Embarking the total quality management (TQM) phenomenon is a call for organizational excellence. The phenomenon which started spreading like will fire across the Globe in early 1980 has been spurred on by the fierce competitions raging between companies of Japan, North America and Europe, Japan which occupies only 0.3 percent of the worlds land surface and has only 2.7 percent of the world population with no natural resources, recorded in early 1980 overall percent of the worlds gross national product. That was the period the Japanese were like to the American’s and Europeans by lending and selling quality products at prices which lower than what it was costing the Americans and Europeans to product them.
TQM is a customer forced performance enhancing tools which can be applied to any type of organization. It balances the diverse elements of business (leadership, strategic, planning, human resources development and management, work processes, management, information system, external customers, employees and stalk holders) and aligns them to achieve excellent business results. TQM aims at achieving increasing better production and services at progressive competitive prices, with minimum production or service cost. It involves doing things right in an organization on the first try, rather than making and correcting mistakes. By focusing on doing things right the first time, organization will avoid the high cost of that is associated with re-work. Many people perceive attention to quality as one of the most important competitive issues of today and tomorrow infact, quality may be one of the most important way a manager can add value to products and services to set them apart from those of this competitors.
Most business organization with in the manufacturing and service industries have in one time or the other experienced a drop in their level of productivity while some are still suffering from it till today. At one time, managers believed that there was an inevitable trade of between productivity and quality. They through that the two were diametrically opposed that is, increasing one meant decreasing the other. Today however through a systematic application of TQM, effective managers consider productivity and quality as two sides of the same coin that is increasing one meant increasing the other. Productivity simply means the ratio out put(that is the quantity of goods and services produced) to input ( that is the quantity of labour, capital, energy).
A manufacturer is faced with the problem of product development or modifications that do not meet the required specifications of a quality product, embodies all its characteristics would definitely have to device a means of preventing waste, cost re-mark. In such a situation, the ratio of resource input would be higher than what the manufacturers produces as output. More also resources will be wasted as a result of rework in trying to manufacture a quality product. This the level of productivity would be adversely affected, similarly, in the service industry, firms that render quality customers services are also confronted with the problems of cost of quality which makes it difficult for them to achieve a positive growth of productivity. This is because in rendering this quality services, there are six categories of cost which a firm must be able to prevent or control if it is to maintain a growth in productivity. But through the application of total quality management (TQM), a firm can comfortably render quality service and also increase its productivity level. The categories of cost of quality would be discussed.
1. The cost of activities which are designed to ensure conformance to agreed customer requirement cost of conformance of cost of goods quality.
2. The cost of activities which result from failure to conform to agreed customer requirements-cost of non-conformance or cost of bad or poor quality.
3. The cost of lost opportunities-cost of lost sales.
These are the cost of activities, additional to a basic work process used in a business according to Akpeiyi (1996).
As already mentioned ,total quality management (TQM) is a management concepts that leads to achieving, the best result on the first try. It stresses on during the right things at the first time and every time. It eliminates wastes scrapes and also enables a company to avoid the problem of re0work of alternative. Be it a manufacturing or a service company. Total quality management prevents problems from occurring by creating the attitude and control that make prevention possible and also builds a philosophy of continuous improvement, efficiency, productivity and long terms success.
LITERATURE REVIEW.
Quality has been an elusive concept in business. Many people think of quality as some level of superiority or innate excellence, otherwise view it as a lack of manufacturing defects. The official definition of quality standardized by the American National standard institute (ANSI) and the American society for quality control (ASQC) in 1978, is the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy given needs. This definition implies that we must be able to identify the features and characteristics of products and services that determine customer satisfaction and form the basis for measurement and control. The ability to satisfy given needs reflects the value of the product or service to the customer including the economic value, safety, reliability and maintainability.
Worker responsibility for quality was influenced greatly by Fredrick W. Taylor’s concept of scientific management by focusing on production efficiency and decomposing jobs into small work tasks, inspection was relegated to an independent quality control department in management organizations. The separation of good from bad product became the chief means of ensuring quality.
