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Quality Management
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Total Quality Management What is Total Quality Management? Quality is not determined or defined by the producing company. The customer determines quality. Thus quality of a product or a service is the customer’s perception of the degree to which the product or service meets his or her expectations. Total Quality Management (TQM) is an approach to improving competitiveness, effectiveness, efficiency and flexibility of the organization in satisfying the customer demands. It is a process that recognizes the need to determine the customers' requirements and uses that knowledge to drive the entire organization to ensure those needs are fully met. It is essentially a way of planning, organizing and understanding each and every activity that takes place in the organization, and depends on every individual at his or her own level in the organization. Thus from Senior Executives to the person just cleaning the premises has to be involved in the quest for continual improvement towards the same goals, recognizing that each person and each activity interacts and has an effect on others. Why TQM? Companies strive for Total Quality Management in an effort to: · Increase customer satisfaction · Increase customer retention? TQM not only focuses on gaining a new customer but maintaining the current customers. · Reduce customer complaints · Attract new customers · Increase organizational effectiveness · Reduce costs due to less waste and rework? Quality costs and every time something is done incorrectly, money is lost. · Increase profitability · Achieve a greater market share · Maintain a competitive advantage Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s Quality Chain Reaction in figure 1 provides a logical rationale for implementing a quality improvement effort. It says that if an organization improves quality, costs will decrease due to fewer errors and more efficient use of materials and time. This causes an improvement in productivity and leads to capturing the market due to higher quality and lower prices. Therefore, a company will stay in business and provide more jobs1. Figure 1. Deming’s Chain Reaction provides the rationale for why an organization should start with quality. What are the specific reasons why a company should consider using TQM efforts? (1) Become more profitable: The main effects of quality on profits are realized through lower costs due to efficiencies achieved, higher customer retention, greater attraction of new customers, and the potential to charge higher prices (refer to figure 2). (2) Competitive position: What makes your company different from the one down the street?
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