or many other activities and tasks.

However you construct your specifics be aware that TQM, implemented properly and consistently, remains a key component of improved performance. Based on solid management and operations principles, TQM delivers results in direct proportion to what you and your company contribute to the process. Much like achieving personal career success, the primary unwritten components of persistence, perseverance and consistency of effort are often the most important features of achievement.