Why is TQM considered to be a good quality management system?

Total quality management (TQM) is a term that originated in the 1950s and is today used mainly in Japan. It is the equivalent of what other countries or organizations may call a company-wide quality management system, enterprise quality management system, or integrated quality management system, to name a few.

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Key Principles of TQM
Customer focus
Employee involvement
Centred on process
Integrated system
Strategic & systematic approach
Decision-making based on facts
Communication
Continuous improvement
Why Follow TQM Principles?
Use TQM to Improve Customer Satisfaction
TQM Improves Business Efficiency and Effectiveness
TQM Provides Long Term Competitiveness
No Easy Task

The term ‘total’ means the entire organization—all teams, departments and functions—is involved in quality management. The ‘system’ refers to the managerial and technological methods to achieve quality requirements and business objectives throughout an entire organization. Although it may go by various names, Juran believes ‘enterprise excellence’ to be a more appropriate name for TQM.

Juran’s Enterprise Excellence Management System has long been expressed as a company-wide business excellence and/or enterprise quality system. It embodies organizational beliefs and habits set forth in policies and processes to develop a culture capable or designing and delivering products and services that will exceed customer, regulatory, business and societal needs.

Key Principles of TQM

Total quality management has a number of key principles which—when implemented together—can move any organization towards business excellence.

Customer focus

Central to all successful TQM systems is an understanding that quality is determined by the customer. No matter what measures you introduce to improve the quality of your products and services, the only way of knowing if they have been successful is customer feedback, whether in the form of reviews, return rates, or satisfaction surveys.

Employee involvement

Every person in an organization—from entry-level workers to management—has a responsibility for the quality of products and services. However, employees can only be invested if they feel empowered to make their own decisions, something that depends on management creating the right workplace environment.

Centred on process

A TQM system will fail without a clear focus on processes and process-led thinking. A process fault is ultimately the cause of most problems, which is why effective monitoring of every single step is an essential part of assessing, maintaining and improving quality.

Integrated system

An organization should have an integrated system that allows for effective total quality management. This may be a bespoke system, or one based on a quality standard such as ISO 9001, but it should be understood and applied across all functions and departments.

Strategic & systematic approach

Critical to quality management is the existence of a strategic plan that outlines how an organization intends to achieve its mission and business goals. It goes without saying that quality should be a core component of such a plan.

Decision-making based on facts

Business performance can only be assessed using the available facts, such as sales data, revenue figures, and customer retention rates. The opinions of customers, employers and suppliers should never be used to inform decisions.

Communication

Effective communication is essential when an organization is implementing significant changes for the sake of business improvement. Every member of staff should be made aware of the strategy, the timescales involved, and the reasons for implementing it.

Continuous improvement

Applying the principles of DMAIC and Lean Six Sigma will instill an organization with a culture of continuous improvement, driving all employees to constantly seek new ways to be more competitive and deliver high-quality products for all stakeholders.

Why Follow TQM Principles?

The quality department in many companies is only responsible for the quality of products, with its focus typically limited to the supply chain. It has no role in driving quality throughout the organization, yet organizations have many opportunities to drive customer experience beyond products, with customer service being a prime example.

In recent years—as competitive pressures have forced a theme going far beyond traditional quality control, inspection, quality engineering, and reliability engineering—the role of the quality department and function is carried out by all departments in a TQM system.

Managing quality in a TQM system ensures your organization moves from its current “little q” or product focus to “big Q, enterprise-focus” thinking. The greatest benefit is reducing the total cost of quality by improving all products, services and processes, not just the ones in production.

Other benefits of TQM include:

Reduce risk and mitigate risk when designing new products and processes
Resolve problems before they occur
Resolve problems that occur during operations
Improve supplier performance
Control processes to avoid risk even when scaling up
Increase productivity or all employees
Reduce the total cost of quality not just the costs of poor quality of products

Get in touch today to discover how Juran can put your organization on the path to enterprise excellence, or read more about the Juran Model and Roadmap for quality improvement.

Why should you implement a Total Quality Management (TQM) program to achieve quality assurance? There is one simple answer; when properly planned and implemented TQM will provide substantive financial benefits to your business and add to the bottom line. Let’s consider just two examples of how using Total Quality Management can help your business.

Use TQM to Improve Customer Satisfaction

A primary focus of TQM and most Quality Management Systems is to improve customer satisfaction by having a customer focus and consistently meeting customer expectations. Customers are almost always satisfied when their expectations are met. When they expect a certain product or service, and you deliver it without problems and at a fair price, you’ve built a solid customer relationship. Happy, satisfied customers become repeat customers and they provide word-of-mouth marketing – the most powerful kind.

There are three Total Quality Management components that work toward achieving customer satisfaction:

It requires that your business understand what customers typically expect in a field, industry, or product line,
It ensures your business has the expertise and the resources to consistently deliver the expected product or service, and
It emphasizes the need for your business to clearly communicate to the customers exactly what you will deliver to avoid misunderstandings.

TQM provides the quality assurance that customers will get what they expect, as well as a process for managing unsatisfied customers, make needed corrections and prevent similar reoccurrences.

Explore the tools you need to achieve TQM. Check out QAD Quality Management Products.

Every business owner and manager knows the importance of satisfied customers, and how expensive it is to find new customers compared to keeping current customers. Business research clearly shows that there is a direct correlation between satisfied customers and revenue. If your business doesn’t have a clear path to creating satisfied customers, then it can benefit from TQM.

TQM Improves Business Efficiency and Effectiveness

While focusing on the customer is critical to success, it isn’t the only factor. A business can go broke sparing no expense to make customers happy. So not only does a business need to satisfy customers, but it needs to do it in a way that is. A business also has to look within and understand its own operations, another important role of a quality management system.

Total Quality Management places a focus on internal processes, including

How processes align to produce desired outcomes to satisfy customers
How consistently processes deliver desired outcomes (effectiveness)
The productivity of a process compared the resources used (efficiency)

Being able to consistently produce desired outcomes without wasting resources like time, material, and money is critical for a business to make it over the long haul.

TQM Provides Long Term Competitiveness

Being able to satisfy customers while operating effectively and efficiency is truly the recipe for financial success and stability. If you achieve these quality assurance goals that are part of Total Quality Management, then you will likely be in business for a long time to come.

Notice that with TQM, quality is not just about a product or service meeting (somewhat arbitrary) requirements. It is about how the whole organization operates to understand customer expectations and competitively deliver customer satisfaction.

No Easy Task

It is important to remember, however, that TQM takes full commitment from management. Simply tossing the concept down to employees and saying “do this” just adds an extra burden on workers without much benefit from their efforts. Organizational members take their cue about what is important from management.

Only through top management commitment and involvement does TQM take hold and become part of the organization’s culture. Once ingrained as the way of doing things, the business can reap the benefits of TQM – including a healthier bottom line.