TQM Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

TQM Philosophy - Essay Example This research tells that TQM's position as an industry innovator was well established by the time of the accelerator pedal disaster. Not only had they established themselves as being nearly synonymous with TQM, but they also had become well-associated with Kaizen and quality circles. Toyota's cars were well-respected in the market for their safety, longevity and gas efficiency. But the accelerator pedal problem showed chinks in their armor. What is certain, even if the TQM idea they deployed was philosophically sound, is that Toyota became complacent due to their success. Like IBM, Microsoft, AT&T, and too many other companies to list, their size and strategic position had led them to believe they could cut corners and do no wrong. Toyota now has been reminded of their fallibility and will have to spend years regaining the trust of their consumers. As the burger chain, Wendy's can testify, even erroneous claims of TQM failures at one store can cause a PR nightmare for years even afte r the claim has been proven to be fraudulent. Toyota will have to examine where TQM failures were made, and hold some people accountable. Worse, this is not a faulty construction element, so their front-line workers can't be held responsible. Instead, it is faulty design, which implicates engineers and management, people higher up the food chain who it is more difficult to demote or fire. The implication for TQM is obvious: Big companies will need to overcompensate in their TQM protocols. With their amassed capital, big companies should be able to comply more, not less, with TQM needs and restrictions. But they will need to recognize that market pressures and internal cultures endemic to large, successful organizations cause what might appear to be viable TQM initiatives to fail. They will need to make their TQM programmes even more robust, knowing that the uncorrected tendency of the company will be to veer into complacency and therefore into unsafe products. But another issue that TQM advocates face in the wake of the Toyota debacle is that elements like TQM can transition from innovative, effective new techniques into established rigidities. New ideas can still be adapted to new market situations, but once an idea like TQM has become old enough, it becomes very hard to apply it in new ways internal to a company due to factors of complacency, institutional size and the commensurate reduction in flexibility, and established institutional cultures that start to make the idea into a routine that becomes increasingly hard to break. TQM advocates will need to commit to bringing in fresh new minds and new ideas and actually adopting them on a yearly basis in order to remain viable. But the Toyota TQM issue was even worse than it appeared: It actually indicated weakness with the whole idea of TQM. An engineer reported, Although one of the main tasks of engineers at the company was to come up with ways to improve existing product designs, I learned early on that kai zen had a fairly narrow application. It was mainly used to tweak designs to improve product performance. These techniques ensured increased market share for the company because buyers could immediately see the results of the improvements in new models. But some of the most complex engineering design processes—and the ones that tend to fail—are under the hood and out of sight of most owners†¦