Introduction
In general, Total Quality Management (TQM) is an effort made by managers of an organization aimed at the improvement of the provision of high-quality services and products to customers. In the modern world, due to the process of globalization and intense competition, quality has become one of those product’s features that have the highest value. Those companies that can provide the best quality usually win (Goetsch & Davis 2014).
Thus, the emergence of TQM has played a crucial role in the overall improvement of the environment inside the organization, which directly depends on the quality of a product produced. As for business excellence, in general, it is a set of practices aimed at managing a company and achieving maximum results and based on a series of values and concepts (Dahlgaard et al. 2013). Over time, these practices have transformed into certain models that serve as guidance on how a company should be operated.
Increasing the competitiveness of the company
Currently, TQM is considered one of the most effective means for companies to increase their competitive ability. The principles of TQM work for any kind of business and can be applied in any industry. In TQM, four sequential categories serve as a framework of any business strategy. They are: plan, do, check, and act. At the stage of planning, a team learns about the problem it needs to solve and develops a plan. At the doing phase, the team finds a solution to the problem and applies it. At the stage of checking, the team analyzes the result of the implementation, thereby determining whether the plan was successful or not (Jiménez-Jiménez et al. 2015). At the acting phase, the team documents the results and provides recommendations regarding the improvement of the plan.
Thus, to make TQM successful for a company, all the phases must be taken into account in the process of production (Goetsch & Davis 2014). Managers try to learn more about TQM and modify it, and now, more and more of them use it to increase their companies’ performance.
Regarding business excellence, originally, it was based on TQM; however, over time, certain changes were made, and it acquired some new features. Particularly, there were some debates concerning the issue that the quality of a product had been made less significant (Dahlgaard et al. 2013). However, the modified principles of business excellence simply considered quality from a different perspective.
Process-Oriented Quality Management
The concept of process-oriented quality management is one of the main components of TQM, which provides a holistic approach aimed at the improvement of a company’s performance. In terms of the main components of TQM, they aim at different areas of business, namely, the customer, the process, and the quality. The first component focuses on customer satisfaction; the second component concerns itself with the processes that occur within the organization in terms of production; the third component deals with the provision of the best quality of a product instead of focusing on its quantity (Stracke 2006). Thus, the combination of all three components provides a comprehensive approach to successful management. If all these components are taken into account, a company will become successful.
Traditionally, there are four phases of building a process-oriented system. In the first phase, it is important to set a direction for a company and create a strategy. It is imperative to determine the company’s strong and weak points and success factors. The second stage is focused primarily on the consideration of the basic requirements and resources needed for the company to function. Additionally, at this stage, it is crucial to determine the quantity of the required resources taking into account the general strategy of the company. The third stage concerns itself with the criteria for individual processes.
Here, it is important to determine these criteria that also have the potential to increase the efficiency of the company (Stracke 2006). Finally, the fourth phase focuses on the development of the methods that will allow providing the best quality of a product.
Process orientation is also one of the main components of quality management. Traditionally, three main dimensions constitute quality management. They are the potential dimension, the process dimension, and the result dimension. In organizational management, these three components must be taken into consideration to develop a successful management model. Moreover, due to the changes in economies regarding customer markets and the increasing significance of the service sector, process orientation has become imperative in terms of integrative management (Stracke 2006). Quality management is aimed at the achievement of organizational objectives and the provision of support to employees in working on the product.
Thus, quality management is a notion that has been significantly improved for the past several decades. The main reason for this is the process of globalization and the increase of competition in the global market (Jiménez-Jiménez et al. 2015). In general, quality management consists of three main components, namely, quality orientation, process orientation, and customer orientation. TQM includes all the requirements of the concept of integrative management. Process-oriented management is now undergoing a continuous process of improvement that has no finish in the future, as it will always be assessed and improved. This is one of the main reasons why quality is one of the most important success factors.
Conclusion
Additionally, nowadays, due to constant and intense competition, companies are trying to increase the quality of their products, as it is a crucial factor in their competitive ability (Stracke 2006). Overall, this tendency is considered good as it significantly accelerates the global progress in every sphere of activity.
Reference List
Dahlgaard, J J, Chen, C K, Jang, J Y, Banegas, L A & Dahlgaard-Park, S M, 2013, Business excellence models: limitations, reflections and further development. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, vol. 24, no. 5-6, pp. 519-538.
Goetsch, D L & Davis, S B 2014, Quality management for organizational excellence. Pearson, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Jiménez-Jiménez, D, Martinez-Costa, M, Martínez-Lorente, A R & Rabeh, H A D 2015, Total quality management performance in multinational companies: a learning perspective. The TQM Journal, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 328-340.
Stracke, C M 2006, ‘Process-oriented quality management’, in Ehlers & Pawlowski (eds.), Handbook on quality and standardisation in e-learning, Springer, Berlin, pp. 79-96.