Total Quality Management (TQM) is an approach that seeks to improve quality and performance

which will meet or exceed customer expectations. This can be achieved by integrating all quality-

related functions and processes throughout the company.

Total quality management has evolved from the quality assurance methods that were first

developed around the time of the First World War. The war effort led to large scale manufacturing

efforts that often produced poor quality. To help correct this, quality inspectors were introduced on

the production line to ensure that the level of failures due to quality was minimized

Principles of TQM

TQM can be defined as the management of initiatives and procedures that are aimed at achieving

the delivery of quality products and services. A number of key principles can be identified in defining

TQM, including:

Executive Management – Top management should act as the main driver for TQM and create an

environment that ensures its success.

Training – Employees should receive regular training on the methods and concepts of quality.

Customer Focus – Improvements in quality should improve customer satisfaction.

Decision Making – Quality decisions should be made based on measurements.

Methodology and Tools – Use of appropriate methodology and tools ensures that non-conformances

are identified, measured and responded to consistently.

Continuous Improvement – Companies should continuously work towards improving manufacturing

and quality procedures.

Company Culture – The culture of the company should aim at developing employees ability to work

together to improve quality.

Employee Involvement – Employees should be encouraged to be pro-active in identifying and

addressing quality related problems.

The Cost Of TQM

Many companies believe that the costs of the introduction of TQM are far greater than the benefits

it will produce. However research across a number of industries has costs involved in doing

nothing, i.e. the direct and indirect costs of quality problems, are far greater than the costs of

implementing TQM.

The American quality expert, Phil Crosby, wrote that many companies chose to pay for the poor

quality in what he referred to as the “Price of Non-conformance”. The costs are identified in the

Prevention, Appraisal, Failure (PAF) Model.

Prevention costs are associated with the design, implementation and maintenance of the TQM

system. They are planned and incurred before actual operation, and can include:

Product Requirements – The setting specifications for incoming materials, processes, finished products/services.

Quality Planning – Creation of plans for quality, reliability, operational, production and inspections.

Quality Assurance – The creation and maintenance of the quality system.

Training – The development, preparation and maintenance of processes.

Appraisal costs are associated with the vendors and customers evaluation of purchased materials

and services to ensure they are within specification. They can include:

Verification – Inspection of incoming material against agreed upon specifications.

Quality Audits – Check that the quality system is functioning correctly.

Vendor Evaluation – Assessment and approval of vendors.

Failure costs can be split into those resulting from internal and external failure. Internal failure

costs occur when results fail to reach quality standards and are detected before they are shipped

to the customer. These can include:

Waste – Unnecessary work or holding stocks as a result of errors, poor organization or communication.

Scrap – Defective product or material that cannot be repaired, used or sold.

Rework – Correction of defective material or errors.

Failure Analysis – This is required to establish the causes of internal product failure.

External failure costs occur when the products or services fail to reach quality standards, but are

not detected until after the customer receives the item. These can include:

Repairs – Servicing of returned products or at the customer site.

Warranty Claims – Items are replaced or services re-performed under warranty.

Complaints – All work and costs associated with dealing with customer’s complaints.

Returns – Transportation, investigation and handling of returned items.

The objective of the survey was to investigate the level of TQM understanding and

implementation in Indian automotive suppliers. To that end, a questionnaire was developed

to collect data for this research. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the Indian

automotive suppliers were selected as the population of this study. The respondents consist of

executive directors, managing directors, manufacturing managers, quality managers,

production managers, and planning and development managers, in these automotive suppliers.

They were chosen as the population of the study because they directly involved in the process,

have first-hand knowledge and experience in TQM implementation. The questionnaire consists

of six parts. The first part investigates the general information of the companies participating in

the research. This includes the size of company, type of business, quality activities that had

been implemented, the certificates that have been received, and the awards that have been

won. The third part of the questionnaire explores the general TQM opinions in Indian

automotive suppliers.

The practical level of TQM implementation in Indian automotive suppliers was explored in the

fourth part of the questionnaire by using critical success factors of TQM for SMEs. In this

part, respondents were asked to rate two aspects on a five point Likert scale:

first, the level of importance placed on each statement in each critical factor; and,

second, the extent to which they thought it is currently a practice in the organization.

For the perceived importance, the rating scales range from 1 ¼ not important at all, 2 ¼ not

important, 3 ¼ neutral, 4 ¼ important, 5 ¼ very important; while for the extent of practice

was given as 1 ¼ very low, 2 ¼ low, 3 ¼ moderate, 4 ¼ high, 5 ¼ very high. TQM results will be

explored in the fifth part of the questionnaire. This part determines the performance of Indian

automotive suppliers after implementing TQM. And the last part of the questionnaire identifies

the barriers or difficulties faced in trying to adopt TQM in the Indian automotive suppliers.

The process of developing the questionnaire included a pilot survey, which was used to modify

and eliminate a number of variables, until the final questionnaire was designed. Experts on the

subject were consulted, to ensure that the questions were properly phrased and suitable.

The comments and feedback given were very useful in enhancing, rectifying, and improving the

instrument.

Survey Results

A total of 250 questionnaires distributed with 32 being returned completed. One of the 32

returned questionnaires was incomplete, resulting in 12.4% valid response rate. Action was

taken to increase the response rate by sending a follow up letter to remind the

companies to respond to the survey, but this still did not improve the response rate.

According to Othman et al. (2001), this response rate is not different from other surveys in

India, which tend to obtain a response below 20%. One of these surveys is the research done by

Ahmed & Hassan (2003) with a response rate of 11.15%. This response rate is also satisfactory

since accessing the managers is usually difficult.