What is TQM??why does it fail very often??

“Total Quality Management” one of the buzzing words now a days…what does this Total Quality Management(TQM) really mean?? does it mean that we have to change the current on going process in which every onr is comfortable…or just introduce a new way of doing the same thing??? Many of the companies are behind implementing the TQM methods may it be to achieve the “6 sigma level ” or the heighest of the “CMM” levels….and now its the time for the Quality team to come up with new fancy terms and introduce some other way of doing the same work…then why dosent any thing change in the company??? why dosent the sigma level increase???? Few of the reasons may be

#1Most of the management functions are left to “experts and specialists” 

#2 The management is bureaucratic.

#3.People and their activities are confined to small functional activities.

           Many companies/organizations are facing this problem of “Small Functional Activities”. Due to these the employees are actually unaware of the customers needs and expectations,they fail to understand who is responsible for reaching the customers expectations and this leads to bad grevience handling and the employee ends up to limit his thinking within the boundraies set for him.The basic principle of TQM is all about the “customer first attitude” and to involve people and encourage out of the box thinking.TQM is a process, a process that  combines the customers the people and the process of the organization all working towards the common goal of “customer satisfaction”.

                       When any company/organization wants to implement TQM they should first have the acceptence and willingness from each and every employee including the top management,but this does not happen in most of the cases as man is basically comfortable in his own comfort zone and would never like to change,,,but what one needs to know is “Change is in-evitable” and once every body understands this implementing TQM methods would be very simple.

          The other reason why implementing TQM is not successful mostly is its a very slow process which includes a total cultural change in the process,it involves changing the organization from a function focused to customer focused.Many organizations think that TQM is very costly to implement but what they need to know is about “The cost of quality” i.e. they should know the cost of attaining quality,cost of running a quality department and above all the cost of having a poor quality.Not every body is interested in statistics and numbers which acts as one of the reasons for TQM to fail as most of the methods include the statistical calculators and complex numbers.

TQM is a process of continious small improvement which involves customers,money and people,the best way to implement TQM is to implement “design in quality” instead of ”test in quality” and the output is “Extraordinary results”!!!

“Need For MBA”

I always had ths question on the top of my mind “Is there a need to do MBA???” Most people have an impression that MBAs can be managers easily in their careers,,,but i think its not true…when we look into the course details of any MBA..we see that we actually know every thing thats there in it…may it be “Business Ethics” or the “Management Control Systems”..we have the “Organization Behavior” which tells us how to deal with our collegues,subordinates and every one in the organization….but if we just think for our selves dont we know the ethics to be followed or how to manage the work we are doin??? dont we know how to behave with people around??? then why does one have be an MBA for that???

I would say one needs to do an MBA coz, though we know most of the things that are thought in this course..MBA puts it in a more organised way and teaches us how can we practice them or rather implement them in our daily life…we all lknow the difference between the mission and vision statements…dont we?? weill if we know then what is it that we learn in MBA?? I say MBA polishes the way we know thing and gives us the in-depth meaning and effect of the minutest things happening around…with the help of all the case studies and the analysis to be done…one clearly gets to know about the thing which they already know in a more detail way and the various effects of it….when working in an organization we work with various people from all over the world..how does one get along with his collegues if he is not a agood teamplayer?? here is where the Soft Skills comes into picture which is one of the most important part of MBA…most of the MBA programs include the training in teambuilding either as a part of student orientation, in work shops or as a topic in Organization Behavior course.

Being an MBA my self i do feel that there ia a need to do MBA as it helps us to bring out a way of analytical thinking from within us and helps us in being more organised.The various quantitative skills and the simple concepts helps us to get along quite easily what ever we do!!!