Total Quality Management Question#2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Total Quality Management Question#2 - Essay Example Oakland (2000) proposed that employees' participation helps in implementing the total quality management (TQM) strategy. For this to happen, employees must be made aware about the different aspects of quality and how they can be partners in implementing quality strategy. Such an arrangement, often termed as the participative form of management, is stated to help the subordinates in sharing the decision making power with their superiors. But the success of any strategy depends upon a number of factors, implementation policy and prevailing circumstances. Therefore the key elements for improving the levels of quality in the billing department include; In view of the evolving global economy, which demands appropriately skilled workforce, most of the governments around the world have started undertaking reforms of their education and training systems, with inclusion of the vocational streams into the system and by providing apprenticeship training to the students. Such training is often provided in technical skills. But the copier company has a mixed workforce which includes trained manpower for carrying out the technical work, maintenance etc. while the other category includes customer care executives and marketing people who require more of behavioural training. There's another category of employees belonging to the accounts and administration branch who might have undergone some training in their respective fields, but when it comes to live experience, their training might require some more polishing to mould them in sync with the company's principles and objectives. John Ruskin, an English critic of 19th century once said, "Qua lity is never an accident, it is always the result of intelligent effort". This statement sums up the kind of efforts required for deliver value to the customer and for producing a quality product and service. To start with, there must be a sincere effort on the part of the management to keep the communication channels working between workers and management. Interaction at regular intervals with the customer care executives, billing clerks, technicians, sales clerks etc. helps not only in gathering the feedback from them, but such interaction also helps in motivating the workers. Company officials must inform the workers in detail about company policies and objectives. The interactions at regular intervals must be used by the company managers to collect as much information as possible about the expectations of the employees from the company and their apprehensions/ doubts about handling some typical situations. An effort must be made by the company officials to solicit the opinions of the workers in resolving some of the testing situations. Such an exercise would no doubt encourage the workers to come out with innovative solutions, but it will also help in company preparing a detailed data base of its working style, working conditions etc., which in turn will help in preparing better customer handling policies. The workers must be trained in handling the customer