QUALITY MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES (DMG5163) 1

1.0 Introduction

Unilever is a British–Dutch multinational consumer goods company co-

headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and London, United Kingdom.
Created in 1930 as a cross-border corporation by the United Kingdom and
Holland, Unilever is now a dual-listed company with two separate companies,
Unilever NV and Unilever PLC in London (Unilever, 2008). Unilever is a
famous international company that deals with the sale of daily consumer
products and one of the major fast moving consumer goods manufacturers in
the world, which products are focusing on the areas of food (production and
sale of soups, bouillons, sauces, snacks, mayonnaise, salad dressings,
margarines and spreads), family usages (production and sale of home care
products including powders, liquids and capsules, soap bars and other
cleaning products), refreshment (production and sale of ice cream, tea-based
beverages, weight-management products and nutritionally enhanced staples
sold in developing markets) and personal care products (production and sale
of skin care and hair care products, deodorants and oral care products)
(Unilever, 2009). The target customer of Unilever is in middle class who are
focusing on their living standards with good quality fast moving consumer
goods (Unilever, 2009). To Unilever, it demands for fast development surplus
its competitors instead of only development comparing with itself.

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Total Quality Management (TQM)

TQM is a totally new set of management principles that were created

by observing the new changes of environment of business organizations
under the condition of contemporary world market (Allan, 2008). Or, it is a
product of the management methodological innovations accelerated by the
revolution of marketing information exchange style and the new features of
modern business organizations (Wadsworth, Stephens & Godfrey, 2006). So,
the term TQM can be defined as the strategy or action to maintain the level of
excellence of a product or a service. While there are many different quality
management programs, such as total quality management (TQM), kaizen
based programs, and Six Sigma, one feature unique to all of them is that they
are, and should be, part of the strategic DNA of an organization and an
integral part of the strategic planning process.
 
2.2 Unilever and TQM

As a large international company, Unilever has long been paying attention

to the implementation of high quality management. This is especially in the
recent years when the company adopts a variety of measures to strengthen
its measures in maintaining a higher level of business service. In the 1990’s,
in order to test and practice the new management techniques and principles,
Unilever introduced the TQM (Total Quality Management) programs in some
of its subsidiaries (Karaszewski, 2003). These new measures include the
construction of the organizational culture, the management of human
resources (including staff member management and customer relationship
management), the management of industrial relations and the emphasis on
team building methodologies. In the current time, the TQM strategy has been
widely exercised in almost all the business branches of the company. From
the case of Unilever, TQM principles have been introduced and utilized to the
management of Unilever at large.

2.3 TQM Framework in Unilever

Quality of work
Quality of process
Quality of leadership
Quality product & service

Learnibility
Intergration of staff UNILEVER's Sustainability
Intergration of suppliers TQM Reliability
Consistancy
Intergration of customer Practice Competency

Continual Improvement

2.4 TQM in Unilever

 QUALITY MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES (DMG5163) 3

First of all, TQM help Unilever in improving customer need

management. Unilever has long been paying attention to the importance of
customer need management (Porter & Oakland, 2005). It believes the
importance of customer management to the sustained development of the
different business branches of the company in all parts of the world (Porter &
Oakland, 2005). So, to both the headquarters of NV and PLC, customer
management is one of the basic integrated processes and contents of the
overall management in the supply chain management. This is because
customer needs management is the basic requirement to build up a
commercial brand that will achieve marketing influence worldwide. To
summarize, the following measures are taken by Unilever to fulfill its customer
management goals. Unilever thoroughly believe they want to sustain stay in
this market and maintain product cycle follow the Six Sigma method . They do
several things to maintain quality such research discovery system as they
have made good research teams in varies countries to find data and
information of their product related things to improve their quality of products.
 
Unilever adopts the management strategy of being honest, transparent
and ethical to maintain the relationship between the company and its
customers (Porter & Oakland, 2005). The business values and codes of
business principles have long been particularly stressed by the company as
well as its business branches in all over the world. The company values much
about what customers think about the quality of the services provided by the
company. Since the company has opened businesses largely under an
international background, the management of a business culture based on
cultural respect and cultural communication has been valued. This is
especially important to meet the needs of customers with different social and
ethnic backgrounds.

At the same time, work division and responsibility has been improved with
the TQM in Unilever (Porter & Oakland, 2005). As a cross-border business
organization, Unilever has to cope with a complicated supply chain network
that is not only related to the different cultural norms and traditions in different
countries and target market but also to the work divisions of each business
branch. The advantage of this strategy is to prescribe the concrete
responsibility of each individual in the whole supply chain managerial job
(Porter & Oakland, 2005). In addition, Unilever thinks it is vital to have people
with the right talent, skills and creativity to support their growth ambitions. To
ensure our long-term prosperity, Unilever want everyone to be healthy,
motivated and committed thus, via its Sustainable Living Plan, it helps to
create a better workplace. These include reducing workplace injuries and
accidents and improving employee health and nutrition.

