The Importance of the Role of Top Management

The Total Quality Management model is limited in its scope of improvement. Total Quality Management establishes targets for performance rather than focusing on continuous improvement. This perspective is to narrow because it fails to consider the overall improvement process. To be effective, management must incorporate all aspects of the business into a dynamic improvement process.

* Total quality management (TQM): This model is concerned with the performance of all processes in an organisation, and the products and services that are the outcomes of those processes. It seeks continuous improvement and will involve everyone in the quest for quality.

Total quality management is a management philosophy aimed at continuous growth in quality improvement of products, processes and services to achieve and surpass quality standards. It consists of strategic planning, organizing and implementing each process activity and of removing all the wasted effort and energy that is routinely spent. It is a methodology of strategic overview of quality and focus on prevention not detection of problems.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a complete and structured approach to organizational management that seeks to make better the quality of products and services through ongoing refinements in answer to continuous feedback. The importance and value of TQM was stressed by European Foundation of Quality Management to reach total customer satisfaction. TQM necessities may be defined separately for a organization or may be in adherence to established standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9000 series. Total Quality Management can define aims for the continuous improvement in all levels and functions of the organization. The continuous improvement suggests that quality management system should be a circle.

A core definition of total quality management (TQM) describes a management approach to long–term success through customer satisfaction. In a TQM effort, all members of an organization participate in improving processes, products, services, and the culture in which they work.

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 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).

First, it is essential to decompose the concept “Total Quality Management” to clearly understand its goal: “Total” goes for the fact that quality involves everyone and all activities in the company, “Quality” means conformance to Requirements “ Meeting Customer Requirements” and “Management” because Quality can and must be managed. 2 The TQM model is based on the hypothesis that a company’s survival is only possible if a competitive level is achieved and maintained for each of the so called «6 dimensions of quality»: • • • • • • Product & service quality On-time delivery Fair price Employees satisfaction Product & process safety Environment conservation.

Quality management is not an easy thing to maintain, therefore, there are certain challenges that it must face before being successful. Some of them are ineffective TQM model, the human resource barriers, and also lack of management committment.

From the leadership perspective, the total quality approach to doing business is substantially different than the traditional approach. While the traditional positive leadership elements such as aligning personnel with vision; providing a sense of direction; communicating effectively and often; empowering; training; and mentoring should be present in the scope of organizational management, “Leadership for quality is based on the philosophy that continually improving people, process, and products will, in turn, improve: Quality; Value; Productivity; Service; Market share; Longevity; Business expansion and Return on investment.” according to David Goetsch and Stanley Davis in the book Quality Management for Organizational Excellence (Goetsch & Davis, 2013, p. 127). Competition is an important element for any business or organization both nationally and internationally, making the quality produced by an organization essential to deliver a compelling competitive advantage. The implementation of Total Quality

Oakland, 1989 (cited Lakhe and Mohanty, 1993: p9-10) has defined Total Quality Management (TQM) as an “approach to improving the effectiveness and flexibility of business as a whole. It is essentially a way of organizing and involving the whole organization; every department, every activity, every single person at every level”.

[Abstract Besterfield D, Michna Besterfield C, Besterfield Glen and Besterfield-Sacre Mary Total Quality Management (3rd Edition) (2002)]

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.

Total quality management there are several variations this are some of the way to have a quality improvement in your business. A good way is for everyone within an organization to take responsibility and take action for emphasizes the need for long-term care and continuous improvement. Other ways for one to have quality improvements is to use six sigma and empower of employees. Six sigma is

Introduction - Total quality management (TQM) has been defined as ‘continuous improvement of every production output whether it be a product or a service, by removing inefficient variations and by improving the backbone of the work process’. International managers like their domestic counterparts have found that incorporating the notion of total quality management into their management process and style can give the competitive advantage.