Total Quality Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words - 2

Total Quality Management - Essay Example TQM was wielded into a coherent operating philosophy in Japan in the 1950s in its search for better methods to stimulate product quality. Its wisdom and usefulness caught the interest of W. Edward Deming and Joseph Juran who in the 1960s weaved into the Japanese concept their own ideas of quality generation. The TQM strategy was thus enriched by Deming’s statistical process control and Juran’s teamwork and plan-do-check-action concepts. In 1962, all three quality circles combined as TQM was registered with the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers as a workable concept of organizational process. By the 1980s, when Japan was rising as a global economic power, TQM was picked up by US and European companies.It was institutionalized in 1988 with the establishment of the European Foundation of Quality Management and has since become the basis for the granting of such quality achievement awards as the International Standards Organization. To implement TQM successfully, a n organization must bring its eight key elements into play.These are ethics, integrity and trust, which serve as the TQM basic foundation; training, teamwork and leadership which act as the building blocks; recognition as the roof; and communication as the binding mortar. Based on the strong foundation of ethics, integrity and trust, the building blocks of training, teamwork and leadership are set in place to reach the roof of recognition. Communication then binds all the elements together to work for the accomplishment of the TQM objectives. In so doing, there are three things to consider: the cost of quality, the counsel of quality gurus, and customer satisfaction. I. Cost of Quality The cost of quality is the extra time, effort and money spent by a company for preventing poor-quality products or services from reaching the consumers. In the words of Crosby, P. (1979), it is the price to pay for non-conformance. The cost of poor quality (Juran, J.,1988). As such, the cost of quality is distinguished from the company's expense on raw material, production and labor in that it involves, for the most part, activities on reworks, returns and customer complaints. There are four known types of quality cost: 1. External failure cost - this is associated with defects found after the customer receives the product, the cost incurred in processing customer complaints, returns, recalls and warranty claims. 2. Internal failure cost - the cost of quality associated with defects found before the customer receives the product, which is spent mostly on scrap, rework, re-inspection, re-testing, material review and material downgrade