Total Quality Management at Work Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Total Quality Management at Work - Essay Example On the way to achieving Business Excellence firms' attempt to attain competitive advantage (Porter 1980) and organizations adopt various techniques to realize efficiency and effectiveness. Industries struggle to gain this competitiveness through shorter production cycles, improved quality and by responding with speed and efficiency to meet customer requirements (Ahmed and Abdalla 2000a, 2000b). To reach excellence it is critical to develop internal quality consciousness and the ability to respond quickly as per schedules (Clausing 1994). Usually profits and returns are considered to be a measure of accomplishment, but, in its widest sense, quality is perceived as the vital element for both national and global success (Dale 1999, Feigenbaum 1999). A number of organizations also implement Total Quality Management (TQM) practices to guide them through to becoming competent and successful as TQM is a preventive approach and not a detective approach to work (Walton, 1986). According to Zairi and Youssef (1998) in the global context today competition cannot be met with cost efficiency alone. Quality plays an equally important role in assessing competitiveness. Quality is a function of TQM is but it is focused on quality improvement alone and in the broader sense does not cover the entire activities of the organization and therefore the Business Excellence has replaced both Quality and TQM as the final measure of performance that effects all stakeholders. (Dale, Zairi, Van der Weile and Williams 2000). Amaratunga and Baldry (2003) state that it is a process of ascertaining and assessing progress and achievement of pre-determined goals and includes information on the efficiency that has been shown in conversion of resources into goods and services. The quality of these outputs and outcomes has a great bearing on the organization's effectiveness and its objectives leading to Business Excellence. The real measure of Business Excellence or Performance according to Evans and Lindsay (1999) is found in five key categories; customer satisfaction; financial and market performance measure; human resource measure; supplier and partner performance; and company strategy measures. Each of these segments plays a vital role in determining the actual value of performance in the context of performance measurements. Benchmarking is essentially a cost reduction method (McDougall and Hinks 2000). Its exercise results in pre-determined and pre-arranged costs. Deviations are the measures that performance management seeks to locate and redress. Managers depend upon it for performance measurement in the TQM context (Camp 1989) and it is considered as the most powerful technique for gaining and maintaining competitive advantage (Codling 1992). Benchmarking has also been defined as the continuous, systematic process for evaluating the products, services and work processes of organisations for the purposes of organisations improvement (Sarkis 2001). Theories of TQM One of the earliest theorists on quality management, Edward Deming, is regarded as not only a pioneer of the quality movement but also a prolific thinker who has inspired and influenced other academicians and practitioners of quality management. According to Deming, quality is not just an external aspect of a product or service that can be measured or controlled. Instead, quality is inherent in the form of people's attitudes and knowledge