Introduction
to Business MGT 211
VU
Lesson
37
TOTAL
QUALITY MANAGEMENT
The
advice of U.S. business
consultant W. Edwards Deming on
quality was heeded
more
widely
in Japan than at home until
recently. Now U.S. companies
are increasingly
customer-
driven,
quality initiatives exist at
all levels of the
corporation, and more
measurements are
used
to document progress objective
and identify areas for
improvement. Rather
than
occasional,
quality efforts are now
continuous.
Managing
for Quality
Total
Quality Management (TQM) (or
Quality Assurance)--the sum of
all
activities
involved in getting high-quality
products into the
marketplace.
Customer
focus is the starting point
and includes methods of
determining what
customers
want, then causing all
the company's activities and
people to be
directed
toward fulfilling those
needs and creating customer
satisfaction.
i.
Planning
for Quality--To achieve
high quality, managers must
plan for
production
processes (including equipment,
methods, worker skills,
and
materials).
1.
Performance
Quality--the performance
features offered by a
product.
2.
Quality
Reliability--consistency of a
product's quality from
unit
to
unit.
ii.
Organizing
for Quality--Although
everyone in a company
contributes
to
product quality, responsibility
for specific aspects of
total quality
management
is often assigned to specific
departments and jobs.
iii.
Quality--Directing
for quality means that
managers must
motivate
employees
throughout the company to
achieve quality
goals.
1.
Quality
ownership means that
quality belongs to each
person
who
creates it while performing a
job.
iv.
Controlling
for Quality--Managers
must establish specific
quality
standards
and measurements.
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