6 Characteristics of Total Quality Management

TQM is a new method of quality management involving many levels and processes of different functions, but requiring an integrated cooperation. Characteristics of TQM can be listed as follows:

1. Target:

Management

In TQM, the most important target to achieve is Quality; Quality policy must be set toward customer. Meeting customer's needs mean satisfying every customer requirement but not trying to reach some quality standards set before. Never stop innovating - never stop perfecting the quality is one of the most important principles of TQM.

6 Characteristics of Total Quality Management

2. Scope:

To ensure the quality of service and product, TQM system requires the extending of production process to suppliers and sub-contractors. Normally, the trading of material in production may account for 70% of final product cost (depend on types of product). Therefore, to ensure the quality of the input material, it is necessary to set up specific standards for each type of material to control its quality. It is also necessary to change the method of placing order to make it suitable with the production process.

3. Form:

In stead of controlling the quality of the finished product (after production), TQM sets up plans and programs to supervise and prevent problems right before the production process. Statistical tools are used to supervise, quantitatively analyze the results as well as factors affecting the quality, consider the reasons and take appropriate prevention methods.

4. Basis of TQM system:

The basis of TQM practice in the company is Human. Talking about quality, people usually think about the product quality. But it is the quality of employees that is the main concern of TQM. Of the three factors of Business, which are hard factor (machines, equipments, money...), Soft factor (methods, secrets, information...) and Human factor, Human is of the first concern to TQM.

The basic principle for implementation of TQM is that the qualification of employees is developed fully and integratedly through training, delegation and assignment.

5. Organization:

TQM system is cross organized and functioned in order to manage, integratedly corporate with different activities of the system and facilitate group working. The implementation of TQM requires the participation of high and middle level managers. A proper organization will help duties to be assigned clearly. Thus, TQM needs new management model, with different characteristics from the previous model.

6. Management skills and tools:

Methods to implement must be based on the principle "do correctly at the very beginning", in researching and designing to minimize economic cost. Strictly apply DEMMING circle (PDCA) to make foundation for the continuous quality improvement.

6 Characteristics of Total Quality Management

I am a author of quality assurance management articles at http://qualitymanagement.hrvinet.com. You can find all templates, form, procedures of quality management, ISO...at: ISO 9001 procedures.

Total Quality Management

Introduction

Competition is getting harder and becoming global. Companies now have to be more responsive, offer a better product and keep improving. Total quality management (TQM) increases customer satisfaction by boosting quality. It does this by motivating the workforce and improving the way the company operates. In an increasingly competitive market, firms with a continuous improvement culture and external focus are more likely to survive and prosper. TQM is considered an important catalyst in this context.

Management

What is TQM?

Total Quality Management

TQM is an approach to improving the effectiveness and flexibilities of business as a whole. It is essentially a way of organising and involving the whole organisation, every department, every activity and every single person at every level. TQM ensures that the management adopts a strategic overview of the quality and focuses on prevention rather than inspection.

Objectives of TQM

o Meeting the customer's requirements is the primary objective and the key to organisational survival and growth.

o The second objective of TQM is continuous improvement of quality. The management should stimulate the employees in becoming increasingly competent and creative.

o Third, TQM aims at developing the relationship of openness and trust among the employees at all levels in the organisation.

Significance of TQM

The importance of TQM lies in the fact that it encourages innovation, makes the organisation adaptable to change, motivates people for better quality, and integrates the business arising out of a common purpose and all these provide the organisation with a valuable and distinctive competitive edge.

Elements of TQM

The various elements of TQM are

o Be customer focused

It requires the company to check customers' attitudes regularly and includes the idea of internal customers as well as external ones.

o Do it right the first time

This means avoiding rework, i.e., cutting the amount of defective work.

o Constantly improve

Continuous improvement allows the company gradually to get better.

o Quality is an attitude

Every one has to be committed to quality. That means changing the attitude of the entire workforce, and altering the way the company operates.

o Telling staff what is going on

This involves improved communication. Typically, it includes team briefing.

o Educate and train people

An unskilled workforce makes mistakes. Giving more skills to workers means they can do a wider range of jobs, and do them better. It also means educating staff in the principles of TQM, which is a whole new style of working.

o Measure the work.

