Implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM): Toyota Case Study

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Introduction

The Toyota Corporation case study report is based on the implementation of total quality management (TQM) meant to improve the overall performance and operations of this automobile company. TQM involves the application of quality management standards to all elements of the business.

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It requires that quality management standards be applied in all branches and at all levels of the organization. The characteristic of Toyota Corporation going through the total quality process is unambiguous and clear.

Toyota has limited interdepartmental barriers, excellent customer and supplier relations, spares time to be spent on training, and the recognition that quality is realized through offering excellent products as well as the quality of the entire firm, including personnel, finance, sales, and other functions.

The top management at Toyota Corporation has the responsibility for quality rather than the employees, and it is their role to provide commitment, support, and leadership to the human and technical processes (Kanji & Asher, 1996).

Whereas the TQM initiative is to succeed, the management has to foster the participation of Toyota Corporation workers in quality improvement and create a quality culture by altering attitudes and perceptions towards quality.

This research report assesses the implementation of TQM and how Toyota manages quality in all organization management systems while focusing on manufacturing quality. The report evaluates the organization management elements required when implementing TQM, identifies, and investigates the challenges facing Quality Managers or Executives in implementing Quality Management Systems.

Implementation of TQM in Toyota

In order to implement TQM, Toyota corporations focused on the following phases:

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  • The company extended the management responsibility past the instantaneous services and products
  • Toyota examined how consumers applied the products generated, and this enabled the company to develop and improve its commodities
  • Toyota focused on the insubstantial impacts on the procedures as well as how such effects could be minimized through optimization
  • Toyota focused on the kaizen (incessant process development) in order to ensure that all procedures are measurable, repeatable, and visible.

TQM Practices in Toyota

The commitment from business executives is one of the key TQM implementation principles that make an organization successful. In fact, the organizational commitment present in the senior organizational staff ranges from top to lower administration. These occur through self-driven motives, motivation, and employee empowerment. Total Quality Management becomes achievable at Toyota by setting up the mission and vision statements, objectives, and organizational goals.

In addition, the TQM is achievable via the course of active participation in organizational follow-up actions. These actions denote the entire activities needed and involved during the implementation of the set-out ideologies of the organization. From Toyota Corporation’s report, TQM has been successful through the commitment of executive management and the organizational workforce (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2012).

Through inventory and half the bottlenecks at half cost and time, the adopters of TMS (Toyota Management System) are authorized to manufacture twice above the normal production. To manage the quality in all organizational management systems, the Toyota Production System incorporates different modernisms like strategy or Hoshin Kanri use, overall value supervision, and just-in-time assembly.

The amalgamation of these innovations enables Toyota to have a strong competitive advantage despite the fact that Toyota never originated from all of them. The 1914 Henry Ford invention relied on the just-in-time production model. The Ford system of production, from a grand perspective, warrants massive production, thus quality (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2012).

Kanji and Asher (1996) claim that to manage the minute set of production necessitated by the splintered and small post-war marketplaces, the JIT system focuses on the motion and elimination of waste materials. This reduces crave for work-in-process inventory by wrapping up the long production lines. Toyota Corp wraps the production lines into slashed change-over times, a multi-trained workforce that runs manifold machines, and new-fangled cells into a U shape.

When supplementing the just-in-cells, the system of kanban is employed by the Toyota Corporation to connect the cells that are unable to integrate physically. Equally, the system helps Toyota integrate with other external companies, consumers, and suppliers.

The TQM and the creativity of Toyota proprietors both support the quality at the source. The rectification and discovery of the production problems require the executives to be committed. At the forefront of Toyota operations, the managers integrate a number of forms of operational quality checks to ensure quality management at all levels.

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The uninterrupted tests help the Toyota workforce engaging in the assembly course to scrutinize the value of apparatus, implements, and resources utilized in fabrication. The checks help in the scrutiny of the previously performed tasks by other workers. However, the corporation’s own test enables the workers to revise their personal advances in the assembly course.

The Toyota process owners set up the mistake-proofing (Poka-yoke) procedures and devices to capture the awareness of management and involuntarily correct and surface the augmenting problems. This is essential for the critical production circumstances and steps that prove impractical and tricky for Toyota employees to inspect.

Nevertheless, the policy deployment system decentralizes the process of decision-making at Toyota. This context of implementing Total Quality Management originates from Hoshin Kanri’s management by objective (MBO).

This aspect becomes more advantageous to Toyota when dealing with quality management. The system initially puts into practice the coordinated approach and provides a clear structure for the suppliers, producers, and consumers through inter-organizational cost administration. Moreover, Toyota executives can solve the concurrent delivery, cost, and quality bottlenecks, thus replacing and increasing the relatively slow accounting management mechanisms.

