Total Quality Management - Meaning and Important Concepts

To understand the meaning of “Total quality management”, let us first know what does Quality mean?

Quality refers to a parameter which decides the superiority or inferiority of a product or service. Quality can be defined as an attribute which differentiates a product or service from its competitors. Quality plays an essential role in every business. Business marketers need to emphasize on quality of their brands over quantity to survive the cut throat competition.

Why would a customer come to you if your competitor is also offering the same product? The difference has to be there in quality. Your brand needs to be superior for it to stand apart from the rest.

Total Quality Management

Total Quality management is defined as a continuous effort by the management as well as employees of a particular organization to ensure long term customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. Remember, one happy and satisfied customer brings ten new customers along with him whereas one disappointed individual will spread bad word of mouth and spoil several of your existing as well as potential customers.

You need to give something extra to your customers to expect loyalty in return. Quality can be measured in terms of durability, reliability, usage and so on. Total quality management is a structured effort by employees to continuously improve the quality of their products and services through proper feedbacks and research. Ensuring superior quality of a product or service is not the responsibility of a single member.

Every individual who receives his/her paycheck from the organization has to contribute equally to design foolproof processes and systems which would eventually ensure superior quality of products and services. Total Quality management is indeed a joint effort of management, staff members, workforce, suppliers in order to meet and exceed customer satisfaction level. You can’t just blame one person for not adhering to quality measures. The responsibility lies on the shoulder of everyone who is even remotely associated with the organization.

W. Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran, and Armand V. Feigenbaum jointly developed the concept of total quality management. Total Quality management originated in the manufacturing sector, but can be applied to almost all organizations.

Total quality management ensures that every single employee is working towards the improvement of work culture, processes, services, systems and so on to ensure long term success.

Total Quality management can be divided into four categories:

• Plan
• Do
• Check
• Act

Also referred to as PDCA cycle.

Planning Phase

Planning is the most crucial phase of total quality management. In this phase employees have to come up with their problems and queries which need to be addressed. They need to come up with the various challenges they face in their day to day operations and also analyze the problem’s root cause. Employees are required to do necessary research and collect relevant data which would help them find solutions to all the problems.

Doing Phase

In the doing phase, employees develop a solution for the problems defined in planning phase. Strategies are devised and implemented to overcome the challenges faced by employees. The effectiveness of solutions and strategies is also measured in this stage.

Checking Phase

Checking phase is the stage where people actually do a comparison analysis of before and after data to confirm the effectiveness of the processes and measure the results.

Acting Phase

In this phase employees document their results and prepare themselves to address other problems.

MRP,MRPII and ERP

MRP stands for material requirements planning and deals with bringing in the right amount of raw material at the right time to support production. MRPII stands for manufacturing resource planning and builds on MRP by adding shop floor production planning and tracking tools. A third-generation system available at time of publication is called ERP, or enterprise resource planning, which integrates all departments of the business, not just manufacturing and purchasing.

MRP

Material Requirements Planning, or MRP, was developed in the 1970s to help manufacturing companies better manage their procurement of material to support manufacturing operations. MRP systems translate the master production schedule into component- and raw material-level demand by splitting the top level assembly into the individual parts and quantities called for on the bill of materials, which reports to that assembly, and directs the purchasing group when to buy them based on the component lead time which is loaded in the MRP system.

MRPII

Manufacturing Resource Planning, or MRPII, goes several steps beyond MRP. While MRP stopped at the receiving dock, MRPII incorporates the value stream all the way through the manufacturing facility to the shipping dock where the product is packaged and sent to the end customer. That value stream includes production planning, machine capacity scheduling, demand forecasting and analysis modules, and quality tracking tools. MRPII also has tools for tracking employee attendance, labor contribution and productivity.

ERP

A discussion of MRP and MRPII would be incomplete without mentioning Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP is the next evolution of the MRP system. While MRP helped companies plan material purchases, and MRPII added in-plant scheduling and production controls, ERP attempts to integrate the information flow from all departments within a company: finance, marketing, production, shipping, even human resources. While some argue that ERP does not deliver on its promise, according to an article on CIO.com, a properly set up ERP system allows better communication and monitoring than ever before, giving all departments access to the exact status of a customer order at any point in time.

Warnings

MRP, MRPII, and ERP are iterations of the same type of system: A software program that aims to help businesses better manage their costs, control inventory, meet customer delivery expectations, and track and improve their internal processes. However, according to an article by the Business Performance Improvement Consultancy, most implementations of any of the three systems fail to achieve the desired results. This is based primarily on a lack of proper training and understanding on the part of the business managers and the IT managers. A business manager with insufficient IT understanding may set the system up incorrectly, while an IT manager who does not understand the business needs may simply automate the current process flow without improving it. If you are contemplating implementing any of these systems, it is critical to make sure that business management and IT management are on the same page and that proper training has been invested in.

Company Secretary

Company Secretary

FUNCTION OF A COMPANY SECRETARY

A company secretary is recognizes as one of the principal officers of the company. The company secretary is the person who entask the compliance of the corporate laws. He is also responsible for managing the various statutory meetings of the company. The code of Corporate Governance which is now a part of the listing regulations of all Stock Exchanges sets various responsibilities of a company secretary in relation to compliance of corporate laws and code of Corporate Governances. The qualification of a company secretary was not previously defined under the Companies Ordinance, 1984 however, the code of Corporate Governance prescribes the qualification of a company secretary of a listed company. The knowledge and training makes a company secretary versatile to carry out various functions in finance, accounts, legal, administrative and personnel areas in addition to his own secretarial duties and responsibilities. In fact his role starts from the very moment when the idea of formation of a Company is conceived.


EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS

Almost every kind of organization whose affairs are controlled whether by boards, councils or otherwise needs to appoint a secretary, by virtue of law, to manage the legal affairs independently. The position of company secretary is the key management position in a company. After the implementation of Code of Corporate Governance the employment prospects have very much enlarged. All listed companies have to appoint a company secretary who fulfills the qualification prescribed in the Code of Corporate Governance.

A qualified member of the Institute of Corporate Secretaries of Pakistan may, therefore, find an opening as a company secretary, assistant company secretary or an intermediate level administrative position depending upon the size of the organization. However after the attaining the position of a company secretary, he does not necessarily reach the zenith of his career but by virtue of his academic background, professional expertise he may aptly suited to become a member of the board or the governing body of an organization. Bureau of public enterprises, State Bank of Pakistan Government of Pakistan , Stock Exchanges, Nationalized Banks recommends the names of senior company secretaries on their panel for appointment as directors in public sector companies or as members of advisory committees. Many senior members have become chairman, managing directors and whole-time directors in many companies.

SELF-EMPLOYMENT (PRACTICE)

A member of the Institute of Corporate Secretaries of Pakistan may also practice as a practicing company secretary. However, the concept of a practicing company secretary is in initial stage of development but in the developed countries the practicing company secretaries are working successfully. A company secretary in practice may be called upon by the promoters to incorporate a new company or amalgamation, merger, reorganization or winding up of the company. He may act as an authorized representative of a company in respect of filing, registration, presentation, attestation, verification of documents (including forms, application and returns) by or on behalf of the company. He may also offer the serves as share registrar, issue house, stock broker, a secretarial auditor, a consultant or an adviser to a company on management affairs including any legal or procedural matter falling under the Companies Ordinance 1984. He may give consultancy on issues in respect of the rules or bye-laws of stock exchange, the monopoly control authority or under any other law for the time being in force.