ELEMENTS OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an emerging system for organisation management that values quality. It puts a lot of emphasis on the participation of all members in an organisation to ensure long term success through customer satisfaction and benefits to society and all organisation members. It integrates all organisation functions and departments (marketing, Finance, design, engineering and production, customer service...) to meet customer needs and achieve the organisation goals.

Elements of TQM include:

a)      Quality: Quality systems have to used and implemented by an organization and quality strategies to be put in place and should be those that are continuously reviewed so that it can produce product that are of quality and are conformant to the standards.

b)     Customer satisfaction: Organizations are basically in existence as a business and thus have customers. It's important for the customers to be satisfied and delighted so that they come back and buy more and more or what is known as a repeat purchase. Delighted customers will eventually be evangelistic to the organization’s product (tell others about the organizations product). TQM advocates that managers and employees become so customer focused that they continually find new ways to meet or exceeding customer's expectations. We must accept the concept that quality gets customer orders and meets their needs and expectations. This is the strategic goal of TQM and it helps the organization to be competitive in its environment since it gives the customers satisfaction,

c)      Continuous improvement: A concept that recognizes that quality improvement is a journey with no end and that there is a need for continually looking for new approaches for improving quality. By this the organization produces quality products since its always looking to continually improve their products and thus bring customer satisfaction.

d)     Quality measurement Quality of a product is very important. Some unscrupulous business people will try as much as possible to produce counterfeit goods. Organizations' will thus have to put in place preventive measures to try and curb this. Allowing the organization to initiate corrective action, set priorities and evaluate progress. Standards and measures should reflect customer requirements and changes that need to be introduced in the internal business of providing those requirements. The emphasis is on "doing the right thing right the first time." By this the organization is able to produce quality products that will be of satisfaction to the customers.

e)        Leadership and commitment: Top management must be the driving force behind TQM. Managers who are the leaders must exhibit personal support by using quality improvement concepts in their management style, incorporating quality in their strategic planning process, and providing financial and staff support. Experience shows that substantial gains come only after management or leaders make a long term commitment, usually five years or more, in improving quality. Customer focus must be constantly renewed to keep that goal foremost.

f)       Employee empowerment: Training is vital for the process of TQM implementation and achieving it. By Empowering the employees with knowledge of the processes the employees are able to understand what is expected of them and also help to bring about employee participation is also an integral part of the process.

g)      Teamwork synergy Team work is a crucial element of total quality management and as such it is important that employees work together in teams since mis gives room for brainstorming ideas and coming up with various solutions which would improve the existing processes and systems and hence bring about quality improvement and customer satisfaction.

h)     Stakeholder's symmetry: The stakeholders need to uphold justice, fairness and equity for the organization to have social peace progress and prosperity. With this the organization is able to focus on quality of products and customer satisfaction.

i)       Culture: The culture requires quality in all aspects of the company's operations, with processes being done right the first time and defects and waste eradicated from operations. Firms with strong comprehensive culture implement highly the TQM elements of top management leadership, people, process, customer and supplier management. This means that any organization that cultivates a quality culture will be competitive in its environment.