What Is Total Quality Management

Running Head: WHAT IS TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT?

What is Total Quality Management (TQM)?

Leah de Rosa

University of Phoenix

What is Total Quality Management?

"Total Quality is a description of the culture, attitude and organization of a company that aims to provide, and continue to provide, its customers with products and services that satisfy their needs." (Stark, 1998, para. 1) This culture must have quality in all facets of the organizations operations, ensuring things are done correctly the first time, as this is essential to customer satisfaction. This paper will further explore the definition of Total Quality Management (TQM) and will provide a description of impact of globalization on organizations and also compare traditional management styles with quality-focused management styles.

Total Quality is a management approach which originated in Japan in the 1950s and was brought to the US by Deming and then gained popularity throughout the 1980s (Stark, 1998). Even with its popularity, many companies found it difficult to implement TQM because the upper management did not invest monies in training their top leadership and have everyone involved in the new product development and involved with the new customer drives, as this would have allowed their companies to have continued growth. Some of the key points of TQM are having upper management integral in the process, customer-driven quality, commitment from the company, continuity and movement toward development and improvement, the employees should be active participants in the process, and the company should act fast on all responses, and the culture should be conducive for TQM to be implemented (Stark, 1998).

Initially TQM was utilized in the manufacturing arena, but now the concept has been adapted and is being used in many different fields such as the military, schools, cars and phone companies too. The list is so vast because this concept is now adaptable to many organizations who now believe they are able to buy into the objectives TQM offers. These companies are devising strategies to keep their customers satisfied with whatever services and products are needed. When successfully implementing TQM, a company must first have present the eight elements necessary in TQM, these are:

1. Ethics

2. Integrity

3. Trust

4. Training

5. Teamwork

6. Leadership

7. Recognition

8. Communication

With these elements, an organization should be able to work cohesively toward the goal of customer satisfaction and organizational improvement should always be at the forefront of the employees and the management's focus as well. As they work together as a team, the management should take note of what employees consider to be the concerns and requirements, for as the stakeholders, they are knowledgeable in many areas the management is not. In TQM,