Total Quality in Organizations

Chapter 1 Key Objectives:

The first chapter provides an overview of the importance of quality in a rapidly changing business environment. Actually, that has become a cliché. Perhaps we should use the phrase: “a chaotic business environment.” As business and industry evolves, they have begun to use the terms “performance management” and “performance excellence” as synonyms for TQM and total quality. Key objectives are:

• To introduce the concept of quality assurance -- providing consumers with goods and services of appropriate quality, as a point of reference. This is often how the average person thinks of quality, but it requires pointing out its limitations, as a technical, rather than a managerial, approach.

• To review the evolution of quality from the Craftsmanship era in the 1700’s, through the Japanese post-World War II challenge brought on by attention to quality and international competitiveness, to the “Quality revolution” in the U.S. and elsewhere in the 1980’s through the early 21st Century. The “revolution” came about as a result of consumer pressures, technological change, outmoded managerial thinking, and competitive pressures that changed the way that U.S. and managers around the world viewed the role of quality.

• To provide a framework for understanding “BIG Q” -- managing for quality in all organizational processes as opposed to simply in manufacturing, referred to as Little Q, and of total quality management (TQM). These are supported by the organizational infrastructure that includes: customer relationship management, leadership and strategic planning, human resources management, process management, and data and information management, as well as a set of management practices and tools.

• To explore the failures in quality initiatives, usually resulting from managerial mistakes, and how the Six Sigma approach, supported by traditional lean tools from the Toyota production system, is revitalizing the focus on quality in the 21st...