The main condition for ensuring the competitiveness of any enterprise is the quality of its products or services. In today’s competitive struggle, only those who provide high quality at a low price will survive. The experience of advanced enterprises shows that quality can be achieved only through the joint efforts of the entire team with an active position of management and with the use of all modern methods and tools of quality management. Modern managers need to have competencies in the field of quality management, the use of modern tools and quality systems in order to be competitive.
Building a Culture of Total Quality Management
Partnering should be based on a number of principles and conditions, non-compliance with which almost always leads to the collapse of the joint business. In this regard, partnering is one of the most difficult parts of business organization. Only by regularly discussing partnering can it be achieved that every partner will make a worthy contribution to the common cause (Kemenade & Hardjono, 2019). A joint business can seriously benefit from a partnering that is subject to quality management.
Developing Customer Focus
Customer focus is a set of measures aimed by the company at studying the desires of the client, meeting his needs in order to obtain additional profit. If the measures aimed at meeting the requirements of customers do not bring additional benefits (for example, profit or competitive advantage), the company does not justify such costs. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully manage quality compliance with the principle of priority customer orientation. To become a customer-focusrd company, it is not enough to offer a quality service or spend a lot of money on a loyalty program. Customer orientation is evident in each segment of the service, which requires continuous quality management. This includes working on the correct structure of employees’ thinking, external and internal readiness of the company to make maximum efforts to satisfy consumers.
Empowering the Team
Often in management, team empowerment is misunderstood. This can be interpreted as managers and leaders adhering to the principle of non-interference, ordering employees to sink or swim. However, empowerment is an active process that requires quality management. It includes coaching or training team members in self-service, their ability to adapt and make decisions.
Partnering & the Culture of Quality Management
The pooling of resources occurs in such a way that the participants of the corporation have fundamentally new, higher opportunities for the implementation of certain functions of economic activity. Due to partnering, this process is more successful in result of the coordination of efforts and the implementation of a unified strategic policy (Goetsch & Davis, 2020). Quality management during pooling resources, based on partnership, leads to an improvement in the company’s market position.
Sharing Costs
The quality of sharing costs in terms of partnering directly affects the adequacy of management decisions. If costs are not shared, the achievements of a particular division or product will be overestimated. However, the total distribution of absolutely all costs is likely to also lead to distortion of financial results. In this case, a number of costs that are not related to the activities of sub-divisions or specific products will be separated by a formal feature. In order to correctly share costs of partners, it is necessary to understand the ultimate goal of this distribution, to follow the sequence in it and choose an adequate quality management methodology.
Cooperating
New organizational forms of cooperating are based on modern computer technologies, the Internet and modern means of communication. However, the successful functioning of new organizational forms of cooperation requires not only the skillful use of innovations. Even more important is the correct solution of a wide range of social, economic, legal and psychological problems that arise in the process of joint activity (Franco et al., 2020). To do this, it is necessary to implement changes in the business philosophy and culture of quality management.
Establishing Customer Focus
Establishing a customer focus is related to the concept of service design and its subsequent quality management. This is the activity of planning and organizing all components of the provision of the service. The goal of quality management in this case is to control the improvement of interaction between the service provider and its customers.
Gaining Commitment from the Management Team
To enlist the support of the leadership in the field of employee empowerment, being a quality manager, I would give the following arguments in favor of my idea. Due to the opportunity to make choices and participate at a more responsible level, employees become more invested in their company. An employee who does not feel constantly monitored and criticized is more likely to view work as a positive rather than a negative environment. Thus, employee empowerment will lead to greater returns on the part of employees, and prevent staff turnover in the company.
Conclusion
Ensuring a high level of quality of products or services is the initial task of any modern company that seeks to take a stable position in the market, as well as expand its boundaries. Constant work on quality management allows not only to improve reputation, but also to enter the international arena. The fundamentals of quality management regulate the most important points that enable meeting the needs of consumers and ensuring an appropriate level of mutual understanding between partners.
References
Franco, S., Caroli, M. G., Cappa, F., & Chiappa, G. D. (2020). Are you good enough? CSR, quality management and corporate financial performance in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 88(2), 13-24.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. (2020). Quality management for organizational excellence. Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education.
Kemenade, E. V., & Hardjono, T. W. (2019). Twenty-first century total quality management: The emergence paradigm. The TQM Journal, 31(2), 150-166.