TQM in Service Organizations

TQM in Service Organizations

Total quality management (TQM) is an approach to improving the effectiveness and flexibility of businesses as a whole. It is essentially a way of organizing and involving the whole organization; every department, every activity, every single person at every level. TQM is about creating a quality culture where the aim of every member of staff is to delight their customers, and where the structure of their organization allows them to do so. Organizations have to find ways of keeping close to their customers to be able to respond to their changing tastes, needs and wants.

Quality Management is crucial to effective operations management, particularly continuous improvement. Basics About Quality Management are:

• Benchmarking is the use of standard measurements in a service or industry for comparison to other organizations in order to gain perspective on organizational performance. Benchmarking uses standard measurements in a service or industry for comparison to other organizations in order to gain perspective on organizational performance.

• Continuous Improvement, in regard to organizational quality and performance, focuses on improving customer satisfaction through continuous and incremental improvements to processes, including by removing unnecessary activities and variations.

• Failure Mode and Effects Analysis is an approach that helps identify and prioritize potential equipment and process failures.

• ISO9000 is an internationally recognized standard of quality, and includes guidelines to accomplish the ISO9000 quality standard. Organizations can be optionally audited to earn ISO9000 certification.

• Total Quality Improvement (TQM) is a set of management practices throughout the organization, geared to ensure the organization consistently meets or exceeds customer requirements. TQM places strong focus on process measurement and controls as means of continuous improvement.

• Six Sigma is a quality management initiative that takes a very data-driven, methodological approach to eliminating defects with the aim to reach six standard deviations from the desired target of quality. Six standard deviations means 3.4 defects per million.

Continually improving a product stays ahead of the times and the needs of customers and society, means improving its technological capabilities and overall product quality.

Total Quality Management is the way for organizations should focus because at this time it is to show standards and quality to compete in global era. Implementing TQM specifics related to the framework and implementation of TQM varies between different management professionals and TQM program facilitators.

But all TQM philosophies share common threads that emphasize quality, teamwork, and proactive philosophies of management and process improvement. To Implementing TQM, companies have to understand various characteristics necessary to succeed within an organization.