Page 47 - DMGT524_TOTAL_QUALITY_MANAGEMENT
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Total Quality Management
Notes 8. The award criteria provided benchmarks for measuring company performance and
individual performance.
9. The advantages of corporate quality awards were increasingly recognised by
management within the group.
10. Contributed to greater improvement efforts all round and helped RPG’s TQM
initiative; in 1996 the company saved US$ 0.2 million in poor quality costs from 52
successful TQM projects. In 2000, the company saved US$ 24.4 million in poor quality
costs from 2520 successful TQM projects.
Questions
1. Explain the need for introducing quality award by the RPG. Do you think an award
within the company can contribute to quality improvement? How?
2. What principles of TQM were incorporated into the quality award introduced by the
company?
3. Discuss how the company was able to reduce costs.
Source: http://www.bpir.com/total-quality-management-bpir.com/menu-id-72/example-cases.html
3.5 Summary
Quality can be defined as the degree to which a product is fit for the specific use. It can be
defined as products and services beyond present needs and expectations of customers.
The quality of a product is determined by how well it suits one’s needs in terms of
reliability, durability, safety, maintainability & cost.
The modern definition of quality centers on meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
Thus, the customer is the principle judge of quality.
Customer focus extends beyond the consumers and internal relationship to the society
which represents an important customer of business.
Participation of employees can be encouraged by implementing suggestion systems or
schemes that act quickly, provide feedback and reward good suggestions.
Employee involvement involves changing organizational culture, fostering individual
development through training, establishment awards and incentives and encouraging
team work.
Learning refers to adapting to change, leading to new goals and approaches. Learning
takes place via feedback between practices and results.
Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Figenbaum, Ishikawa, Crosby, and Taguchi contributed to the
development of principles and practices and/or the tools and techniques.
Total Quality Management is a management approach aimed at satisfying all customer
requirements, needs and expectations using a Continuous Improvement approach.
Benchmarking supports the IQ improvement team in setting high but realistic targets that
energise the process.
3.6 Keywords
Atarimae Hinshitsu: The idea that things will work as they are supposed to is referred to as
Atarimae Hinshitsu.
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