Today, when competition is very high, businesses always aim to keep quality at the highest level in order to increase their profitability and satisfy their customers. Businesses that can provide quality remain competitive and achieve sustainable success, while other businesses cannot achieve the success they want. In the 1950s, Total Quality Management, the widely known quality approach, emerged in Japan. This approach focuses on achieving excellent quality in every aspect of a business. It emphasizes continuous improvement by involving all employees, from top to bottom, in the process of ensuring customer satisfaction. In this blog post, we will discuss what total quality management means, its principles, benefits and many details. What is Quality? Before going into the details of total quality management, let’s take a look at the definition of quality. In its simplest definition, quality is the capacity of a product or service to meet customer needs and expectations at the highest level. It also means that a product or service conforms to certain quality standards and is free from defects. Definition of Total Quality Management? Total Quality Management system is the systematic approach to ensure the quality of people, work, products, and services with the participation of all employees in order to meet customer requirements. TQM is based on the principle of continuous improvement of products and services that will add value to customers. Total Quality Management encourages data-driven decision-making, teamwork, proactive problem-solving, and partnering with suppliers to ensure that a business achieves excellence and efficiency. In this management model, the views and goals of employees are included in every process and all employees are involved in the quality process. The goal of TQM is to eliminate defects, reduce waste, streamline operational tasks, and improve performance by integrating quality into all processes. In this way, companies will be able to achieve long-term and sustainable success in the market. Total Quality Management Principles Total Quality Management encompasses a set of principles aimed at maximizing quality in an enterprise. There are basically 7 quality principles: 1. Customer Orientation The essence of Total Quality Management is based on understanding, meeting, and exceeding customer expectations. Because the customer defines quality and all the efforts of the business to achieve success are to ensure customer satisfaction. To achieve this, TQM takes customer feedback into account and focuses on responding to it. 2. Employee Engagement Quality improvement is not the responsibility of a single department in an organization. To improve quality and ensure customer satisfaction, employees at all levels need to contribute to the process with ideas, suggestions, and efforts. Total employee involvement integrates quality throughout the production cycle. 3. Process Focus The importance of structured and systematic methods to achieve quality objectives is emphasized. This systematic approach to process improvements is supported by quality planning that is customer-centric and aims to improve service quality throughout the customer journey. 4. Leadership Support It is important to have active involvement and commitment from managers to support quality management initiatives throughout the organization. 5. Continuous Improvement Total quality management focuses on continuously improving the quality of products and services. This management approach aims to achieve excellence and complete quality control as part of a strategic plan to optimize and improve processes. 6. Data-Driven Decision Making TQM emphasizes collecting the right data and measuring performance in order to make informed decisions and to know whether targets are being met. 7. Supplier Relations An important principle of modern quality control is supply chain management. Companies work closely with suppliers to ensure the quality of key raw materials and inputs, working in an integrated manner within their business and production processes. This cooperation is carried out with the aim of joint quality planning and systematic quality management. 7 Tools of Total Quality Management Check Sheet: Used to collect real-time data. Control Chart: Used to understand whether a process is in a state of control or not. Flow Chart: Used to sample a specific group. Pareto Chart: Analyzes the most common errors by category. Includes both bar and line graphs. Histogram: Used to evaluate the probability distribution of a variable in general by showing the frequency of observations within certain ranges of values. Cause and effect diagram Scatter Diagram: Used to show the relationship of two values in a data set. What are the Benefits of Total Quality Management? Total quality management provides many benefits such as product and service quality, customer satisfaction, productivity, and competitiveness. Here are some of the benefits: TQM differentiates businesses from their competitors by enabling them to offer better quality products and services. This difference gives the business a stronger position in the market. It ensures that waste is reduced and higher outputs are achieved. Helps businesses adapt to changing market conditions by promoting a culture of continuous improvement. Optimizes processes and increases efficiency. Ensures that processes are development-oriented. Increases customer satisfaction by prioritizing customer needs and expectations. Increases customer loyalty, thus establishing long-term customer relationships. Continuous Improvement Software
