What is Total Quality Management?
TQM or Total Quality Management includes management approaches by the whole organizational performance management teams to improvise their business and bring out quality products/services with high-end customer satisfaction.
It is pretty often that we come across various companies offering similar services. But as a customer, we are captivated by the one which has better quality, better feedback, and better brand image.
Thus, in a TQM effort, all the members of an organization work to attain long-term business success. This practice includes detecting errors in manufacturing, eliminating unwanted tasks, aligning the supply chain management, ensuring and maintaining employee work pace, and boosting customer satisfaction.
Discovered by W.Edwards Deming, TQM was mainly planned for its practical solutions in Japanese manufacturing sectors but later on owned by every different industry worldwide.
In-Depth understanding of TQM
The process of TQM laser focuses on practices that approach the overall well-being management of companies. It aims to increase internal management efficiency to accelerate enhanced quality outputs.
Deming also proposed assorted benefits for understanding the ‘Total Quality Management’ viz.,
· Strengthening competitive position
· Higher productivity
· Gaining enhanced market image/brand image
· Elimination of defects and useless stuff
· Better enhanced cost management
· Higher profits
· Improvising customer-focused products and satisfaction
· Customer retention and loyalty
· Innovative business strategies
· Improved employee efficiency
Elements of TQM
TQM can be summarized as implementing the right strategic business plans to enable continual improvements. Achieving these management improvements include the following principles:
1. Customer Priority
TQM’s first kingpin is customer satisfaction and retention. Efforts made in TQM aim at getting positive reviews and feedback. No matter how many strategies you’ve applied to boost your organizational performances, your customers are the final judges to decide upon the quality of your products.
“Starting from product purchase to continued support, the customer remains the main focal point for every organization,” ensures TQM.
2. Process-oriented
Total Quality Management also focuses on the implementation of aligned processes. The process thinking stage is essential as it enables organizations the ability to achieve success. A process is thus a series of strategic steps internally and externally to produce sustainable and productive outputs for customers.
3. Employee efficiency
TQM asks for the involvement of every organizational member to ensure top-notch quality at every stage. It doesn’t focus on a specific department but the whole corporate team. Since the goal is to provide an excellent customer experience, it makes sure employees are putting up with their best efforts and practices.
This, in turn, enables companies to boost their overall performance by hiring the best and most efficient employees for their tasks.
4. Communication
Communication is a powerful asset in every work. The EMS Global consultancy firm assists professionals in understanding the fundamentals of excellent communication to sustain a healthy work environment in their organizations.
Similarly, TQM seeks every team member to be at their best form and provide value-added services. Thus to achieve that, core leaders and employees need to own strong and transparent communication.
5. Data-proven works
Total Quality Management doesn’t require guess-based works. It requires accurate data to analyze lags and improvements needed for boosting productivity. It also needs to continually create data to improvise its decision-making efficiency and executing actionable strategic business plans.
6. Continuous improvements
Perfection is nearly impossible when it comes to running a business. Regular improvements and strategy implementations are required to attain a pillaring position. Hence, both creative and analytic methods need to go into power when following TQM, improving organizational performance management.
Implementing TQM principles
Now when the principles are clear, here are few ways to practically implement these principles:
Clarifying your mission and vision
The employees must know what they are putting their efforts for. The organizational management must be well aware of its vision, mission, and principles that will steer their confidence and decision-making.
This can be achieved by educating the employees during orientations and maintaining effective communication.
Recognizing the CSF (Critical Success Factors) of your mission
CSF enables organizations to focus on factors that help them meet their objectives and achieve their goals. It also enhances the team in successful business strategy planning in case they need improvisations in their processes.
Some important CSF are financial performance, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, product quality, etc.
Look out for Customer feedback
The only way organizations know if they are doing well and satisfying customer demands is through feedback. You can put up with this requirement by simply asking questions in a structured way using creative ways like social media, Google reviews, etc., with an effort to understanding what’s working for you and what needs to be added.
Improving strategic business plans
The next immediate step is to plan improvisations when the bottom line is established with a strong foundation and valuable feedback. These plans or goals should be smartly distributed among the staff members to align with their efficiency.
Technology innovation
Using innovative and creative ideas also includes the usage of innovative technology. An organization needs to ensure user-friendly and supportive technology to improve targeted demands.
The easiest example to define this point is ‘website optimization.’ The better the user interface and content are, the more captivated and focused your audiences would be in knowing more about you.
Final Thoughts
Total Quality Management works best when there is full support and commitment by every member of the organization. For that, it is imperative for each member to be clear about its advantages and outcomes.
TQM also offers job security if executed rightly. Therefore, employees and managers must understand its vitals before jumping to any conclusions since there’s always a chance where few might have objections against changing work patterns.
Proper training is required to ensure effective organizational performance management in the teams for TQM. Expert Mind Solutions is a highly recommended firm that consists of highly professional business coaches to train employees and even aspirants to deliver the critical features and beliefs of TQM.
