Now lets talk about the concept of TQM, Total Quality Management. I want to give you some two different tracks related to, to TQM, how this TQM was initiated. There is, first, technical dimension, or technical track, and the other one is organizational dimension, or organizational track. In the technical side, during 1960s, or 70s, quality circle became popular. In other words here, the quality improvement is not something you know, automatic. In other words, quality improvement, or the quality circle, is a not just a byproduct. It's not something that automatically, you know, accomplish without any conscious effort on the part of the company. But actually, quality is something we have to try. We have to, we have to make a conscious effort to improve. So, we design some quality teams and quality circles and everybody must you know, brainstorm with each other and they try to find the problems and they try to find the solutions to those problems, and so on and so forth. So I will just say that the, the concept of a quality circle was the beginning of the era that, you know, emphasizes the conscious effort to quality improvement. And then probably, you know, during 1980s and 90s, people paid more attention to, more formal way, more formal and more analytical way, analytical way to control the process. In other words it's not just qualit, quality, it's something based on the process, process itself. And therefore we want to apply more sophisticated approaches to control process so that you know, that we have good process capability and eventually we have, we want to have good quality. And, of course, the concept was much older, probably 1920s or 1930s. The basic concept of you know, statistical process control were suggested. But probably 1980s and 1990s people became more aware, more aware of the importance of this statistical process control. And they try to implement this concept in, in actual, you know, factory floors. And then in early 1990s and probably, you know, 2000, Six Sigma became the most popular approach. The company, the, the you know, the approach which was most widely adopted by the companies. And, probably GE, and Motorola were the first companies that actually stylize the concept of Six Sigma. And a Six Sigma is you know, we talk about this, normal distribution. Six Sigma is, some people say that the range this one is actually Six Sigma and this one is a Six Sigma so it's kind of a very daunting task. Six Sigma actually implies obviously, depends, depending on who talks about Six Sigma, definition a little bit different, but I just said in general, we believe that there are two mistakes. There are two mistakes per 1 billion attempt. And I think that you know, it's in, it's in general, right? It's in general. It's very similar. Although, the specific definitions may be different, but in general this, you know, talks about very daunting tasks. It's not the task easy to accomplish, only two mistakes you make per 1 billion attempt. Let's, even in a statistical sense there's something very difficult to achieve. So I'll just say, I, I call that a technical dimension. There is another dimension, organization dimension. Early periods managers are, you know, commanding. Managers commanded, and they control. So this is the general philosophy in organizational dimension, general philosophy in management, so we call that as top down approach. Your top actually command and they control all this process. It's kind of a very mechanical relationship, mechanical relationship between management, between managers and employees and workers. And then over time, people realized that motivation and incentives are very important in determining the performance or productivity, so it's not just a one-directional relationship. You are not just a, you know, command, you are not just control. You, you gotta give these workers, you've gotta give these employees motivations, right? They, they need to understand why they have to perform this task. What does it mean for them to perform this small task? Is it is it for the good, or is it for the entire society, and so on and so forth. So, motivation and incentive becomes very critical factors that actually determine the organization performance. And then over time, people realized that in order to enhance this customer satisfaction and customer happiness, we gotta give more power to the employees, more power to the employees. Not just the top managers. Top managers must delegate some of this decision-making rights to the employees, to the workers, to the field workers who are the closest to the customer. Right? So when you give more power, more decision-making power to those who contact with the customer on a everyday basis, then your whole organization becomes more customer-oriented. And then after that, probably, you know, 1990s or even 2000 we see that you gotta have learning organization. In other words, it is continuous improvement. You've gotta improve things continuously. Continuous improvement, and also it emphasises the problem solving, and by solving the problem, you want to have your performance improvement, performance improvement continues here. Okay. So, more or less, these two dimensions were separate, or have been separate so far. But when we, you know, when we look at this concept of Total Quality Management, TQM, is, is, this is not just a technical concept only. This is not just organizational concept only. This is act, this is actually combining these two things at the same time. Six Sigma plus learning organization. Technologically or technically you got to have this approaches but at the same time you've got to have learning organization and only when you accomplish this combination, only when you sumnumate this, you know, quality management to the debi/gt or the manage, or, management philosophy. Now, you will be able to improve this whole eight, eight dimensions of quality. Do you remember we talked about eight dimensions of quality, right? And the eight dimensions were not just eight dimensions were not just you know, technical things, conformers and performers. Eight dimensions impro, you know, includes some serviceability and you know, perceived quality and so on and so forth. So, how can you make sure that the organization or the company enhances all of these eight dimensions of quality? By becoming an organization that is good at TQM, Total Quality Management. So only when you approach this quality issues from this managerial philosophy, the organization would be able to tackle this whole eight dimensions at the same time.
