Impact of Globalization on Total Quality Management

Quality management is an act that monitor all activities that needed to maintain and sustain high quality output, continuous improvement of process and product to a desire level of excellence in order to create customer satisfaction (Flynn, Schroeder, & Sakakibara, 1994, p. 342). Nowadays, increase in globalization and international trade had led to the increase of competition in the global market. The increase of competition had forced companies to focus on the concept of quality in their business and discover that effective quality management can increase their competitive advantage in the global market (Anderson, Rungtusanatham, & Schroeder, 1994).

First, it is essential to decompose the concept “Total Quality Management” to clearly understand its goal: “Total” goes for the fact that quality involves everyone and all activities in the company, “Quality” means conformance to Requirements “ Meeting Customer Requirements” and “Management” because Quality can and must be managed. 2 The TQM model is based on the hypothesis that a company’s survival is only possible if a competitive level is achieved and maintained for each of the so called «6 dimensions of quality»: • • • • • • Product & service quality On-time delivery Fair price Employees satisfaction Product & process safety Environment conservation.

TQM involves the entire organization, from the most junior employee to the CEO. In particular, TQM provides management with the ability to ensure quality through more effective improvement channels

TQM encourages a strategic approach to management at the operational level through involving multiple departments in systematic innovation and cross-functional improvements. It allows companies enable managing operations as cross-functional process which gives an advantage to develop and fit an orientation toward inter-company collaboration and strategic alliances through establishment of culture collaboration among different departments. It also helps a company able to work well for services and manufacturing sectors then provides a high profits through improving efficiency (Yoshiki Kurata,

One of the popular strategies is the total quality management TQM, which is focused to continuously improve the ways people, machines, and systems accomplish work at every level of the organization (Noe et al., 2016). As its name tells us, the core is the quality, so all products and services and the whole production itself including employees should have a very high quality. Customers value high quality a lot and are often ready to pay more for it.

For an organization to make improvements, it must consider the external, as well as the internal and relational-based views. TQM affects the process at all levels.

Total Quality Management is the management philosophy for improving the products and process under the continuous improvement. Under this philosophy, every little step adds value to the overall improvement of the organization. Under the TQM, Management tries to coordinate all the stakeholders of the organization in order to meet the customer expectations. The practices of TQM are usually seen as cross-functional product design, process management, supplier quality management, customer involvement, information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-functional training, and employee involvement.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an improvement tool that is widely used in many companies. It consists of many aspects including Managing people as well as business processes in order to maintain customer satisfaction. With TQM, Businesses starts to do the right thing from the start and to ensure zero error. Therefore, it is important to learn the principle of TQM and how it acts in organizations with its advantages and disadvantages.

TQM is defined by University of Tulsa as a zero-error approach towards improving the quality of processes and systems in an organization. It is said to be a management approach that aims for long-term success by focusing on customer satisfaction. TQM is based on the participation of all members of an organization in

The world offers significant business opportunities for every company, however, opportunities are accompanied by significant challenges for managers. Managing global operations across diverse cultures and markets represents a big challenge and opportunity for companies. To compete in the global market and be successful, companies must learn the strategies, policies, norms and technology necessary to conduct international business. The opportunities for global expansion are numerous, and attaining success is a matter of developing the right strategy to win local markets and its consumers.

Total Quality Management is a management approach to the way an organization conducts business. It focuses on the long term success of the company through customer satisfaction (Lyle, 2013). Continued improvement is viewed as a process, not a short term goal (WebFinance, Inc., 2015). Total Quality Management encompasses the value of the customer, and puts quality first. The level of quality is determined by the customer, and is called customer-defined quality (Reed & Sanders). Total Quality Management was created and has evolved around the quality of every aspect of a company. Quality is not easily defined. People can have different opinions about what quality is or the level of quality that is needed. To further complicate the matter, the quality meaning has changed over time.

“While Total Quality Management has proven to be an effective process for improving organizational functioning, its value can only be assured through a comprehensive and well thought out implementation process” (Packard, 1995). Implementing TQM requires large scale change. Change can be difficult in a culture where patterns have been ingrained. However, the survival of the company is dependent upon the change. Change is not just focused on the customer but also on the entire culture of the organization, its belief systems and decision making processes. Changes done according to a plan are usually successful.

Managers are looking to globalize operations, developing new markets for their products for better strategic business outcomes. Consumers have better access to a greater variety of goods and services and competition to reach to the new markets with the right product is getting stronger among businesses. Globalization also gives businesses better access to a global workforce, enables them to tap into international raw materials and financial resources. As the world economy is fast becoming a single interdependent system, businesses have competitors, customers, employees from anywhere in the world.

Quality management is seen as the most essential part when it comes to the organisation of a business and possible the most important and complex component of business strategy (Golder et al. 2012: 1). It can be argued that the success of a business is down to the management of quality. This means managers must deal with meeting both internal and external expectations set in order to excel. Quality is a concept that has to be applied throughout the business and must involve everyone within the organisation and it is through this we see the implementation of total quality management (TQM), defined by Dale (2003) as ‘an ever evolving practice…which meet and hopefully exceed the needs and expectations of customers’ (Dale, 2003: 4). The

In the business context, quality management is a broad concept. Customer demands quality in a product rather than price. So, organization must focus on the quality enhancement. Quality usually leads to increasing cost. Business organizations have to manage quality in such a way that it leads to as minimum cost as possible. Not every organization can do this. But, it should be their main goal and objective of structuring their business. In the competitive market, quality management is the most important term that is to be considered in every process.