Practical Applications of Total Quality Management (TQM) – Part I

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy of management that strives to make the best use of all available resources and opportunities through continuous improvement. TQM means achieving quality in terms of all functions of the enterprise. Many researchers attempted to analyze how IT and TQM can jointly add value to organizations and the purpose of this first post on TQM is to evaluate the practicality of TQM in an IT service. 

In this evaluation, a balance of the service management needs with the reality of bottom-line effectiveness is provided. The post also provides a list of critical success factors to consider in a change management initiative engaged by an IT service.

TQM in Practice

The essence of quality is to do it right the first time, and to satisfy customer requirements every time by involving everyone in the organization. The works of Crosby and his colleagues on the evolution of TQM cut across all pervasive philosophies of management. TQM has been a key business improvement strategy since the 1970s, as it has been deemed essential for improving efficiency and competitiveness. TQM aims to achieve an overall effectiveness which is higher than the individual outputs from the sub-systems such as design, planning, production, distribution, customer focus strategy, quality tools and employee involvement. This philosophy of management strives to make the best use of all available resources and opportunities through continuous improvement. 

As a management philosophy, TQM makes use of particular set of principles, practices, and techniques to expand business and profits and provides a bypass to enhanced productivity by avoiding rework, rejects, waste, customer complaints, and high cost. This can be achieved by emphasizing the organization’s commitment from data-driven, problem-solving approaches to quality accruing. 

The five basic pillars of TQM are: (a) top management commitment for quality enhancement, (b) customer centric advancements of processes and building a long-lasting trustworthy relationship between the organization and the customer, (c) relentless development by setting goals and deadlines, (d) benchmarking with several specific tools and quality-adding techniques, and (e) strengthening the employee base by concentrating at any stage of a process on quality, where customer satisfaction is stationed. Table 1 provides a summary of the key dimensions that constitute TQM.

Table 1: TQM key dimensions

 TQM and Change Management Initiative for IT Performance

A business firm achieves world-class status when it has successfully developed operational capabilities through TQM to support the entire company in gaining a sustained overall performance over its competitors. Although there is insufficient statistical evidence to conclude significant simple relationships between TQM and IT services quality performance, many studies investigated the notion that TQM practices provide approaches to improve the economic position in the service sectors in general. Both IT and TQM had, and will continue to have a significant impact on most organizations. I only regret the lack of empirical research on the relationship between the two and how they both relate to business performance.

Critical success factors for TQM implementation in an IT service are summarized in Table 2. The implementation of TQM in an IT service should facilitate the adoption of appropriate policies and procedures that enhance the eight categories of TQM.

Table 2: Critical success factors for TQM implementation