Total Quality Management (TQM) in Public Sector in Malaysia

There are five basic concepts of implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) in the public sector in Malaysia. The concepts are:

1. Meeting customers’ requirement

Total quality management is smart management which does not only include producing product with using efficient resource, but it is a continuous management process to produce goods that meet up and exceeds customers’satisfaction. TQM requires the organization to identify their customers, their needs and expectations, and translate those needs and expectations into standards of quality output to be produced. Aimed at customer focused, TQM establish the appropriate processes involved in producing the quality goods and services and implement the process effectively and efficiently in order to meet up and exceeds customers’ expectations.

2. Maintain through prevention 

TQM main aim it to identifyactivities which will cause wastage in the operating process to produce quality goods and services to the customers, through strategic quality planning. It prevents errors and problems from occurring, rather than simply fixing problems or correcting errors. TQM aims on continuous improvement and problem solving to meet up to customer’s requirements. TQM’s important strategy is the 3 Qs, which are quality planning quality assurance and quality control. These 3 Qs are the prevention technique which will ensure the goods and services produced are in conformance with the needs and requirements of the customers. For example, quality planning is the early stage of error-prevention. Through careful planning, customers of all categories are identified, their needs are recognized, the process to produce the goods are determined, and a set of process controls are designed to ensure that quality can be achieved through the operational activities.

3.Standard of performance is zero defect

As TQM aims at doing things right the first time, all the time, it targeted at providing customers to their full satisfaction by producing defect-free goods and error-free services that conform to the expectations of the customers.

4. Cost of quality is non-conformance of standards

In order to produce goods and services efficiently, TQM always focuses on control of the cost of quality. Quality planning plays an important roles at controlling cost, as at his stage, all cost involved in producing the quality goods and services are estimated and well-planned, any cost incurred as a result of wastage of resources, manufactured of low quality goods, errors at servicing or work or non-value added activities are avoided. Extra cost incurred which does not as predetermined in quality planning, could be reduced by prevention and improving work processes. Strategic planning will also ensure the cost incurred in the process of producing goods, are acknowledged to the production team and prevent unnecessary wastage of resources which will increase the cost of production. Cost of quality incurred is seen as non-conformance to the quality standard. Let say, If a book publishing company targeting at publishing quality storybooks for public libraries that each book contained of 100 stories in it, and estimated each book will cost less than RM 5 in the market, and make a profit of RM 2 out of each book, the publishing or production should plan the type of paper use, ink and numbers of coloured pictured used in each book to ensure the cost of production will be less than or equal to RM 3. That’s standard of total quality. If the production cost more than the estimated RM 3, and the company have to raise the price of the book, customers would not be happy, and that’s not total quality. Arrays in cost of quality are seen as non-conformance to the predetermined total quality standard.

5. Whole work is a process

TQM involved not only the goods produced, but also the people who produce the goods and services, the materials, environment and the work system itself. And TQM not only aimed at meeting customer’s expectations, but it aimed at exceeding them. Organization which practiced TQM like public organizations, implanted quality culture in the work process. The organization recognizes the whole organization as a system, and as a system, the organization has a lot of interacting parts in it. These interacting parts or work which involved everyone in the organization is called process. It affects one and another and it has a chain reaction throughout the system. TQM focus not only on one part of the system or organization, but it focused on the whole system, to optimize the output of the whole system and organization and to achieve total quality output. As TQM looking at the whole system, or organization, the actions of everyone in it will definitely affecting the outcome of the quality process in delivering quality service and goods to the customers.