Measurement allows the company to make decisions based on facts, not opinion. It helps to maintain standards and keep processes within the agreed tolerances.

o Top management must be involved

If senior management is not involved, the programme will fail.

o Make it a good place to work

Many companies are full of fear. Staffs are afraid of the sack, their boss and making mistakes. There is no point in running a TQM programme unless the company drives out fear.

o Introduce team work

Team work boosts employees' morale. It reduces conflict and solves problem by hitting them with a wider range of skills. It pushes authority and responsibility downwards and provides better, more balanced solutions.

o Organise by process, not by function

This element of TQM seeks to reduce the barriers that exist between different departments, and concentrates on getting the product to the customer.

Reasons for failure

TQM fails because:

o Top management sees no reason for change.

o Top management is not concerned for its staff.

o Top management is not committed to the TQM programme.

o The company loses interest in the programme after six months.

o The workforce and the management do not agree on what needs to happen.

o Urgent problems intervene.

o TQM is imposed on the workforce, which does not inwardly accept it.

o No performance measure or targets are set, so progress cannot be measured.

o Processes are not analysed, systems are weak and procedures are not written down.

Conclusion

In today's globally competitive market, the situation is to buy whichever is of good quality and low cost. The organisations have started with a rigour to have an edge over the global competition and in the process some have become successful. The quality movement, which drives every organisation towards the global market, seems to increase its competitive advantage for better market acceptance.

Total Quality Management

How To Measure Total Quality Management, TQM, Success

Implementing TQM is an initiative many organizations wanted to embark on. Assuming that you are a leader of this organization, a common question you probably asked would be: "How do I know whether my organization is successful in implementing TQM?"

TQM implementation has been in my mind for a long time and I wondered how to measure the success of TQM implementation in an organization. If we take an organizations who are winners of the Baldrige Award, then my question is whether taking an assessment based on Baldrige Criteria an appropriate measure to gage the success of TQM in an organization.

Management Concept

There is no doubt that measuring TQM implementation is success rate is of interest with all if not most leaders. Otherwise, how would you as a leader know the effort put into implementing TQM is really worthwhile, more so when a lot of resources such a money, manpower etc are deployed to support the implementation of a TQM initiative.

So, would you ask a similar question before the TQM initiative is started? Or You would ask half way during its implementation? How would you like to measure the success of the TQM implementation? Do you accept the opinion of your management comment alone or you rather based on some form of evaluation result?

One of the ways to evaluate the TQM success is to adopt a holistic approach of assessing your organization. One of the examples of such a holistic approach is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award assessment approach. This is a national level award system in the United States to recognize organizations for achieving an excellent in their respective business.

To prepare for an assessment, you need to understand the Baldrige criteria which is used a reference for the assessment. Once you have understood the Baldrige Criteria, you would start to conduct an assessment based on these criteria. You may perform a self assessment guided by the Baldrige Self Assessment criteria to ascertain your level of performance with reference to the Baldrige Criteria. For a self assessment, it takes must lesser time. Alternatively, you can go for a full scale assessment. This mode of assessment may be conducted by your management team or a 3rd party Baldrige Assessors.

To help you to adopt the Baldrige Criteria, there are eleven core values and concepts used by the Baldrige Criteria. To jump start your assessment effort, perhaps you start with the understanding of these core values and concepts.

How To Measure Total Quality Management, TQM, Success

About the Author: Dr. LM Foong, PhD

He writes and publishes TQM articles, ebooks, case studies, trainer manual and presentation slides. Please visit website at http://www.tqmcasestudies.com for more TQM related matters. He can be contacted at http://www.tqmcasestudies.com/ContactUs.html

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Essential Elements of a Quality Management System

A good quality management system in a pharmaceutical company can significantly improve the net profit status, high quality medicines for patients, less rework and recall which save more money, good work environment and compliance with local and international regulations.

Quality management is a philosophy. It takes management understanding, commitment and responsibility before introducing and implementing the concept. Once practiced a good quality management system slowly develop or reshape a sustainable organization culture that pays off rapidly.

Management Concept

The initial step of introducing a good quality management into a system is to know the essential elements of the quality system and clear study from where to start. Company objectives should be clearly understood. Policies should be prepared. Then comes the design of the process flow, validating the process, material flow and organization chart. When a good integration between people, process and material is achieved the next step is to putting the integrated system in a state of control. Any deviation from the controlled system must be analysed and corrected.

