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Total Quality Management: Customer Focus
Total Quality Management: Customer Focus
Total Quality Management is defined as a strategy for improving business performance through
the commitment and involvement of all employees to fully satisfying agreed customer
requirements, at the optimum overall costs, through the continuous improvement of the
products and services, business processes and people involved.
The concept of Total Quality Management can be expressed as “Achieving success through
delighting the customers”. Customers here may include the internal user, the external
customer or end-user, together with the other stakeholders, i.e.
shareholders
employees
suppliers
Customer satisfaction refers to a situation where the customer's needs are met in a manner
that is way beyond his specifications. It implies that a company or organization has got to go an
extra mile to please the customer. In any competitive market customer satisfaction is a key
differentiator and is a crucial component of business strategy.
The standards strongly encourage focus on defining the needs of all stakeholders, who are
internal customers, agents, external customers and end-users.
Reliability
Aesthetics
Adaptability
Usability
Functionality
Appropriateness
Applying the principle of customer focus in the organization leads to the following activities:
Customer's orientation is the first level of programming quality. It focuses on knowing the
customer, his requirements and understanding these requirements. Customer orientation,
therefore, begins by clarifying customer requirements, assessing the current level of processes
with regard to these requirements, by assessment of planning steps to meet customer
requirements and ends with creating action plan which contains a definition of the individual
time steps aimed at improving of processes. To meet the needs and expectations of customers
and end-user management of the organization has to:
--understand the needs and expectations of their customers, including potential customers,
--identify the key characteristics of product for their customers and end users,
--identify and assess the competition on the market,
--identify the market opportunities, weaknesses and future competitive advantages.
Workforce Management:
Giving people authority to make decisions based on what they feel is right, as a leader you
should sincerely belief and trust in your own people. Provide education, resource and
encouragement remove restrictive policies foster the atmosphere of trust , share information
freely, train hand on tasks
2.Team management
3. Leaderships skills
4. Decision making
5.Communication
6.Negotiation
The workforce focus investigates the effectiveness of an organization in terms of its use,
development and management of the workforce in order to fulfill their potential and create a
TQM product. The workforce environment can encompass a variety of factors such as the
structure of work, the physical environment, and services and rights available to employees.
The workforce environment in TQM encourages the need for employee fulfillment in their job.
It is often argued that a positive impact on customer satisfaction can be achieved by treating
employees as internal customers and can often result in greater loyalty. It is further argued that
it is imperative to establish a high degree of employee well-being and satisfaction in order to
establish effectiveness within the organization. The Baldrige Award encourages employee
engagement advocates for greater employee autonomy and skill variety. The major methods to
establish employee empowerment requires an organization to focus on open communication,
team orientation and cooperation.
A significant portion of the TQM philosophy focuses on the human resource environment. TQM
implementation relies heavily on the brawn and brain of front-line workers. Workers set the
pace for quality within a TQM system. Thus, it is imperative that employees are treated in such
a manner that they can become involved and enact the tools of quality. Therefore, in the
following paragraphs we present arguments to describe the relationships of TQM workforce
factors.
EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT
(2) upward problem solving, such as suggestions schemes, attitude surveys, quality circles, and
total quality/customer care programs
(3) financial EI, including profit sharing, employee share ownership, and value-added or
establishment-wide bonus arrangements, and
(4) representative participation, such as joint consultative committees/advisory councils and
collective bargaining. Therefore, it is apparent that EI efforts cover a broad spectrum of
employee issues and as such may be critical not only to productivity but also employee
attitudes regarding the organization.
TEAMWORK
A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a
common purpose, set of performance goals, and they are mutually accountable
Types of TEAMS:
Management Teams
Natural work teams
Self manage teams
Virtual Teams
Quality circles
Project Teams