The 14 cornerstones of successful TQM

TQM has been applied to businesses and has proven very efficient in terms of customer satisfaction and effective service delivery. However, its application to organizations is still a mystery to so many people.

Paul Deming – known as the pioneer

Paul Demings, was known as the pioneer of "Total Quality Management," and it has served so many Japanese organizations over the years. He made TQM with the aim of having a company- wide approach to quality that started with management. Paul stressed that every part of an organization must be actively involved in TQM if the desired result is to be expected.

Paul brought new ways of management and the 14 points he made has been the cornerstone of TQM’s success in organizations.

1. The first point is to create a purpose of improvement of your product or service with the sole purpose of staying competitive.

2. You will have to adopt leadership by example role.

3. Always build quality into your products and give no room for quality control inspection to catch any errors.

4. Have a single supplier for any one item, based on loyalty, quality, and service, instead of price.

5. Continue to improve the quality while reducing the costs of production.

6. Rely on the job training.

7. Assign leaders in each team so that members can perform better.

8. Do not be afraid

9. The departments should work with each other since the whole project is built on the same concept.

10. Substitute leadership and eliminate quotas.

11. Do away with slogans that cannot be controlled by the work force.

12. Remove any barriers that will make the worker hate workmanship and instill pride into both workers and the management.

13. Introduce educational and self-improvement programs for everyone.

14. Involve everyone in the transformation to TQM.

Paul stressed the point that good housekeeping is the secret to TQM. Your business must begin with a neat and orderly working environment. Having inaccurate paperwork will make things sloppy and disorganized, all of which is a recipe for mistakes and failures. Paperwork must be done accurately and treated with respect.

Inaccurate and sloppy record keeping is a recipe for business failure and if you are not up to date with your cost of operations, your sales figures, or your cash flow, then you are putting your organization in lots of risks. There are several tools and softwares that will help you look into keeping your records.

Another point shared by Paul is the fact that caring goes a long way in ensuring that your business becomes profitable. How you keep your business, how you relate to your employees, how you value your word, and yourself, make a strong statement about your business philosophy, all accumulate and become transparent in your business. Caring is one of the most important things needed to build a positive reputation.

The perception of your operations is a direct reflection of your business values, attitudes and efforts. Remember, that quality isn’t just about the product or the services being offered, it is about the whole organization and how it is being run.

IBQMI® uses the most holistic approach to TQM on the market.

Enroll in the IBQMI TQM TRAINER® program and learn how to become a corporate senior trainer. Our award industry-recognized IBQMI TQM TRAINER® certification program is widely accepted as the gold standard in the industry.