TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT AS A CHANGE TOOL[1]

copyright 2005
 

By

Henry H. Goldman, Ph.D.

Executive Managing Partner

Risk Management Associates, International, LLP

www.riskmanagementintl.com

  
In the thirty plus years of change management as an understandable and definable discipline, Total Quality Management (TQM) remains the anchor for quality minded managers.  It was certainly not the first quality tool but it burst upon the scene following a number of earlier efforts to provide for quality products and quality services.
 
TQM became the first “quality buzzword.”  TQM became a new way of life in American industry.  Companies all across North America began to learn how to apply the Deming-Juran concepts of quality within their own product/service areas.  Book publishers were inundated with TQM oriented manuscripts, some good, some outstanding, some with little or no value.  Seemingly overnight, seminars, workshops and executive level classes were being conducted, everywhere, or so it appeared.
 
TQM quickly became a springboard for managing change.  Companies wishing to develop quality approaches to better products and/or services recognized that there had to be a fundamental change in the ways that those products were being made and in the ways that the services were being offered.  Ford Motor Company’s slogan, “Quality is Job One” required that the change toward quality had to begin at the lowest level of responsibility and rose to the top, while, at the same time, quality was pushed downward from the top.
 
The Total Quality Management ideal was evidenced in a number of ways.  Managers of TQM companies realized that the concept could be used to facilitate change in several related by unique situations.  The widespread use of TQM encouraged a number of more sophisticated programs and initiatives, i.e. ISO 9000, Benchmarking, Business Process Engineering, etc.  Each of these newer ideas represented a change in management style or, in some cases, a change in corporate culture.  Samples of these changes are listed below: 

• Customer involvement
• Management responsibilities
• Company cultural change
• Statistical orientation
• Continuous measurable improvement (CMI)
• Employee empowerment
• Vendor quality, Supplier integration
• Teamwork
• Competitive benchmarking
• Cycle time reduction