Total Quality Management (Past, Present & Future)

TRIMILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT
Total Quality Management
(Past, Present & Future)

By Dr.M.R.Gopalan

The quality movement has gone through several transformations to reach the present stage. In the past, controlling quality meant that the product had to be inspected after it was produced to check whether it met all the specifications or not. Then, it was estimated that the cost of poor quality was as high as 15 to 20 per cent of sales. This concern led to the thinking that preventive measures have to be undertaken to ensure the final quality of the product or service. The transformation from inspection mode to prevention mode is considered to be a very important step in building quality from the very beginning or start of the manufacturing process.

But all these developments in quality management kept manufacturing as the focal point. During the early 1990s, some management and quality gurus started talking about what is known as Total Quality Management (TQM). It was considered a buzzword at that time and every organisation started projecting itself as a TQM company. First we have to understand what this TQM movement is and whether it has taken the quality movement to the next stage.

The TQM concept or philosophy focuses on building quality in every task that is performed in an organisation. The message of TQM: do everything right the first time; encourage continuous improvement throughout all the processes and tasks. Through TQM one should build quality into everything that the organisation. If one has to build quality in any product or process, the above framework is quite critical to identify quality parameters for the input, process, control and output.

If the TQM movement has to succeed, it has to be a company-wide quality movement and not just focussing on manufacturing alone. Therefore, we see a dramatic shift in the quality management focus from manufacturing to company wide activities and, more specifically, to the needs of the internal and external customers.

In the last decade, we also observed that there was a great pressure on companies to go for ISO 9000 certification. For companies who wanted to adopt TQM, the ISO certification was one of the routes to get into that mode. As everybody knows, an ISO certified company does not necessarily become a TQM company. Yet, it is the first step towards evolving into a TQM company.

Quality management has assumed that building quality into everything that you do is very fundamental and those companies who believed in that have embraced new philosophies in managing quality on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, for many, TQM had been a fad and it is no more relevant for them to achieve competitiveness. Therefore, they started chasing new concepts and trends such as re-engineering, benchmarking, ERP, e-business, e-commerce, etc. If you are not there, it seems you cannot be competitive. Nobody denies the fact that one could make a company competitive provided that the basics and several other things required to run a business are in place. But organisations want quick results through shortcut methods. Going through a TQM route may take longer but it could ensure that a strong culture for quality is built.

Before we dwell upon briefly on the above dimensions let us look into some of the reasons for the TQM taking a back seat in many organisations. Quality is no more a competitive factor. It is assumed that it need not have to be reiterated. If it is really so, then every company deserves a Baldridge award. There are several quality gaps in every organisation, many of which are due to the lack of customer focus and the lack of appreciation for the TQM movement.

The outcome of TQM implementation is not seen as critical for improving sales. In contrast, an activity in finance or marketing is seen as directly contributing a company's revenue. To come out of this situation companies should calculate the loss in revenue due to lack of focus on TQM. This will enable them to refocus on TQM.

As companies have to gear themselves up to increasingly meet specific requirements of individual customers, it will be a difficult task for them to meet such requirements without a system in place. That kind of a system can be established only through a TQM approach, because everything has to be performed right for the first time.

If maximum benefits are to be derived out of implementing ERP, e-commerce, etc., these have to be brought under the TQM umbrella to ensure that all the linkages are managed in a coherent manner and the best systems and processes are put in place to exploit the new approaches. Today, the implementation of ERP is not successful at many sites due to lack of this integration through TQM.

The importance of TQM is evident for successful e-commerce implementation. The input-process-control-output framework of managing quality has to be superimposed on all applications of e-commerce. In such applications, the customer (internal or external) will be directly in contact with the system delivering the service and hence not only faster delivery, but credibility of transactions has to be there. For example, Federal Express has established a very efficient tracking system, which can be used easily by the customer to know the status of the parcel she has despatched to some destination.

What we will see in future, in terms of managing a supply chain, is going to be very different from what we are accustomed to. Some entities will disappear from the customer's sight but eventually be managed behind the screen. Managing quality in such systems and such an environment is likely to be quite challenging and the TQM approach has to be applied keeping in mind the new way of doing business.

The manufacturing sector is already undergoing changes with respect to the way operations are being carried out due to the impact of the electronic and software revolution. This will mean more on-line transactions and, hence, increase the interaction between man and machine. Greater integration with regard to all the functions is likely to take place and, hence, functions operating independently could become obsolete. In such a scenario, the complexity of the business operation will increase and demand a very high level of discipline, commitment and quality from all sources. The challenge will be to make products faster through a reliable system. The quality of the system will have to be high because a failure at any stage of the operation is likely to cripple the whole system.

Software development and usage will demand a big chunk of the critical resources needed to run a business. Once developed, the software itself will become a critical resource. This is going to be a very fertile area for TQM application as more and more features have to be built into every piece of software to make it user friendly, reliable and to be able to come back to the normal mode in case of failure.

To conclude, here's a warning: although TQM may have ceased to be a buzzword for many companies, they are likely to miss the bus in the New Millennium unless they draw up a road map to use TQM more innovatively.

Dr.M.R.Gopalan, Professor IIM-Bangalore

Issue Contents Write to us Subscriptions Syndication