Effects of Quality Management

Effects of Quality Management

Misty W. Polk

MFT/449

Kevin Diviney

July 9, 2012

Effects of Quality Management

Quality management can mean something totally different from one company to the next. Depending upon the type of organization and what products or services it offers. For some companies, quality is even more important than others, depending upon what they produce. Auto makers must make sure that their quality is above and beyond due to the fact that they are manufacturing something that could potentially be life threatening if not done properly. Ford Motor Company and Toyota are two examples of companies that take great pride in their quality management.

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company has always thought of quality as something that had to be hard fought and won in order to stay on top. In the 1980’s, their slogan was even “Quality is job 1.” Today, it is “Ford has a better idea,” but quality has not been put on the back burner. The company has found that Six Sigma is the method to use in order to insure quality at this time in their project management. For Ford, total quality management, or TQM, left off the guessing and began a process of having a way to weigh quality in all levels of production. These processes are constantly evolving, growing, and improving thanks to the feedback that the company receives from customer quality satisfaction surveys ("Tqm And Ford Motor Company", 2011).

Terry Chenault came on board in 1999 and helped to create Customer Driven Six Sigma Process in which furthered the total quality management ideas that the company had ("Tqm And Ford Motor Company", 2011). Henry Ford actually based his quality methodology after Toyota’s 5S best practices upon his visit to see the assembly lines at the Toyota plant when he started his company years ago. All in all, Six Sigma and 5S procedures are what keeps Ford Motor Company in top notch shape when it comes to quality. These processes and procedures...