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The meaning of TQM
Total Quality Management (TQM) is the name given to programmes that seek to ensure that goods are produced and services are supplied of the highest quality. TQM thus is an organization wide approach to continuously improving the quality of all the organization’s processes, products and services. TQM programmes are aimed at identifying and reducing or eliminating causes of wasted time and effort.
Activities in the organization are classified as either:
a) Core activities which add value to the business
b) Support activities which do not themselves add value
c) Discretionary activities such as checking products and dealing with complaints, these are symptoms of failure and should be reduced.
TQM rests on the following premises
- The firm adopts a customer orientation such that a quality product or service must be related to what the customer wants - both internal and external customers. Suppliers are chosen on the basis of consistency, quality and reliability of their product. Price is a secondary consideration.
- Design quality: TQM also requires that organizations pay attention to product design and is aimed at getting quality right the first time. The basic principle is that costs of getting things right the first time are less than the costs of correction.
- Conformance to quality. The organization should also ensure that the production system is designed in such a manner as to ensure that the final product conforms to the design specification. With TQM inspection should be used primarily for improving production processes rather than for detecting and correcting errors.
- There is absolute commitment by the chief executive and all senior managers to doing what is needed to change the culture.
- TQM requires that employees and suppliers be adequately trained so that all parties know what is expected of the.?
- TQM requires management to encourage education and self-improvement at every level. They should remove barriers to workmanship by providing adequate equipment and encouraging pride in one’s work.
- In TQM communication is excellent and multi way.
- There is commitment to improvement in all processes. Attention is focused first on the processes and second on results.
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
BPR is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed.
BPR is a radical technique that has been advocated to overhaul existing business processes and practices with a view to improving organizational performance. BPR places emphasis
on processes as a change mechanism. Typical processes include ordering, buying, manufacturing, product delivery and invoicing.
In each case the idea is to ask radical questions about why things are done in a particular way and whether alternative methods could achieve better results.
The following main principles of BPR have been identified.
- Organize around outcomes not tasks.
- Ensure that those who use the output perform more of the process themselves rather than passing it on.
- Link parallel activities rather than integrate results i.e. consolidation of tasks
- Put the decision point where the work is performed - empower the people who do the work to make decision.
- Capture information only once - ideally at its source.
BPR and TQM are neither identical nor in conflict, they are complementary. Both are radical change processes. They give a lot of focus to the customer. TQM aims at providing a quality product/service that satisfy customers’ wants and in BPR the focus of performance and payment shifts from activities to results (expressed in terms of value created for the customer).
Both BPR and TQM pay great attention to empowerment of employees and at the same time a lot of room is given to communication, which is two way.
Kavungya answered the question on April 26, 2021 at 11:33
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