Benefits of TQM in Toyota

Customer focus that leads to the desired customer satisfaction at Toyota Company is one of the major success factors in TQM implementation. For every business to grow, it should have understanding, reliable, and trustworthy customers. The principle of customer satisfaction and focus has been the most presently well-thought-out aspect of Toyota’s manufacturing quality.

The TQM may characteristically involve total business focus towards meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations and requirements by considering their personal interests. The mission of improving and achieving customer satisfaction ought to stream from customer focus.

Thus, when focusing on manufacturing quality, this aspect enhances TQM implementation. The first priorities at Toyota are community satisfaction, employees, owners, consumers, and mission. The diverse consumer-related features from liberty. The concern to care is eminent in Toyota Corporation during manufacturing.

Toyota has three basic perspectives of TQM that are customer-oriented. These are based on its manufacturing process traced back to the 1950s. The strategies towards achieving quality manufacturing, planning, and having a culture towards quality accomplishment are paramount for TQM implementation to remain successful. To enhance and maintain quality through strategic planning schemes, all managers and employers must remain effectively driven.

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This involves training workers on principles concerning quality culture and achievement. Scheduling and planning are analytical applications at Toyota Company that purposes in assessing customer demand, material availability, and plant capacity during manufacturing.

The Toyota Corporation has considerable approaches that rank it among the successful and renowned implementers of TQM. From the inherent and designed structure of Toyota, it becomes feasible to comprehend why quality manufacturing is gradually becoming effective. The inspection department is responsible for taking corrective measures, salvaging, and sorting the desired manufactured product or service quality.

The Toyota Corporation also has a quality control system that is involved in determining quality policies, reviewing statistics, and establishing quality manuals or presentation data. Furthermore, quality assurance is one of the integral principles in quality implementation that is practically present at Toyota. The quality assurance and quality inspectors throughout the Toyota Company structure also manage research and development concerning the quality of manufactured products and services.

The quality assurer and quality inspectors all through the Toyota Company structure also manage research and development concerning quality of manufactured products and services

Examples of TQM in Toyota

The Toyota production and operations management system is similarly dubbed as the managerial system. In fact, in this corporation, operational management is also referred to as the production process, production management, or operations (Chary, 2009). These simply incorporate the actual production and delivery of products.

The managerial system involves product design and the associated product process, planning and implementing production, as well as acquiring and organizing resources. With this broad scope, the production and operation managers have a fundamental role to play in the company’s ability to reach the TQM implementation goals and objectives.

The Toyota Corporation operations managers are required to be conversant and familiar with the TQM implementation concepts and issues that surround this functional area. Toyota’s operation management system is focused on fulfilling the requirements of the customers.

The corporation realizes this by offering loyal and express commodities at logical fees and assisting dealers in progressing commodities proffered. As Slack et al. (2009) observed, the basic performance objectives, which pertain to all the Toyota’s operations, include quality, speed, flexibility, dependability, and cost. Toyota Company has been successful in meeting these objectives through its production and operation functions.

Over several decades, Toyota’s operational processes and management systems were streamlined, resulting in the popularly known Toyota Production System. Although the system had been extensively researched, many companies, such as Nissan, experienced difficulties in replicating TPS.

The TPS was conceived when the company realized that producing massive quantities from limited product lines and ensuring large components to achieve maximum economies of scale led to flaws. Its major objectives were to reduce cost, eliminate waste, and respond to the changing needs of the customers. The initial feature of this system was set-up time reduction, and this forms the basis of TQM implementation.

At Toyota Corporation, quality is considered as acting responsibly through the provision of blunder-gratis products that please the target clientele. Toyota vehicles are among the leading brands in customer satisfaction. Due to good quality, its success has kept growing, and in 2012, the company was the best worldwide. Moreover, Toyota has been keen on producing quality vehicles via the utilization of various technologies that improve the performance of the vehicles.

While implementing TQM, Toyota perceives speed as a key element. In this case, speed objective means doing things fast in order to reduce the time spent between ordering and availing the product to the customer.

The TPS method during processing concentrates on reducing intricacy via the use of minute and uncomplicated machinery that is elastic and full-bodied. The company’s human resources and managers are fond of reorganizing streams and designs to promote minimalism. This enhances the speed of production.

Another objective during TQM implementation is dependability. This means timely working to ensure that customers get their products within the promised time. Toyota has included a just-in-time production system comprised of multi-skilled employees who work in teams. The kanban control allows the workers to deliver goods and services as promised. Advancing value and effectiveness appears to be the distress for administrators, mechanical specialists, and other Toyota human resources.

During TQM implementation, Toyota responds to the demands by changing its products and the way of doing business. Chary (2009) argues that while implementing TQM, organizations must learn to like change and develop responsive and flexible organizations to deal with the changing business environment.

Within Toyota plants, this incorporates the ability to adopt the manufacturing resources to develop new models. The company is able to attain an elevated degree of suppleness, manufacturing fairly tiny bunches of products devoid of losses in excellence or output.

