Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management is planning, organizing and monitoring to achieve quality in every activity involved. It is a management philosophy for a successful organization. It emphasizes not only quality of the end product but quality in everything. The organizations, which have adopted TQM as their culture, have achieved high profits.

TQM includes strategic planning, allocation of resources and other systematic activities. To achieve TQM, requires the commitment and participation of all members of the organization. To achieve TQM, the following are the objectives to be considered.

1) To make quality as the foremost, policy.

2) To consider customer's requirement first.

3) To achieve product/services right at first time.

4) To achieve continuous improvement.

5) To install a system for managing quality.

International Organization for Standards (ISO)

In the present economic scenario, export manufactured goods is essential for the survival industries. The goods to be exported have to meet the requirements of the foreign customers. It is therefore necessary to standardize the quality systems. The first attempt to standard quality was in America. The result was ISO.

ISO stands for international organization for standardization. Under the chairmanship of Canada, ISO brought out six standards. It was called the ISO series. These standards help in evaluating the standards pertaining to quality management systems. The series of standards serve as a boss for ensuring quality to all provides of goods/services.

ISO Certification

There is a need to get ISO certification for assurance of quality in the world market as the customers, all over the world like to have confidence in manufacturer's capability to design, develop and produce quality products. Competition makes it necessary for industries to get ISO certification. Industries will not be able to export to world markets without ISO certification as it certifies that the company meets international standards in designing developing, producing, installing and servicing the products it supplies.

The basic steps to be followed for ISO certification are:

1) Quality awareness training.

2) Analyze existing practice and take corrective action.

3) Develop standard procedures.

4) Implement the quality systems.

5) Internal audit.

6) External audit.

7) Apply for accreditation.

8) Maintain the quality system.