Today’s organizational environment is filled with constant and rapid change; technology changes with the blink of an eye, competition is increasing, and customers are demanding greater quality and lower costs. To adapt to these changes and still meet their goals, organizations need to be efficient. Efficiency requires an overall approach and cannot be reached by focusing on a particular process, or on a specific area within an organization. But, how can total quality management improve an organization’s effectiveness?
What is Total Quality Management?
Total Quality Management: a business philosophy which focuses on customer satisfaction and relies on an understanding that a strong focus on employees is necessary to achieve efficiency within an organization.
Total Quality Management is oriented to create quality awareness across an organization, and it considers both the organization’s processes and the employees as integral aspect in an organization quality improvement capacity.
Total Quality Management promotes commitment, participation, cooperation and continuous improvement within organizations. Because every employee and every process is important in achieving organizational effectiveness, Total Quality Management can assist in this matter by empowering all employees and making everyone responsible for meeting internal and external customers expectation.
Every employee, regardless of their role within the organization, can improve quality within their processes.
Total Quality Management can also help organizations achieve effectiveness is by encouraging a dynamic approach to quality improvement. Variations can occur within processes that can negatively alter the desired results.
These variations need to be detected, communicated and addressed promptly to prevent deviations from proposed goals. Therefore Total Quality Management, by encouraging teamwork and empowering employees to make decisions, can facilitate good communication and an effective response within and across different functional units within an organization.
Organizational effectiveness is reached by achieving common goals. Since internal and external customers expectations drive organization’s processes, by meeting and exceeding these expectations, organizations can reach their goals and also obtain a competitive advantage.
Many organizations can utilize Total Quality Management to increase their efficiency. Total Quality Management has been implemented in manufacturing, education, government administration and services. Any type of organization can benefit from Total Quality Management and use it to adapt to constant changes, improve their effectiveness and thus increase competitiveness.