The organizational hierarchy and job descriptions also determine the successful implementation of the TQM. Toyota is amongst the few companies whose organizational structure and task allocation have proved viable in TQM implementation. The company has three levels of management. See the diagram below.

Management hierarchy

Management hierarchy

Despite the hierarchy and task specification, employees are able to make independent decisions and take corrective measures when necessary to ensure quality during production. Team working is highly encouraged at Toyota Corporation, and this plays a significant role during TQM implementation. All stakeholders are incorporated in quality control initiatives to ensure client demands are satisfied.

However, all employees are required to carry out their assigned tasks, and the management closely supervises the ways of interactions between workers. The management ensures that the manufacturing lines are well-built and all employees are motivated to learn how to improve the production processes.

Toyota Quality Management

Toyota is among the few manufacturers in the complete automobile industry that consistently profited during the oil crisis in 1974. The discovery was the unique team working of the Japanese that utilized scientific management rules (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007).

The joint effort in Japan, usually dubbed Toyotaism, is a kind of job association emphasizing ‘lean-assembly.’ The technique merges just-in-time production, dilemma-answering groups, job equivalence, authoritative foremost-streak administration, and continued procedure perfection.

Just-in-time (JIT) assembly scheme attempts to accomplish all clients’ needs instantly, devoid of misuse but with ideal excellence. JIT appears to be dissimilar from the conventional functional performances in that it emphasizes speedy production and ravage purging that adds to stumpy supply.

Control and planning of many JIT approaches are concerned directly with pull scheduling, leveled scheduling, kanban control, synchronization of flow, and mixed-model scheduling (Slack et al., 2009).

Toyota appears to be amongst the principal participants in changing Japan to a kingpin in car production. Companies, which have adopted the company’s production system, have increased efficiency and productivity. The 2009 industrial survey of manufacturers indicates that many world-class firms have adopted continuous-flow or just-in-time production and many techniques Toyota has been developing many years ago.

In addition, the manufacturing examination of top plant victors illustrates that the mainstream them utilize lean production techniques widely. Thus, team-working TPS assists Toyota Corporation in the implementation of TQM.

Toyota TQM Implementation Challenges

Executives and Quality Managers face some challenges while implementing Quality Management Systems in organizations. In fact, with a lack of the implementation resources such as monetary and human resources in any organization, the implementation of TQM cannot be successful. Towards the implementation of programs and projects in organizations, financial and human resources have become the pillar stones.

The approach of TQM impels marketplace competence from all kinds of organizational proceeds to ensure profitability and productivity. To meet the desired results in TQM implementation, an organization ought to consider the availability of human and financial resources that are very important for the provision of an appropriate milieu for accomplishing organizational objectives.

In the case of Toyota, which originated and perfected the philosophy of TQM, the Executives, and Quality Managers met some intertwined problems during TQM implementation. The flaw in the new product development is increasingly becoming complicated for the managers to break and accelerate, thus creating reliability problems. Besides, secretive culture and dysfunctional organizational structure cause barriers in communication between the top management, thus, in turn, augmenting public outrage.

The top executives may fail to provide and scale up adequate training to the suppliers and new workforces. As a result, cracks are created in the rigorous TPS system. In addition, a lack of leadership at the top management might cause challenges in the implementation of TQM. Therefore, in designing the organizational structures and systems that impact quality, the senior executives and managers must be responsible, as elaborated in Figure 2 below.

Therefore, in designing the organizational structures and systems that impact quality, the senior executives and managers must be responsible

Conclusion

Total Quality Management is a concept applied in the automobile industry, including the Toyota Corporation. It focuses on continuous improvement across all branches and levels of an organization. Being part of Toyota, the concept defines the way in which the organization can create value for its customers and other stakeholders. Through TQM, Toyota Corporation has been able to create value, which eventually leads to operation efficiencies.

These efficiencies have particularly been achieved by continuous correction of deficiencies identified in the process. A particular interest is the central role that information flow and management have played in enabling TQM initiatives to be implemented, especially through continuous learning and team working culture.

The Toyota way (kaizen), which aims at integrating the workforce suggestions while eliminating overproduction and manufacturing wastes, helps the company to respect all the stakeholders and give clients first priority. The objectives are realized through TPS.

References

Chary, D. 2009, Production and operations management, Tata McGraw-Hill Education Press, Mumbai.

Huczynski, A. & Buchanan, D. 2007, Organizational behavior; an introductory text, Prentice Hall, New York, NY.

Kanji, G. K. & Asher, M. 1996, 100 methods for total quality management, SAGE Thousands Oak, CA.

Slack, N. et al. 2009, Operations and process management: principles and practice for strategic management, Prentice Hall, New York, NY.

Toyota Motor Corporation 2012, Annual report 2012. Web.

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