TQM Analysis

TQM Analysis

Home Depot strives for customer satisfaction, employee involvement and continuous improvement in performance which is known as the Total Quality Management (TQM). The purpose is to achieve a high level of quality, which can be described as a customer’s level of satisfaction with the service or product and process performance, using their operations to create value. Also, must be supported and guided by leadership and management commitment in creating a quality-driven organization.

                                      

The Home Depot relies on a TQM system to determine Customer Satisfaction, internal and external, using the term quality to describe their level of satisfaction. There are five dimensions that make up customer satisfaction which is, conformance to specifications, relates to the consistency of the quality, on-time delivery, or delivery speed. Value, another outlook on the pricing for the product or service, depending on what the customers are willing to spend on. Fitness for use, is the intended purpose of the product. Customers may consider the advantage of a service, the mechanical features of a product, or the other aspects including its appearance, design, longevity, reliability, craftsmanship, and serviceability. For example, Home Depot is having a sale on storage shelving units, you can define the quality as it is easy to assemble and its appearance and styling of storage to fulfill the customers need of extra storage for their garage. Support is the service the organization provides such as customer service, which meets the needs of customers who have issues on a product or service. Home Depot uses the collected data from the surveys taken by customers. With this, customers can input their evaluation on the service or product they received. Psychological impressions, the evaluation of the product or service based on atmosphere, image or aesthetics. Such as employees at Home Depot have a uniform for customers to be able to spot them and overall showcasing a team of employees who all work together to provide excellent service to its customers.

Employee involvement a vital part of the TQM, employees are involved in the overall quality of the service and product. As it is an important aspect of cultural change, which is a challenge developing, for having both customers being internal and external. Having to focus on two types to satisfied both in order to achieve great quality. Teams are a key tactic for improving processes and quality. They are small teams which can be approached in three different ways such as problem-solving teams, special-purpose teams, and self-managed teams. Creating responsibility within the teams to improve the involvement within the organization.

Continuous improvement is how Home Depot is always seeking constant ways to improve.  Continuous improvement involves pinpointing benchmarks of excellent practice and instilling a sense of employee ownership in the process. The focus is to be able to reduce waste, such as the length of time someone is waiting to be checked out at a register, the amount of labor needed to work a machine, or the number of employee injuries that occur. The idea is not to wait until a massive problem occurs before acting. One must always be constant in the overall process of the operations to avoid issues and to always keep a balance.