In Search of Excellence - Past, Present and Future Su Mi Dahlgaard-Park Institute of Service Management Lund University

Toyota is the world’s largest car manufacturer beating out Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler. They had double digit gains in April of 2014 delivering an impressive 13.3 percent more automobiles than April of the previous year. Despite the recall debacle that happened, they have been able to hold the No. 1 spot this year (Le, 2014). Toyota has numerous comparative benefits over their competition. They have a solid working model that produces high margins, a strong international brand that is known for quality and a business model that permits them to produce multiple car models for a very low amount of money while doing it at a fast pace and producing the best quality.

Although Toyota invented this new hybrid vehicle more than ten years ago, it did not offer the car to the USA consumers immediately. The main reason was that Toyota was aware of the new technology challenges. While Toyota was on the market research and new product development, other companies were focusing on merger and acquisition. Brand recognition, technology changes and improvement take several years to finish and Toyota wanted to launch a product which has cleared all the possible obstacles such as space, efficiency, speed, safety, weight which can meet all consumers ' expectations.

The President Ralph Larsen has realized that Wengart has some major problems with the quality however he is focusing on the profitability instead of the longevity of the company. He needs to have the team focus on improving the quality problem or the company’s profits will continue to decrease. Larsen in the effort to improve the quality has decided to seek out help from an OD practitioner who suggests to Ralph to implement Top Quality Management (TQM). Larsen feels that this should be easy to implement and hands it off to Kent Kelly the Vice President. He feels that the TQM program was a matter of common sense (Brown, 2011, p. 365).

The Toyota Prius value delivery network begins with the company Toyota itself. Strong management, design, and marketing must all coalesce to ensure that the Prius is designed and marketed properly. Internal research, development and innovation are crucial in maintaining market share and increasing share of the customer in such a competitive industry. Day to day operations must run smoothly at Toyota in order for it to focus on new product ideas and promotional efforts. However, many companies must look beyond their own value

Automobile industry is a faster growing industry nowadays than any other industry. Most car manufacturers face the challenge of providing the best quality products to remain competitive to retain or regain market share during this tough economic times. Every organization has the opportunity to make more profit than their competitors do by improving delivery method and its impact on the company’s turnover. Toyota Corporation has implemented different plans and techniques to remain competitive and make profit. One of the innovative plans Toyota Corp. created is the Prius. The Prius brought about a major revolution in car manufacturing industry, and opened a place in the market

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an improvement tool that is widely used in many companies. It consists of many aspects including Managing people as well as business processes in order to maintain customer satisfaction. With TQM, Businesses starts to do the right thing from the start and to ensure zero error. Therefore, it is important to learn the principle of TQM and how it acts in organizations with its advantages and disadvantages.

Today, TQM concept is the most comprehensive, it has emerged into the main stream of organizations and became a function like any other activity like marketing or commercial.

Its mission has not changed much in the past few years, for the current mission of Toyota can be characterized as becoming the world's leading vehicle manufacturer, which means that it expects to sell more cars than any competitors, whilst setting benchmarks on product quality and production efficiency. Toyota also aims at providing good quality cars at competitive and affordable prices in order to well establish

During 2009 and 2010 Toyota dealt with a large vehicle recall, and their actions which followed the recall nearly sent them spiraling out of business. Then shortly thereafter in 2010, Japan experienced one of the largest earthquakes and Tsunamis in their history which devastated Japan and Toyota’s supplier’s and manufacturer’s. These conditions dramatically changed the production capabilities

Toyota realises the importance of its customers time. The increasing use of the internet, especially in the early stages of a purchase, has made the company 's website an important asset. Therefore an updated website will all models, colours, specifications and options is of vital importance.

Similar to the previous concepts and components of organizational structure, the principles of effective management have progressed since early management theories into many approaches that both share similar characteristics and vary in many ways. One of the most significant changes from early approaches can be attributed to the total quality management theory (TQM) developed by W. Edward Deming, which emphasized the idea of continuous improvements in every aspect of an organization (CSU Global, 2015). Notions such as the adoption of new philosophies, supervisor assistance, and the elimination of boundaries and numerical standards are all attributes stemming from the TQM approach that remains alive in many organizations today (CSU Global, 2015). However, there remains components of the TQM system that do not apply to every management approach but are useful in the examination into the similarities and differences between the many management theories.

Critically assess an organisation (from any sector or size) in relation to the application of “Quality Culture” and its relation to the “Global Competitiveness”. Devise and discuss an improvement plan. Your response should include an introductory section containing key organisational contextual information such as, sector, products, numbers employed, key finance measures, growth trends, market trends.

Toyota is among the leading automobile manufacturers of the world selling almost 9 million models at all the five continents. Toyota has been awarded a position in the top 10 fortune global 500 enterprise and the company was ranked among the most renowned automaker and it have the dedication towards providing complete customer satisfaction. And the company has also tended to provide and shape up the effective set of values and principles which have

Later, they have realized that TQM is much more than just shop-floor improvements. The definitions of quality incorporate factors like top management commitment, leadership, team work, training and development, rewards and recognition, involvement and empowerment of employees etc. These critical factors are the foundation for transformational orientation to create a sustainable improvement culture for competitive advantage on a continuous basis.

This reduces cost for the company correspondingly increasing the overall profit for the company. With better services and good quality products, customers are satisfied resulting in fewer complaints and better brand value. Every production enterprise requires to decrease the defects generated in it’s products. With the help of statistical principles, it can minimize the number of defective items generated thus reducing wastage of resources and improving the efficiency of the system. But TQM being an extensive study, it requires an in-depth knowledge, to be implemented to notice effective changes in the production or the defect ratio. For TQM to be implemented in the unit, all the employees need to go through extensive training which might result in wastage of time-resources as well as there are chances of resistance to learn from the employees. In addition, it is a slow process, in the sense, that direct results cannot be observed. Being a long process, it can not be used to correct the necessary and immediate problems. TQM focuses on task standardization, which can discourage creativity. Moreover, it requires a lot of resources being contributed to it’s planning and implementation not only making it resource-consuming process but also an expensive one.