The Concept of Total Quality Management, Operational Strategy, and Kaizen
The global companies today aim at catering to an international consumer markets by producing high standard products meeting the market needs. The needs of the market are considered to be quality parameters of the products and the companies maintain these quality standards by Total Quality Management. TQM is closely associated to the operation strategy and Kaizen. The assignment opens with these three concepts follow by the application of them in today’s market. This is where Staubli enters as an example to throw light on the applications and framework of Total Quality Management. The last section is the future expectations from TQM stressing mainly on spreading consumer base.
Total Quality Management:
E Sallis in his composition stated quality as the high state of goods which meets the consumer demands to the highest degree earning higher value. The system is used in the companies, especially the multinational companies because all their global locations function in an integrated manner. The system based on quality control evolved in Japan and the United States of America to tide over her economic crises. Today the concept of total quality management has given way to parameters like Six Sigma and ISO 9000 (Goetsch and Davis 2014).
Figure 1. Total Quality Management diagram
(Source: Qpmg.com, 2017)
Nigel Slack and Michael Lewis in the third edition of their work Operation Strategy stressed on the concept of operations strategy. The book states the importance of making operations strategies in the top organizations like Amazon and IKEA. The chapter also states that the global companies have gained competitive advantage even in the tough economic conditions due to their ability to make strategies to keep afloat (Slack 2015).
Kai means change and zen means good in Japanese which tantamount to change for the good. Kaizen at organization level is the slow but continuous initiated and driven by the employees. It is a change in the outlook of all the levels of looking at organisational behaviour. This concept requires the management of the companies to empower their employees and frame policies to improve the organisational strategies. The application of Kaizen aims at management of all the resources and processes of a company to ensure that the processes and things related to them meets the quality requirements of the customers. The activity is a daily strategy which requires the management to frame operational strategies and engage all employees in enforcement of these strategies (Kaizen.com 2017). Thus, Kaizens embraces the concepts of Total quality management and operational strategy.
The Role of Staubli in Total Quality Management
Customer centric:
Total quality management has become the need of the hour today which requires companies, especially the global ones to keep a control their vast resources spread to produce high quality products. This way of operation leads to better consumer satisfaction which earns the companies high revenue and goodwill. TQM has helped the global companies to place themselves advantageously on the international business map because of the distinct identity their products have earned them in the market (Alvarez 2016). Staubli is Swiss Machine parts manufacturing company which makes annual turnover of one billion Swiss France and is present in Europe, Asia and the America. The company manufactures high quality products and continuously innovates its products confirming to the consumers’ requirements. The company makes industrial parts, connectors and robotics supplying to several other companies (Staubli.com 2017).
Total Employee involvement:
Total Quality Management requires total employee management to control all the processes. The management of the company involves all the employees in controlling the processes. Goetsch in his work differentiated traditional quality management against modern quality management. Modern quality management or total quality management empowers employees to take decisions, expects at least ten improvements in every employee and aims at increasing productivity by producing goods with high qualities.
Process centric:
Modern companies like Staubli have their presence in several countries and their machine parts form the assets of several other industries. The International Journal of Hospitality Management states that today the companies operate according to the stakeholders’ theory where identities like customers, governments and even rivals have roles in business strategies. This calls for the companies to follow processes which ultimately create utility for the consumers. Thus, TQM is process centric which aim to integrate several processes into a quality creation mechanism (Benavides-Velasco, Quintana-García and Marchante-Lara 2014).
Strategic and systematic approach:
The success of multinational corporations lies on their power of taking a systematic and strategic approach towards operations. The Journal of Operations Management by Hitt, Xu and Carnes states that today organisation break the entire operations into several small divisions called departments where each department manages the resources in its exposure to maximise the consumer utility and revenue. This approach is known as Resource Based Theory has become an area of study to develop operations management (Hitt, Xu and Carnes 2016).
Framework:
Total quality management stands of the three pillars of measures, people and processes.
Measures:
Total quality management aims at creating value for the consumers by providing them with quality products which satisfies their demand. The Swiss company makes machine parts which make it important for it to keep a control over its processes and measure them. The company must present the changes in financial status statistically and measure them. The management must define the benchmarks and the procedures for the employee performances and the use of resources. For example in the founder and CEO of Amazon, the ecommerce giant states in that during slack period the company uses only percent of its resources. The work by Slack also has measure of orders received by the company, manufacturers’ orders to suppliers and store owners’ orders to retailers measured in terms to time to show their utility(Slack 2015).
TQM and the Stakeholder Theory
People:
The companies today work on the stakeholders’ theory which considers employees, consumers, suppliers, governments, employees and even rivals while making business strategies. The companies today produce goods which create high value for the end customers and train them to act in ways to satisfy the customers better. This earns them huge consumer bases in several markets and generates enormous profits for them. For example, Staubli serves the people in China, Korea and Europe each having its own demand norms. The presence of the company in these markets proves that it is able to manage and maintain its quality and cater to the people in these markets (Staubli.com 2017).
Processes:
The term process in TQM expands beyond the conventional concept of production methods and encompasses the operations of all the departments. Staubli works in processes which creates value for the several industries who are its customers.
Huge customer base:
The demand and requirements of the consumers are considered to be the parameters of quality management today. Hence, if the Staubli fulfils the requirements of the consumers, it will also produce high quality goods. The company looks forward to improve its TQM and expand into new markets. The company also wishes to work and strengthen the textile industries, especially the small handloom ones to control their productivity and expand their markets.
Competitive Advantage:
The company should control its resources towards reduction of wastage and maximisation of quality products. This will earn it a huge revenue and competitive advantage in the world market (Doz and Prahalad 2013).
Conclusion:
Staubli should control its resources to maintain its quality and keep on expanding its market. The company should form competitive operation strategies and work towards betterment to cement its position. Total quality likewise has emerged as an indispensible opearations and strategic management tool. It has great promise for the future of the global economy. The companies will produce better products which will benefit the consumers. The companies consequently will earn more revenue and catalyse the global economic growth.
References:
Alvarez, J.L. ed., 2016. The diffusion and consumption of business knowledge. Springer.
Benavides-Velasco, C.A., Quintana-García, C. and Marchante-Lara, M., 2014. Total quality management, corporate social responsibility and performance in the hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 41, pp.77-87.
Doz, Y. and Prahalad, C.K., 2013, January. Quality of management: An emerging source of global competitive advantage?. In Strategies in Global Competition (RLE International Business): Selected Papers from the Prince Bertil Symposium at the Institute of International Business, Routledge (pp. 345-368).
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Hitt, M.A., Xu, K. and Carnes, C.M., 2016. Resource based theory in operations management research. Journal of Operations Management, 41, pp.77-94.
Kaizen.com. 2017. What is Kaizen | Definition of KAIZEN | Kaizen Meaning. [online] Available at: https://www.kaizen.com/about-us/definition-of-kaizen.html [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017].
Qpmg.com. 2017. Total Quality Management improves quality, productivity and customer satisfaction.. [online] Available at: https://www.qpmg.com/tqm.htm [Accessed 17 Mar. 2017].
Slack, N., 2015. Operations strategy. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Staubli.com. 2017. Cite a Website – Cite This For Me. [online] Available at: https://www.staubli.com/en/profile/history/ [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017].
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