The Quality Management Theory with an Emphasis on Kaizen and Efqm

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.

The history of quality management can be traced back to the Japanese during the economy-rebuilding period of the 1950’s. They emphasized on prevention rather than inspection, customer satisfaction, continuous improvement and leadership training. These principles formed the Total Quality Management (TQM) system. Concisely TQM emphasized on “Quality of Management” rather than “Management of Quality” The EFQM model was an improvement

The article highlighted several areas on how quality management affects the performance of an organization. Studies done have come back with mixed results. Some studies have proven that implementing quality implementation can have many benefits to an organization. However some studies have shown that organizations that have implemented total quality managements do not necessarily outperform organizations that do not or have not implemented total quality management programs. Of the results that have been published for organizations that had issues with quality management implementation several

People, in general, have certain expectations of a health care organization. The main one, I believe, most people would agree with is to have standards to provide low-cost effective quality care. This is often presented in the principal foundation of an organization’s model of health care, embedded and established in the infrastructure of the organization. These models are responsible for the approaches of an organization’s performance, quality assessments, and quality management. As an employee of Avon hospital, a Cleveland Clinic (CC) health system hospital, I stand by their model set forth by their six fundamental beliefs and values of quality, integrity, compassion, collaboration, service, and innovation, which is the source of the

Yasin and Alavi (1999) conducted a quantitative study to determine if Total Quality Management (TQM) can produce quality improvement

One of the method used to motivate is by substituting the outdated procedure of command and control with delegation and empowerment. This is done by introducing policies and strategies aimed at creating a favorable environment for all the employees to be participate in improvements. In addition, the traditional focus on results should not be overemphasized immediately during initial stages of kaizen implementation. Instead the employees should be allowed to concentrate first on the process improvement until it gains momentum.

Quality management is an act that monitor all activities that needed to maintain and sustain high quality output, continuous improvement of process and product to a desire level of excellence in order to create customer satisfaction (Flynn, Schroeder, & Sakakibara, 1994, p. 342). Nowadays, increase in globalization and international trade had led to the increase of competition in the global market. The increase of competition had forced companies to focus on the concept of quality in their business and discover that effective quality management can increase their competitive advantage in the global market (Anderson, Rungtusanatham, & Schroeder, 1994).

Kaizen’s principle aims for improvement, effectiveness, safety, and waste reduction and those who follow the approach often find a whole lot more in return (Torrington and Hall, 1995). Inventory is used more efficiently as are employee skills and more people are satisfied as they have direct impact on the process. Team members are more satisfied and most likely to commit doing a good job, thus satisfied customers are more likely to stay. It focuses on identifying problems at their source, solving them at their source, and changing standards to ensure the problem stays solved.

The secrete to successful quality control was in the method of product management the Japanese were using. The Japanese organizations used an approach

Quality management is an integrative management philosophy aimed at the continuous improvement of performance of processes, products and services to achieve and exceed customer needs and expectations. It is a way of managing the whole business process to ensure complete customer satisfaction at every stage, internally and externally’. It transforms an organizational status to a world-class level and helps organizations achieve excellence. It has evolved as a management paradigm to improve organizational effectiveness competitiveness and

The second element - personal discipline. Discipline is paramount to success. Kaizen demands each employee to increase their self-discipline in all aspects of labor - management of their time, the quality of performance of the work, observance of requirements and regulations, expenditure of material and financial resources, and so

Everyone has different roles within the organization from the top management, middle management and the supervisor along with the ground workers, they all focus on different aspects of the business as needed but the Kaizen philosophy has created a level in the hierarchy that all the employees from different departments and levels perform a similar task of implementing a continuous improvement culture within the organization operation

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.

They do believe in quality programs, but in complex organizations with scarce idle resources, they prefer to be more certain of where it is best to spend discretionary money. Some quality managers have become skeptical about measuring COQ. They have seen increasing regulations and standards, such as the ISO 9000 series, in which installing any form of COQ measurement is perceived as more of a documentation compliance exercise for certification to a standard rather than a benefit to improve performance. Veterans of quality management believe quality just for quality’s sake—meaning conformance to a standard—is not sufficient. They say quality should be viewed as a condition in which value entitlement is realized for customers, suppliers, employees and shareholders in every aspect of a relationship. There always will be debates among shareholders, customers, employees, taxpayers and environ-

Even though Deming, Juran, and Crosby all have similarities between their key principles in quality management there are several aspects that are different to the approaches. They all recognize the importance of measurement to improve quality; however, the level of importance each emphasizes is different. Crosby and Juran view the cost of quality as the focus of measurement whereas Deming does not use the cost of quality as a focus (Suarez, 1992, p.18). To Deming, meeting the customers’ needs and expectations about a product or service is of higher importance to quality. He also considers unknown costs such as the impact of lost customers to be more significant than visible costs (Suarez, 1992, p.18).