Moreover, transportation and logistics management of Unilever can also

be improved with TQM (Porter & Oakland, 2005). To use the latest technical
development to improve the transportation and logistics is an essential part of
the TQM in Unilever’s supply chain management. As a global consuming
merchandise dealer, Unilever has to face the problem of transporting goods to
different target markets. So, the transportation network of Unilever is
confronted with the problem of how to cut down expenses and promote
efficiency. Now, by using the data-analysis tools of products transportation,
Unilever can save a considerable amount of expenses in transporting goods
to different areas of the world. Ebrahimpour and Schonberger (1984)
described problems encountered by manufacturing firms in developing
countries and made an attempt to show the potential of practices such as just-
in-time (JIT) and total quality control in helping to ease these problems.

At last, TQM helped Unilever developing its global issues. One important
TQM contents of international business organization is the management of
integrated global issues. As a cross-border business organization, Unilever is
confronted with the issue of how to integrate the business culture as well as
the staff member’s business ethic codes required by the international
business environment at the present time when cross-cultural communication
and international business integration have become crucial in determining the
success of the management job of business organization (Porter & Oakland,
2005). So, how to adjust the organizational behavior to the cross-cultural
environment is a decisive factor for the business success for Unilever.
 QUALITY MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES (DMG5163) 5

3.0 Recommendations

i) Benchmarking

Unilever can choose good performance on competition strategy,

business process management in its industry comparing with itself to find out
the differences and possible improvement ways (Ishikawa, 2002). First of all,
colleting data from market and competitors is important for Unilever to know
the industry level in benchmarking setting up. Moreover, Unilever should aim
at focus on strong competitors in its industry such as P&G to analyze its
competition advantages and the differences between them and Unilever. At
last, Unilever should make sure the objective of its benchmarking
management to bring maximum benefit for the whole company. In conclusion,
apply Deming’s Principle’s of creating constancy of purpose toward
improvement of product and services, with the aim of becoming competitive
and to stay in business.
 
ii) Quality Management Culture

Daily training on quality management culture can improve Unilever

employees’ idea of ‘Quality first’ which can cause their quality attention during
working (Kanji and Asher, 2006). That is because quality management refers
to all departments and all business process of Unilever, so the implementation
of TQM needs the cooperation of all departments and employees. Training on
the topic of quality management culture can help Unilever improve
employees’ quality consciousness on the importance of TQM on the strategy
development level. Deming’s Principle of institute training on the job should be
applied together in support of 5S, Shitsuke or sustain can solve the issue.

iii) Responsible Team for TQM

 The first and foremost important work in TQM is to form special
responsible team to co-ordinate relevant works, which can help Unilever
under the systematic and whole control of quality management. This TQM
responsible team should be formed with managers from major departments,
who can make quality management decisions together from all aspects
(Reed, Lemak & Mero, 2000). Also, these managers can react quickly to the
problems in the quality management process and help solving them.
Deming’s Principle of institute leadership which aim of supervision should be
to help people and machines to do a better job and break down barriers
between departments can contribute to this issue. In addition, remove the
bottleneck that had been slowing the entire system down.
 
iv) Quality Management Check

Unilever can check quality management situation every month from the
aspect of employee satisfaction and quality index achievements to make sure
whether the quality management has been implemented well in all
departments and all business processes (Reichheld & Sasser, 2000). The
important work in quality management situation check will focus on quality
information records, which including quality index and standard. At the same
time, quality information should be recorded in data, which will be useful in
statistic analysis for quality management result. Application on Deming’s
Principle’s of improve constantly and forever the system of production and
service to improve quality and productivity with the support of 5S, Seiketsu or
standardize should take place.
 
v) Performance Check Supervise

The check of TQM performance should be supervised, which will be

positive for not only TQM result but also for TQM result analysis
(Vanichchinchai and Igel, 2009). With the performance check supervise
system, Unilever can provide evidence for its quality control and improvement
measures and ensure employees’ implementation of TQM requirements.
Here, all implementation of Deming’s Principle, JIT and LEAN, 5S and other
 QUALITY MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES (DMG5163) 7

TQM application can contribute to this solution.

vi) Just-in-time (JIT)

Other quality practices and processes that Unilever should or could

consider are those associated with lean manufacturing principles such as just-
in-time and other. In a just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing environment the
objective is to minimize inventories throughout the supply chain. Thus,
Unilever can implement this in order to counter its supply chain issue.
Additionally, JIT environment it is critical to ensure that the needs of the
customer are always met and with only small percentage of excess capacity
Unilever can simply increase the production rate (Tsutsui, 1998, p.112).

4.0 Conclusion

In conclusion, TQM is a complicated business management philosophy

that is based on the innovation of business management methodologies
under the influence of technological development and the change of
management thinking in modern times. Management of Unilever reveals
some basic principles for modern business organizations to observe. In many
cases, the success of a business is not only determined by the business
assets and financial resources, but also by how business organizations
rationalize their business behavior and management tools. TQM, as a new
and integrated management methodology, plays an important role in changing
the management environment of the business world. As a result, it has been
widely accepted by modern organizations as one of the most effective means
of management. The use of best practices is a technique associated with
quality management programs such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Six
Sigma, and other quality management systems, which owe most of their
processes and underlying logic to the work of Dr. Deming who was the first
researcher to promote the use of statistics as a management device (Hahn,
2002).
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