Tqm

Nannette N. Segura

Total Quality Management Survey

Mr. Steven Zeitlin

April 16, 2007

Introduction

The three sectors of the industry that will be discussed in this paper are namely: government sector, service sector, and non-profit sector. Those three sectors all have something in common, and that is they all have customers to serve. The only variation they have is how their customers drive the quality of the services and products that they offer.

First is the government sector. One organization in the government sector is the police department. Not because they are serving the public without the public paying for those services does not means the police department does not care about the quality of the services rendered.

Traditional methods of police management used to be militaristic in the beginning of the twentieth century (Maguire & Archbold, 2007). Orlando W. Wilson, a former superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, reinforced classic managerial principles through his popular textbook on police administration. These principles consist of span-of-control where there are limited number of subordinates per supervisor, unambiguous hierarchy where everybody know to whom they must report, and centralized command where decisions are made at the top and flows down ((Maguire & Archbold, 2007). That became known as the military model for police management.

Nowadays, all other kinds of policing are in place after realizing that military model of police management does not seem to work. One of those programs is the community policing which the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services defined as an organizational and managerial change, problem solving, and community partnership. The community policing eventually led to most police department to embrace Total Quality Management for better work culture and better community service. Through TQM, police department was able to change and restructure many of their departments and turn themselves into the facilitators of the community through community policing or Community Oriented Policing (COPs).

With community policing in place, cops role was re-identified as a facilitator in the community. As a result, the public opened up to the friendlier police department after realizing that their main concern is the community and not just the power and the law that they are trying to uphold.

The next sector is the non-profit sector such as the Goodwill Industries located around the valley. They sell mildly used items that are donated to them through their stores that are designed like a regular retail store. According to their website, they are one of the largest non-profit companies in Las Vegas and offer many diversified career opportunities. Their core values consists of the following: people are their strength and they treat them with dignity and courtesy at all times, they exceed customer's expectation, they benchmark against other best companies, they are honest , they embrace innovation, and they work as a team. Those core values are the qualities of TQM. Embracing TQM enabled Goodwill Industries to be open to changes and was able to change the culture of their business. They improve the process of selling the donated items by designing a retail store that can be comparable to other retail stores such as Target and Wal-Mart. Goodwill management know that what they are selling is used and donated and cannot compete to the other regular retail store. To compete with other retail stores, they improved the way their stores look and designed it as if what they are selling is comparable to the new items being sold next door but is 90% cheaper.

Goodwill might not have the quality clothing that one is looking for, however they cater to a certain group of customers and they know that there is a market for it. Unlike your regular retail stores where none of us knows what is going on sale next week, Goodwill gives their customer a monthly calendar that shows when a specific item will be cheaper (e.g. Toddler Tuesday where kids clothes are 50 cents every Tuesday). This is profitable for Goodwill while at the same time helpful to the moms-on-tight-budget shopping for clothes for their kids. This kind of program is what gives Goodwill an edge over other retail stores. They show that they are not only concern about their profits, but they are concern about their customer's budget as well. Their customers like the fact that they know what they are getting everyday and there is no other gimmicks.

The third sector selected is the service sector and Starbucks is one example of this sector. According to Starbucks website, most of the drinks they sell came from customer suggestions. This means they run their business based on customer-driven quality. They sell quality coffee that they know will sell because the idea came from their customers. Unlike other businesses that push whatever products they have to the consumers without regards to what the consumers want and need, Starbucks does the opposite. Similar to Xerox Corporation, Starbucks prioritize their customers first. Those customers become the controller of the quality of the products that they serve. As a result, total customer satisfaction is always possible.

Differences between Strategic Roles of TQM

All three sectors have one goal, and that is to achieve customer satisfaction. The difference is how they strategically utilize total quality management to help them achieve this goal. Figure 1 shows the relationship between those strategic role of TQM for Starbucks, the police department, and Goodwill Industries.

Figure 1: Relationship of TQM Strategic Role for each Sector

Starbucks Police Department Goodwill Industries

Customer suggestions + + +

Continuous training/education + + +

Better competitive pricing - - +

Employee empowerment + + -

Figure 1 shows that Starbucks