TQM And Quality Management

LITERATURE REVIEW

TQM has been widely accepted as a disciplined management process in different sector in order to cope with the changes in marketplace and focus on quality in both their products as well as services (Venkatraman, 2007). TQM has helped many organizations to achieve better results (Talib et al., 2013) but also has failed in giving better results (Huq, 2005). Various reasons have been given for their failure, majority of the reasons are due to management’s inability to implement a total system (Boerstler et al., 1996; Brannan, 1998; Zabada et al., 1998). For service operations, it is even more difficult to implement it because of its preoccupation with internal performance dimensions that cannot keep-up with the constantly changing

Beside this, it was found that industries face difficulty in implementing TQM satisfactorily and efficiently due to considerable problems faced during the introduction, development and measurement of quality improvement. They noticed some barriers which hinders TQM implementation. Because of these barriers industries have not achieved the full benefits and advantages, which they were expecting from TQM before its implementation. Furthermore, poor results have given rise to the opinion that TQM does not work and in many cases the TQM initiatives have been abandoned declaring that TQM has failed (Griffin, 1998; Fisher, 1992; Witcher, 1994). These studies further identify the reasons behind the poor results and failure in improving performance

Literature review identifies the TQM barriers that need to be addressed for the successful implementation of TQM in the service industry, which influences business performance and customer service. Based on previously published literature on the TQM barriers (Talib et al., 2011) ,12 barriers were identified. These 12 barriers were utilized by Talib et al. (2011f) in their studies on the identification and classification of TQM barriers for the service industry that frequently occurred in TQM literature. The 12 barriers

2 Amar and Zain (2002)

Lack of coordination between departments

Wide difference of opinion between the quality and production/service department, and absence of quality circle concept 2 Amar and Zain (2002)

Lack of proper training and education Employees are not trained in problem identification and problem-solving techniques

Employees are not trained in group discussion and communication techniques

Employees are not trained in quality improvement skills 3 Jun et al (2004)

Lack of top-management commitment Top management is not committed to quality, Management’s compensation is not linked to achieving quality goals, Time constraints prohibit effective TQM implementation 3 Bhat and Rajashekhar (2009)

No benchmarking No targets, no attitude to attain higher productivity/efficiency, and Bhat and Rajashekhar (2009) best practices of other companies are not benchmarked 3 Jun et al (2004)

Poor planning There are inadequate resources to effectively employ TQM

Quality action plans are often vague

Time constraints prohibit effective TQM implementation

Quality is treated as a separate initiative

Strategic plans do not include quality goals 5 Jun et al