Operations Management and the Importance of Interdepartmental Communication

Total Quality Management is a management technique adopted by most manufacturing organizations. Total Quality Management influences every level in a business. TQM in general is viewed as organization set up which will help to manufacture products at lowest cost by the following various management techniques through continuous improvement. Advanced expectations began in manufacturing and are associated with manufactured products, are now applied to all sectors including the service

Operations Management in an organisation is repsonsible for managing and in making decisions concerning the activities that convert inputs into outputs , that is goods and services. This covers both short term actvities as well as longer term activities to meet strategic goals. Inputs can be the raw materaials need to manufacture goods such as furniture or the computers needed to create a service like online shopping site. Operation management’s role is to make decisions to improve how operation activities function, for example, to improve the final quality of the output or to change production methods to be more efficient in terms of cost and in time.

The total quality management (TQM) incorporates quality into all the activities of the organization through an ongoing process. This control makes sure that there is a continuous improvement in all the activities and there will not be any chances for defects. TQM ensures safety and helps improve customer satisfaction (Daft, 2014).

Total Quality Management (TQM) may be defined as a continuous quest for excellence by creating the right skills and attitudes in people to make prevention of defects possible and satisfy customers/users totally at all times. TQM is an organization-wide activity that has to reach every individual within an organization (Lakhe and Mohanty, 1993: p.9).

Operations management focuses on managing the processes of producing and distributing products and services. Operations activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. It deals with all operations within the organization. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. The nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc.

Within the past two decades, total quality management represents one of the most profound changes in the way companies are now being managed. According to Biech (1994), "Quality improvement (TQM) is a customer-focused, quality-centered, fact-based, team driven, senior management-led process to achieve an organizations strategic imperative through continuous process improvement" (pp. 1-2). The benefits associated with TQM includes higher quality, lower cost

Total Quality Management (TQM) involves developing quality and execution of product and service of a company. Customer relish is the main purpose which generates customer attention and satisfies customer expectation. So, it can be said that concentrating on customer fulfillment, total quality management manages peoples and business processes. In other words, Total Quality Management includes performance, appearance, easy accessibility, delivery and maintenance or after sales service, cost efficiency and value. Total Quality Management takes consider each and every measures taken at all levels and involving the entire company workforce. According to Ahire et al.,

Manufacturing and servicing companies, have different measurements of quality. The manufacturing company bases its quality off of tangible products. One way of measuring quality in a tangible item is conformance, or a preset order of specifications. Some other common ways manufacturing company’s value quality is durability, performance, features, serviceability, and features.

Total quality management (TQM) is the organization-wide effort to install and make permanent a climate in which it continuously improves its ability to deliver high-quality products and services to customers. While there is no widely agreed-upon approach, TQM efforts typically draw heavily on the previously-developed tools and techniques of quality control. As a business phenomenon, TQM enjoyed widespread attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s before being overshadowed by ISO 9000, Lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma

Operations management is generally described as the planning, arrangement, and control of activities that change raw materials or an organization's input into finished products and services. The overall activities covered by operations management include the creation, development, manufacture, and distribution of products. The concept also relates to various activities such as inventory control, controlling purchases, quality control, logistics, storage, and evaluation ("Operations Management in McDonalds", n.d.). Since operations management covers the entire operations in an organization, it mainly focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of the firm's processes.

In any business, the achievable goal is to have a successful form of operations management. The function of this goal is to plan, coordinate, and control resources that are needed to produce a company’s products and services. This area is a critical function within every organization and plays a vital role in the success of any company. Over the course of the years and through changing economies, operations management and its decisions have been altered to reflect updated standards, conditions, and technology. These areas and activities that have been developed are often unseen and overlooked. The evolution of operations management and its purposes were derived from several gurus whose innovation expanded from assembly lines to quality management and strategic perspectives. Operations management has grown to include an emphasis on better quality goods and services, technology, and automation: far exceeding the initial expectation of just minimized costs.

There are many researches showing that total quality management is the predominant factor to remain business organizations’ sustainable competitiveness and generate the best result (e.g., Easton & Jarrell, 1998; Hendricks & Singhal, 1997; Lemak et al., 1997; Samson & Terziovski, 1999; Shetty, 1993). What is quality? How could a good total quality management dedicate to organization? Are they the same in any organizations? Understanding the importance of quality, many organizations have appointed a Quality Manager to manage quality operation as a whole. In order to study the contributions of TQM, take a medium-size manufacturing as an example, what should a quality manager do to improve the overall performance? In this

Total Quality Management (TQM), is a management system that involves all organization functions, which focuses on meeting customers’ needs and organizational objectives which involve all employees continual improvement, and that seeks to improve the quality of products and services through ongoing refinements in response to continuous feedback (Rouse, 2005)

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an operational perspective dedicated to consumer satisfaction and continuous advancement; accordingly, TQM is devoted to the superiority and to remaining the finest in all occupations. Since TQM objectives are to decrease expenditures and enhance quality, it can be utilized as a course to implement a comprehensive inexpensive or a differentiation corporate strategy. (Wheelen, T. L., Hunger, J. D., Hoffman, A. N., Bamford, C. E., 2015)

Globalization has resulted in transformation of businesses from craft production to mass production. Due to globalization, there is fierce competition in the market where cost and quality are the deciding factors. Quality is something what the customer expects and pays for. And managing and continuously improving the quality of the product/process to maximize an organization’s competitiveness where all members of an organization are involved is called as Total Quality Management. It is a management approach to long–term success through customer satisfaction rather than short term improvements.