Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management

Quality has been a concern of management and workers in factories for as long as factories have existed. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the great minister of King Louis XIV, wrote in 1664, "If our factories could, through care, impose the superior quality of our products, foreigners would see the advantage of purchasing French goods and money would flow to our kingdom" (Burrill & Ledolter, 1999, p. 26). What Jean-Baptiste Colbert wrote in 1664 still holds true today: Consumers and company seek to purchase products of high quality. Though industries and management's role within organizations have changed dramatically through the centuries, all organizations still strive to be known for producing high quality products and service. One of the methods that management in many organizations have taken is to implement top quality management. In this paper, we will define total quality management, examine the impact of globalization on quality, compare and contrast traditional management styles with quality focused management styles.

First, we will define total quality management. According to Burrill and Ledolter (1999), total quality management is a [holistic] business management methodology that aligns the activities of all employees in an organization with common focus of customer satisfaction [to be achieved] through continuous improvement in the quality of all activities [processes], goods and services. Total quality management is basically a focus of all employees from the CEO to the warehouse laborer, toward the common goal of providing the best service and best products possible to customers.

How has globalization affected quality? Different countries have different standards of what quality looks like. For example, a third world country will have different, more than likely lower, standards of quality than the United States. With products now being produced throughout the world and imported into the U.S., it is important that the supplier in the country of production conforms to the strict standards of quality of the United States consumer. According to Burrill and Ledolter, there are two methods that can be used to gain this assurance. "One is for the customer to review each supplier's system. But this method is costly and time-consuming for both the customer (who has many suppliers, and the supplier (who has many customers)." Burrill and Ledolter offer a more practical alternative of quality management for a foreign supplier, which is insisting that the suppler meet some standard that is acceptable to the customer. The Underwriters Laboratories (UL) of the United States provides an example of this method. The UL evaluates manufacturers' quality systems, and if the manufacturer meets the standards of the UL, there is a "UL" label stamped