Quality Management

Essay by desiguyno1 December 2008

download word file, 3 pages 0.0

Total Quality Management can be defined as managing the entire organization so that it excels on all dimensions of products and services that are important to the customer. This is very useful for companies as the focus is never taken from their customer who uses the company's product. In this day and age, where everybody is concerned with product quality and safety, a company can only stand to profit if they provide the product of highest quality which results in higher customer satisfaction, customer goodwill and higher profits. Quality management is a very important part of any company because the customer demands the product to be of higher quality and this has resulted in different benchmarks for different industrial sectors. Six Sigma is a measure of quality that strives for near perfection. Six Sigma is a disciplined, data - driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving towards six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process -- from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.

Different companies have applied the SixSigma methodology and have produced significant results.

General Electric is one company which has applied the Six Sigma methodology in quality management and has produced dramatic results. According to GE's Six Sigma website, they claim that they were able to reduce the lead times for matching colors for GE resins to customer requirements by 85%. That's a dramatic turnaround which definitely gives the company a competitive edge and shows that the Six Sigma approach has worked very well for GE. GE was able to use the same approach in developing a better CT tube which had longer tube life, faster patient exams and improved image quality. This shows that the customer is given a high priority when it comes to developing a product.