Total Quality Management approaches

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a set of approaches to improve organization quality in different services. Total Quality Management is a direct approach to management for improving the quality of customer service and meeting customer expectations and performance. There are various quality management techniques adopted by different organizations. Some of the major approaches for TQM  given by different quality gurus are as follows.

Approaches from different quality gurus

1. Deming approach

2. Juran’s approach

3. crosby’s approach

4. Feigenbaum's approach

5. Ishikawa’s approach

Deming approach

• The best known of the “early” pioneers, is credited with popularizing quality control in Japan in the early 1950s. Today, he is regarded as a national hero in that country and is the father of the world-famous Deming prize for quality.

Deming’s 14 Points are as follows:

1. Create constancy of purpose for improving products and services.

2. Adopt the new philosophy.

3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.

4. End the practice of awarding business on price alone; instead, minimize total cost by working with a single supplier.

5. Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production, and service.

6. Institute training on the job.

7. Adopt and institute leadership.

8. Drive out fear.

9. Break down barriers between staff areas.

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce.

11. Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.

12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or merit system.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.

14. Put everybody in the company to work accomplishing the transformation.

Juran's approach

• Juran, like Deming, was invited to Japan in 1954 by the union of Japanese Scientists and engineers.
• Juran defines quality as fitness for use in terms of design, conformance, availability, safety, and field use. He focuses on top-down management and technical methods rather than worker pride and satisfaction. 

The Juran Quality Trilogy

Juran developed an approach for cross-functional management that comprises three legislative processes:

1. Quality planning

2. Quality control

3. Quality improvement

Crosby’s approach

• Philip Crosby has developed 14 steps for an organization to follow in building an effective quality program:

1. Management is committed to quality – and this is clear to all
2. Create quality improvement teams – with representatives from all workgroups and functions
3. Measure processes to determine current and potential quality issues
4. Calculate the cost of (poor) quality
5. Raise quality awareness of all employees
6. Take actions to correct quality issues
7. Monitor progress of quality improvement – establish a zero defects committee
8. Train supervisors in quality improvement
9. Hold zero defects days
10. Encourage employees to create their own quality improvement goals
11. Encourage employee communication with management about obstacles to quality (Error-Cause Removal)
12. Recognize participants’ effort
13. Create quality councils
14. Do it all over again – quality improvement does not end

Crosby defined the Four Absolutes of Quality Management:

1. Quality is conformance to requirements 

2. Quality prevention is preferable to quality inspection 

3. Zero defects are the quality performance standard 

4. Quality is measured in monetary terms – the price of non-conformance 

Feigunbaum’s approach

• He has written a very good book entitled ‘Total Quality Control’, in 1961. He stressed in his book that the quality of products and services is directly influenced by ‘Nine Ms’ viz.; Markets, Money, Management, Men, Motivation, Materials, Machines and Mechanization, Modern information methods and Mounting product requirements. 
• The control must start with the identification of customer quality requirements and end only when the product has been placed in the hands of a customer who remains satisfied. Total quality control guides the coordinated action of people, machines, and information to achieve this goal. The first principle to recognize is that quality is everybody's job.” 

Feigenbaum’s philosophy is explained in his “Three steps to quality”. 

1. Quality Leadership

2. Management Quality Technology

3. Organizational Commitment

Ishikawa’s approach

• "Total Quality Control is a thought revolution in management", Kaoru Ishikawa.
• Dr. Ishikawa`s definition of quality control:

"To practice quality control is to develop, design, produce and service a quality product which is most economical, most useful, and always satisfactory to the consumer. To meet this goal, everyone in the company must participate in and promote quality control, including top executives, all divisions, within the company, and all employees."

To engage in quality control means to:

1. Make total quality control the foundation of your business process.

2. Focus full-scale efforts on the control of cost, price, and profit.

3. Control quantity - the amount of production and stock