Total Quality Management

Essay by twillyUniversity, Master'sA-, June 2004

download word file, 3 pages 2.4

Total Quality Management is a structured system for satisfying internal and external customers and suppliers by integrating the business environment, continuous improvement, and breakthroughs with development, improvement, and maintenance cycles while changing organizational culture. One of the keys to implementing TQM can be found in this definition. It is the idea that TQM is a structured system. In describing TQM as a structured system, I mean that it is a strategy derived from internal and external customer and supplier wants and needs that have been determined through daily management.

There has been a significant shift in the quality movement from traditional quality-assurance practice to total quality management (TQM). Total quality management is a customer-driven approach to quality, emphasizing the involvement and commitment of every employee in an organization to provide quality products and services. Customers are increasingly sophisticated, with increasingly more complex demands to be satisfied. The increase in international competition also suggests that only quality driven companies will survive.

Therefore, for a company to achieve quality, customer needs, expectations, and aspirations must be satisfied.

The business environment has changed significantly since the advent of information technology. Business organizations have undertaken drastic restructuring by modifying their means of communication and coordination of work activities. Information technology has made it possible for companies to operate on a real-time basis, whereby products and services are delivered to the right place at the right time. Since then, information technology has proliferated and has undergone considerable improvements. Costs have continued to decline as these new technologies have emerged. A business not supported by a network of computer systems (primary information technology) is almost destined to fail, since it will be unable to compete effectively in today's complex and dynamic environment.

Companies are not the only ones who have benefited from advances in modern information...