Total Quality Management is a management approach originated in the 1950's and has progressively become more popular since the early 1980's. Total Quality is a description of the culture, attitude and organization of a company that strives to provide customers with products and services that satisfy their needs. The culture requires quality in all aspects of the company's operations, with processes being done right the first time and defects and waste eradicated from operations.
In order to be successful implementing TQM, an organization must concentrate on the eight key elements:
1. Ethics
2. Integrity
3. Trust
4. Training
5. Teamwork
6. Leadership
7. Recognition
8. Communication
TQM has been coined to describe an idea that makes quality the driving force behind leadership, design, planning, and improvement initiatives. For this, TQM requires the help of those eight key elements. These elements can be divided into four groups according to their function. The groups are:
I. Foundation - It includes: Ethics, Integrity and Trust.
II. Building Bricks - It includes: Training, Teamwork and Leadership.
III. Binding Mortar - It includes: Communication.
IV. Roof - It includes: Recognition.
We can say that these eight elements are keys in ensuring the success of TQM in an organization and that the supervisor is a huge part in developing these elements in the work place. Without these elements, the business entities cannot be successful TQM implementers. It is very clear from the above discussion that TQM without involving integrity, ethics and trust would be a great careless, in fact it would be incomplete.
Training is the key by which the organization creates a TQM environment. Leadership and teamwork go hand in hand. Lack of communication between departments, supervisors and employees create a trouble on the whole TQM process. Last but not the least; recognition should be given to people who contributed to the overall completed task. So train...