Quality Management (TQM)

TREND – TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM)

TQM is a management philosophy used by organisations; the main focus here is to meet customer needs as well as organisations objectives. It is done by the integration of all the processes that an organisation does. These processes are marketing, finance, design, engineering, production and customer service. It maintains that organizations must strive to continuously improve these processes by incorporating the knowledge and experiences of workers. The simple objective of TQM is “Do the right things, right the first time, every time.”

TQM is now becoming recognized a generic management tool; it is as applicable in service sector as in public sector organizations because of its variability and adaptability.

Shewhart, TQM is a form of statistical quality control. He first devised a statistical control chart named after him in 1923. Then, he published his method in 1931 as Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product. Joseph Juran, who was trained in this method, implemented it at the Western Electric Company in 1926. He wrote a pamphlet entitled “Statistical Methods Applied to Manufacturing Problems” in 1928, which was later included into the AT&T Statistical Quality Control Handbook. Juran also published “Quality Control Handbook” in 1951, which is still considered as an influential work. But it was first recognised widely when a Japanese industry deployed TQM under W. Edwards Deming, who is now known as the "father" of quality control, quality circles, and the quality movement. W. Edwards Deming was sent to Japan by the U.S. state department for the preparation of the Japan Consensus, 1951. He gave various lectures on Statistical Quality Control in 1950 under the patronage of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE).

He recognised that the Management and Engineers controlled the whole process while the line workers played a small role. Therefore, he advocated the idea of greater involvement of the line workers in the quality control

Process Improvements were done by Quality Improvement Projects (QIP’s), Value Engineering Projects, Statistical Process Control projects and Operations Research Projects by managerial teams. It adopted Quality Circles and 5S as strategic tool for employee involvement and improvement in all the departments. The J N Tata Quality Award Model based on Malcolm Baldrige Model was adopted for its divisions in the company in 1992. It also adopted the JRDQV Model for Business Excellence in 1994 for competing with other group companies. Emerging marketing tools were Benchmarking and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and were complimenting the TQM efforts at Tata Steel. This was done for the continuous improvement in process and practices. In 1998, Balanced Score Card concept was integrated with the TQM strategy of the company. The Annual Quality Improvement Plans (AQUIP’s) incorporated each aspect for various