Total Quality Management

Running head: TQM

Total Quality Management

Suzanne Kagan

University of Phoenix

MGT 449

Joseph Paden

September 19, 2005

TQM

In this paper I will define total quality management (TQM). I will also include a description of the impact of globalization on quality. Compare and contrast traditional management styles with quality focused management styles. Lastly I will explain how TQM applies to my organization.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a comprehensive and structured approach to organizational management that seeks to improve the quality of products and services through ongoing refinements in response to continuous feedback. TQM requirements may be defined separately for a particular organization or may be in devotion to established standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9000 series. TQM can be useful to any type of organization; it originated in the manufacturing sector and has since been adapted for use in almost every type of organization imaginable, including schools, highway maintenance, hotel management, and churches (Green 2003).

TQM processes are divided into four chronological categories: plan, do, check, and act (the PDCA cycle). In the planning phase, people define the problem to be addressed, collect relevant data, and discover the problem's root cause. Next in the doing phase, people develop and implement a solution, and decide upon a measurement to gauge its effectiveness. Third is the checking phase, where people prove the results through before-and-after data comparison. The final phase acting is where, people document their results, inform others about process changes, and make recommendations for the problem to be addressed in the next PDCA cycle (Green 2003).

The large and growing importance of world trade is a major phenomenon of our time. This trend has been increasing from the merger of Europe into the European Union and by the rapid growth of a few of the less developed countries of Latin America, South America, and Asia. For example, China is now the third largest world economy behind the United States and Japan (Burril & Ledolter, 1999).

A customer needs assurance that quality products will be supplied while dealing assertively with any supplier. This assurance is principally important when customer and supplier are on a global basis, entailing separate legal systems and grievance procedures. Thus, the growth in world trade has been a major stimulus for developing successful ways for customers to feel certain about the quality of the goods supplied to them, since their customer could be thousands of miles across the ocean (Burrill & Ledolter, 1999).

One method for assuring quality control is to inspect all incoming products. This is expensive and seldom practical in the busy world of today (Burrill & Ledolter, 1999).

A more appropriate approach would be to have certainty in the quality systems of the various suppliers around the world. There are two methods that can be used to gain this assurance. The first one is for the customer to evaluate each supplier's system before conducting any business. This method is costly and very time-consuming for both the customer and the supplier. An additional, more practical system for gaining confidence is to insist that the supplier meet criteria that is suitable to the customer. This is the more accepted way to be sure that quality is acceptable for global business partners (Burrill & Ledolter, 1999).

Traditional management was normally