Total Quality Management and Toyota

Total quality management is “a management approach of an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all of its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organization and too society” (Wikipedia). This is the definition of total quality management as given by the International Standards Organization, and while the definition provides a vague notion of what total quality management is, it fails to provide any real knowledge of total quality management. Instead, as with many things in life, in order to fully understand what total quality management is, what it’s various facets are, and how it gets implemented, it is necessary to explore first hand how real corporation define and use total quality management. In this paper, I will analyze the way in which the Toyota Motor Corporation uses total quality management, with a specific focus on the Toyota Production System and the three main tools by which Toyota Motor Corporation manages total quality management.

Tags: Toyota TQM, Total quality management in Toyota, Toyota total quality management, TQM and Toyota, Toyota TQM analysis

[...] Thus, in order for Toyota employees to be able to accurately identify the causes of production failures or defects, they must stop the line and isolate these defects before they spread to other parts of the production process. Furthermore, if a defect is identified in the final product, it will be extremely difficult to identify which specific part of the production process was responsible for the defect. In order to successfully implement this aspect of the Toyota Production System, Toyota Motor Corporation had to standardize the work that was being performed by the employees: If you're turning out something in a different way from that on the standardized work sheet, or different from the way other people are doing it, that's the definition of a problem. [...]

[...] However, before going further, it must be noted that total quality management can be applied to a company that produces material goods or a company that provides intangible services, and that the principles of total quality management, as well as the execution of TQM, is different in both cases. As Toyota Motor Corporation is primarily a manufacturing firm this paper will only focus on total quality management as it applies to manufacturing. Total quality management in manufacturing starts with taking a random sample of product and performing statistical tests to maintain quality assurance (Wikipedia). [...]