Total Quality Management Essay

Quality Management has become a very important part of the industry, including all the types of it, food, automotive, services, and domestic industry among others. It can be the deciding factor on whether a business is going to be successful or not; it is defined as “the management of the quality of a finished product or service based on customer’s perceptions of its design and how well the design matches the original specifications””.

Quality is highly important as it is the deciding factor for the customer to choose you or your competition. Once you are the supplier you must meet several quality standards marked by the customer and keep updating them in meetings so both parts are in agreement. The supplier part must always be very careful in reaching and maintaining the quality of the product/service provided to the client which is difficult when your employees do not understand how important it is to provide the best to the them; a form of keeping the quality standards high is capacitation courses and through compensation programs, these are an important part of the quality chain and a great incentive for employees to keep doing the best job they can.

For a good quality system to work it is required a great communication to employees to let them know what is required to produce the desired quality of products and to incentive them to achieve the quality specifications. A good QMS (quality management system) is as essential as any other department on a company; with it, all the goals and requirements can be more easily achieved. It (QMS) serves a lot of functions like establishment of visions, goals and setting standards for the employees and it builds a lot of motivation within the company as all the people who work there know what should be achieved for the purchaser to be satisfied.

To ensure that the management in the company takes the leadership role in defining, implementing and improving the Quality Management System, with the goal of meeting all customer’s requirements and expectations, it is essential that they take part in defining the Quality Policy. Therefore it must be ensured that there is a continuous commitment from the management. The intentions of the management are laid down in a policy statement as is required by the standard.

According with the BIR, the Quality Policy should include the following:

• The company’s quality objectives

• Management commitment to meet the requirements and to continually improve the performance of the company

• Organizational goals

• Fulfilling customer needs and expectations

Make sure that the Quality Policy is understandable for everybody in the company. Make it ambitious, yet achievable.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

TQM is a different type of quality system; this has been implemented in a lot of companies since its popularity incremented in 1980. It is a management approach in which quality is emphasized in every aspect of the business and organization. Its goals are aimed at long-term development of quality products and services. Management’s role in TQM is to develop a quality strategy that is flexible enough to be adapted to every department, aligned with the organizational business objectives, and based on customer and stakeholder needs. Once the strategy is defined, it must be the motivating force to be deployed and communicated for it to be effective at all levels of the organization.

In this system every part of the process must be willing to work together from the suppliers, the employees and the customer as this requires the contribution of everyone to keep improving the quality goals, policies and standards from the company. TQM has a special focus on employee involvement, they are encouraged to share ideas and be creative. A lot of the projects that take part in a business that implements TQM are result of a group effort or a

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