TQM: Planning, Design & Implementation

In the present competitive environment, survival of the organizations depend on their ability to continuously improve the expectations of the customers. Quality is critical in achieving competitiveness in domestic and global market, as quality is a prerequisite to have satisfied customers. Customer expectations for quality products and services have prompted organizations to adopt the principles of total quality management (TQM).

With liberalization, the Indian industries feel the necessity of improving quality for its survival and growth, provided it addresses to some of the key issues that form the core of TQM philosophy. Award models are helpful in this regard as these are generally based on the synthetic framework involving enablers, results and processes. Most of the authors have treated TQM and award models as a system, yet the dynamics interactions among their subsystems have not received due attention in literature. TQM initiatives often fail due to the lack of understanding of the interactions among TQM variables.

The motivation of this book is to model some of the complexities in the dynamic interaction of the variables that play important role in the survival and growth in the TQM journey. The objectives of this book are:

A system dynamics model has been developed by integrating all important enabler and result variables. TQM index (TQMI) has been proposed, which provides a synthetic score for the enablers and results of the business processes.

A simulation-based model has been developed in this book, which is useful to the organizations in devising policies for effective deployment of enablers to improve results and ultimately enhance the TQM index. This is also helpful in providing insight to the management for devising strategies under different scenarios.

This book also suggests implementation strategy for TQM in the forms of six phases and 18 steps. These phases comprises of : Start up and commitment strategy phase, Systems and protocols development phase, Practice phase, Monitoring phase, and Growth phase.