3.5 TQM - core concepts
The principles of the experts that we have been discussing are brought together in TQM. The aim is to integrate customer and organisational performance requirements into a single management system. Broadly, the core concepts can be defined as:
- Strategic. Strategic planning that reflects a commitment to meeting the needs of all stakeholders (external and internal customers, the organisation, the community within which the organisation operates and the business partners). At the heart of strategic planning must be the quality of output and performance.
- Informed management. Effective management is based on accurate, adequate and relevant information, properly analysed and distributed. This means that all key processes and their outputs should be suitably measured. The information should also be available on customers, competitors, business partners, employees and all associated costs. This information should be suitably analysed to provide support for management decision making on planning, processes, and measurement of outcomes and review of procedures.
- Good leadership. This comes not only from the chief executive but also from all managers. It must convey an orientation on the customer through clearly expressed values and high expectations from themselves as well as their colleagues. This leads to adopting the part of a role model for all those who are subordinates. Where employee participation is high in providing input into improving processes, the factor of role modelling becomes more important because the means of evaluating and implementing suggestions, as well as providing support to develop ideas, takes on greater dimensions. This takes us away from the "managing" (controlling) function of management to an empowering-the-employees function because no one can know more about a job than the one doing it.
- Customer focused. The interaction that a customer has with the organisation and the product pre-sale, during the sale process and post-sale, is what determines the quality of the organisation in the eyes of the customer. An organisation not only needs to keep its existing market but also develop new markets for new products. This means being sensitive to customer and market sentiment and preventing customer related problems. This includes having a short design to market lead-time so that identified, and changing, customer needs are promptly addressed.
- Continuous improvement, or kaizen , is at the heart of TQM. This means problems should be addressed where they start and processes should be improved whenever possible. Various general ways to improve can be identified, including enhancing value of organisation to customers through new products, reducing mistakes, shortening lead-times and raising productivity. Continuous improvement requires inter-departmental working or the use of multi-disciplinary teams. TQM sees the whole organisation as a collection of various processes, each aimed at delivering the best possible final output to the customer as well as the organisation. All the processes are linked to each other, vertically and horizontally, through a network of communications and responsibility, giving each person involved an ownership in the product.
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