Some basic but essential elements of Quality Assurance as depicted in GMP guidelines and ISO 9001 guideline for pharmaceutical industry can be listed as: the Preparation of standard operating procedures of a complete system maintaining cGMP principles; Preparation and maintenance of effective change control of quality and master file documentation; Recording and management of manufacturing change control; Recording and reporting procedure of Deviations of your systems; Quality concern investigation process; Customer complaint investigation procedure; Quality audit procedures; Vendor assessment, evaluation and certification procedure; Quality control laboratory procedure, Rework procedures for the defective manufactured products; Procedures on training for manufacturing staffs and recall procedure.

Standard operating procedures and manuals should be written in details and referenced to relevant other documents, so a new starter within the organization should be trained easily and expected to perform as per procedure. The result will be a common standard of activities across the organization, good tractability of work flow, deviations and ease of corrective actions as necessary.

Standard Operating Procedure

You should prepare SOPs, forms, templates and manuals, which can be used immediately as the system runs. Forms and templates should be used for record keeping which your people can follow routinely.

Documentations - Classification, Definition and Approval

Quality and Technical/Master file documents to be created to build up a good quality management system for your manufacturing sites. Definition of documents, their classification, approval requirements and retention requirements should be understood.

Quality Documentation Management and Change Control

Procedures to be created on how to generate new quality documents or change control of existing documents, review of quality documents, satellite file management, role of document author, approver, document control officer and satellite file administrator. In this procedures you will also define the numbering systems of different quality documents like audit files, SOPs, forms, templates, manuals, training files, QA agreements, project files etc and their effective archiving system.

Preparation, Maintenance and Change Control of Master Documents

Procedures to be created which will particularly focus on the management of master file documents like specifications, control methods, raw materials, finished goods and packaging specification and test reports, formulation, stability files etc required to generate during the product registration in the market.

Deviation Report System

It is a regulatory requirement to capture all sorts of deviations evolves in your systems in order to maintain the continuous improvement of your processes and systems. Procedures should be created that describes how to categorize the deviations between production, audit, quality improvements, technical deviations, customer complaints and environmental, health and safety deviations. It should also describes the management responsibilities of initiating deviation, capturing data, analysis, investigation, determination of assignable cause/s, generation of management report and initiatives to be taken on corrective and preventative actions.

Vendor Selection and Evaluation

Procedures to be followed during the vendor assessment and vendor evaluation for purchasing of raw materials, critical and non critical packaging components, laboratory supplies, engineering supplies and imported finished goods from the vendor. These instructions are essential for approving prospective vendor.

Vendor Certification

This procedure aims to describe the process by which a vendor may be certified to supply materials or services. This procedure applies to vendors that supply a material or service to be used at any stage of manufacture by operations. Here you will describe the roles of each department in the process to certify an approved vendor.

Product Complaint Procedure

You should have strong procedure to cover the receipt, logging, evaluation, investigation and reporting system of all complaints received from customers for the marketed products. This procedure should contain step by step instruction to be followed during the customer complaint management like numbering of complaint, registering the complaint, evaluation, determination of assignable cause for the complaint deviation, implementation of corrective and preventative actions, trending of complaints and handling of counterfeit products.

Annual Product Review

Some countries require reports as Annual Product Review to sell your products into their market. So you have to create instructions on how to do annual product review, to evaluate data, trends and to identify any preventative or corrective action that would lead to product quality improvements and report them to management.

Rework Procedure

Procedure should contain the step by step instructions to be followed when the rework of an in-process or completed finished good is required. Product Identification and Traceability The purpose of this procedure is to define the method used for the identification of all contributing materials that could affect product quality and to ensure their full traceability.

GMP Audits

Procedure should be created to describe the process of planning, performing, reporting and follow-up of different audits for your systems like Internal Quality audit, Vendor audit, Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) audit, EHS workplace inspection, Housekeeping audit.

Evaluation of Batch Documentation and Release for Sale

This procedure should describe the process of collection, evaluation and record of batch related document generated during the production of a batch before an authorized person can release the batch for sale.

GMP Training

Effective GMP related training modules to be created for your manufacturing staffs. Training records and reports have to produce on each employee as justified.

Management and Control of Contract Work

There should have procedure to describe the management and control of contract work provided by the contractors for packaging and finished products for your company as well as control of contract works done by your company on behalf of others.

Quality Concern Investigation Process

Procedure should be made that contains instructions to follow when conducting Investigations collection of data and information, analysis, assigning root cause, determine corrective and preventive actions.

Essential Elements of a Quality Management System

Essential elements of a good quality management system are described in this article for pharmaceutical industry. Check more in Pharmaceutical Quality Procedures

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