Total Quality Management: Case Analysis of the Highway Agency

The Total Quality Management ( TQM) can be defined as the holistic approach for the long term success which can be visible in the ongoing development in every aspect of the organization process. The overall transformation of the organization can go through various changes in different systems, structures, practices and the attitudes.

6. The organization and supplier should have ongoing discussions with information exchange so that success can be achieved by both parties.

Dayton, L. (1999). Critical success factors in total quality management systems: A practitioner-based study of united states quality programs. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Sarasota)Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/docview/304552688

In today’s business world, quality management is a key competitive issue. Total Quality Management, involves listening to people, communicating, including the people who do the work in the decision making process. Team managers should have a clear and inspiring goal for the group and should make sure to prominently exhibit the team mission statement on the work space, team web-site, and other office communication. Create an environment in which people are empowered, productive, and happy. I agree with the principles of TQM. The goals of TQM demonstrates appreciation for each person's unique value. Help people feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves and their individual job. Share the most important goals and direction for the group. Listen to learn and ask questions to provide guidance. Help employees feel rewarded and recognized for empowered behavior. Most importantly, it is beneficial for the company to motivate and empower teams and not just the individual.

Total quality management can be defined as a system of management that is based on the principle that every staff member needs to be committed to maintaining standards of work in every aspect of a company’s operations. This form of management is done in order to make sure that the entire organization can excel as a whole when it comes to the products or services that are important to the customer. Subsequently, this form of management has two fundamental operational goals. These goals are; careful design of the product or service, and ensuring that the organizations systems can produce the design at a consistent rate. What makes these two goals so important is the fact that they cannot be accomplished without the entire organizations unity. Furthermore this is how the term total quality management, was established.

In early 1990’s, Teradyne experienced a major change in leadership with the new CEO Alex D’Arbeloff. Alex grew interested in the risk of losing Teradyne’s competitive edge due to quality and reliability concerns. Although D’Arbeloff believed the team was exceedingly competent, he believed there were major operating problems regarding reporting and performance measurements. To minimize these problems, D’Arbeloff embraced total quality management (TQM). After 5 years of intensive effort, TQM principles were embedded into most aspects of work at the company and resulted in noticeable improvement in manufacturing quality and customer service. However, the engineering organization was resisting TQM because of the resulting late and over budget projects.

Although an organization may consist of many different functional specialties often organized into vertically structured departments, it is the horizontal processes interconnecting these functions that are the focus of TQM.

Although TQM was originally intended for the industrial sector, Deming (1986) pointed out in the preface to his book “Out of the Crisis” that his management principles could be applied equally well in service industries. The service industries, he emphasized, “include government provisions, education and the delivery”. In fact, whenever an organization has a series of activities directed towards a clear final result, it has business processes which can be examined and developed by TQM techniques.

This particular case gives phenomenal examples of TQM, a term that is synonymous with continuous quality improvement (CQI), in a health services organization. TQM shows long-term application of CQI with assistance of the corporate hierarchy (McLaughlin, Johnson & Sollecito, 2012). Even though the corporate personal in the organization attempted to disprove that there was need for restructuring, HCA management under Dr. Paul Batalden saw the need for this metamorphous (McLaughlin, Johnson & Sollecito, 2012). When the time was presented physicians, management, corporate and all other levels of personal took the opportunity to revamp their system to the ever changing world to compete with the competitive side of healthcare (McLaughlin, Johnson

Harrogate Borough council has been using TQM with reasonable success and the fact that this has been coupled with benchmarking for performance management shows that the council takes performance seriously. Total quality management is now one of the most important concepts of the modern strategic management (Shewhart, 1980). TQM is about making incremental improvements in the processes and their flow is generally from bottom to top as opposed to other concepts regarding bringing about radical changes in the process designs where the flow is generally from top to bottom. Generally, in a management scenario operations level is avoided and TQM inculcates a strategic view at the operations level as the improvements in the processes can only be brought about if departments interact with each other. In the absence of this strategic interaction among departments, failed projects could be produced for example technological advancement brought about by the R&D department can be of no use if the firm does not have or cannot acquire the capabilities to produce or implement it. Hence, inter-organizational collaboration is one of the requirements of successful process improvement utilizing organizations resources and capabilities. Furthermore, TQM should not be considered as ends instead of means to achieve overall strategic goal. Overall strategy should be the guiding force behind TQM because without overall strategy managers cannot decide which operations are

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 following is an attempt to analyze AT&T's use of Total Quality Management throughout its organization. Since AT&T is an elaborately enormous corporation I will focus my study to AT&T Power Systems/Lucent Technologies. This division of AT&T has been the industry standard for excellence since TQM was first introduced to the company. AT&T Power Systems has become one the world's most dynamic companies because of its use of TQM. I will provide a brief description of who AT&T Power Systems is, a description of the events that lead up to its use of TQM, AT&T's TQM philosophy, and how this philosophy was implemented. Finally I will discuss the benefits AT&T Power Systems realized through their use

Due to the increasing pace at which life operated, businesses in many industries had become reliant upon creating a quick product, not necessarily evaluating if quick was necessarily going to result positively. Over the last two decades, among various industry lines, it became more commonly understood that quality management may help organizations to repeat work less often, as the initial product or service that was delivered, was of a higher caliber, resulting favorably for the company as well as for the client. Quality management has now become a more regularly used practice throughout all phases of projects, allowing project managers to operate with a clear, defined process, and letting upper management determine if work should stop short for the sake of time, not sacrificing the quality of what has been completed.

The fact that globalization has expanded the market for organizations means that TQM is more important than ever before. Customer demands are higher and if a company does not create products and services that meet their expectations they can easily access the same or similar products and services from another company. If managers do not implement TQM into their company procedure then they will fail to meet the high standards of customers all over the world and eventually lose their business. When it comes to implementing TQM, it’s the mangers responsibility to create an environment where people can work together to improve their work processes. If the ownership or senior management does not buy into this concept you will never succeed. Many people in leadership roles are either too set in their ways or closed minded to the necessary change needed to really improve the way things get done. You have to buy into the concept that there is always a better way to do something. By tapping into all the knowledge and experience your employees possess, you develop solutions that not only improve your execution, you provide everyone with a sense of accomplishment.. These "process improvement teams" give employees a chance to help steer the future direction

The main principal comprises of internal customer in relation to TQM as well as encouraging the implementation of TQM program on