Total Quality Management
A dominant feature of TQM is the concept of continuous improvement which will be discussed in more detail later in this section. This approach represents a change in management and in the way people and systems operate, the overriding principle of which is that customer satisfaction begins on the shop floor.TQM has been described as: an interrelationship between the organisation's culture; its relationships with its customers, both external and internal; the use of organisational teams and cross functional teams; an emphasis upon problem solving; recognition of a need for continuous improvement; and the use of measurement to evaluate systems and practices and to indicate the effectiveness of improvement efforts (Westbrook 1993). Moreover, TQM sets out deliberately to create an environment where continual improvements in all things are the norm. This TQM culture involves every department and employee in direct production, production support activities and even upstream and down stream in the value chain. The Key features of TQM are:on-going continuous improvement involving everyone;a total management approach to quality involving all members of the organisation;the application of appropriate quality control techniques;group problem solving;a focus on internal and external, customers and suppliers;the ethos of working together.Therefore the main thrust of any TQM initiative and the main topic for this investigation is the notion of continuous improvement.Continuous Improvement as a concept is derived from the Japanese term KAIZEN. This does not mean simply to continuously improve, it means something more far reaching than that. It has been discussed variously as a system for gradual, unending improvement (Dawson 1994);the restless, never ending, continuous search for improvement, by everybody in everything (Senge 1990);continuous improvement requires a commitment to learning (Garvin 1993).It is ignorance of this last point that Garvin attributes the high rate of failure of most continuous improvement programmes. Senge (op.cit.) and Nonaka (1991) both provide links between learning and continuous improvements which provide an idyllic and utopian vision of an harmonious company where all employees are straining at the leash to solve the problems of the organisation. Unfortunately these links, whilst of use to the theorist, prove to be too abstract for managers who need guidelines for action; the nitty gritty of what is actually to be done.Burdett (1991) describes three issues which in his experience are fundamental in the context for involvement to flourish:the organisation must strive to create a learning culture;empowerment embodies a significant shift in the supervisors' power base;management of boundaries becomes an imperative.As Arie de Geus (1988) has put it the ability to learn may be the only sustainable competitive advantage. Senge (op.cit.) describes how, by the freeflow of meaning through a group, 'team learning' develops the insight not attainable individually. The definition of what is happening in a given situation under this type of interactive organisation is not the sole obligation of hierarchical leaders. Smircich and Morgan (1982) argue that in situations of more equalised power, this obligation is more widely spread. Therefore the ability to understand the meaning of a situation must be developed and the adaptive capacity (Senge 1990) of the whole organisation is an important development to replace the dependency upon conventional leaders.What is important is the notion that unless learning takes place any change will be either cosmetic or short term. The traditional Plan - Do - Study - Act (Deming 1988) needs to include a learning phase which effects an advancement shift and enables organisational learning. Without this learning shift the organisation carries on the same way it always has; with the learning shift the organization becomes skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights (Garvin, op.cit.).Whilst TQM may represent a set of events the culture change it sets out to achieve is not the installation of a new set of traits but an on-going sequence of changes - a journey not a destination. Culture change is the hidden agenda of TQM, it is one of the few aspects that is the responsibility of management. TQM is not something that can or should be introduced via a big bang approach. However, some approaches demand a quantum leap to provide the necessary radical change in the way work is carried out. One such technique is Business Process Reengineering.