Implementation of Total Quality

Management (TQM): Toyota Case Study

Introduction
The Toyota Corporation case study report is based on the implementation of total
quality management (TQM) meant to improve the overall performance and
operations of this automobile company. TQM involves the application of quality
management standards to all elements of the business.

It requires that quality management standards be applied in all branches and at

all levels of the organization. The characteristic of Toyota Corporation going
through the total quality process is unambiguous and clear.

Toyota has limited interdepartmental barriers, excellent customer and supplier

relations, spares time to be spent on training, and the recognition that quality is
realized through offering excellent products as well as the quality of the entire
firm, including personnel, finance, sales, and other functions.

The top management at Toyota Corporation has the responsibility for quality
rather than the employees, and it is their role to provide commitment, support,
and leadership to the human and technical processes (Kanji & Asher, 1996).

Whereas the TQM initiative is to succeed, the management has to foster the
participation of Toyota Corporation workers in quality improvement and create a
quality culture by altering attitudes and perceptions towards quality.
This research report assesses the implementation of TQM and how Toyota
manages quality in all organization management systems while focusing on
manufacturing quality. The report evaluates the organization management
elements required when implementing TQM, identifies, and investigates the
challenges facing Quality Managers or Executives in implementing Quality
Management Systems.

Implementation of TQM in Toyota

● The company extended the management responsibility past the

instantaneous services and products
● Toyota examined how consumers applied the products generated, and this
enabled the company to develop and improve its commodities
● Toyota focused on the insubstantial impacts on the procedures as well as
how such effects could be minimized through optimization
● Toyota focused on the kaizen (incessant process development) in order to
ensure that all procedures are measurable, repeatable, and visible

TQM Practices in Toyota

The commitment from business executives is one of the key TQM
implementation principles that make an organization successful. In fact, the
organizational commitment present in the senior organizational staff ranges from
top to lower administration. These occur through self-driven motives, motivation,
and employee empowerment. Total Quality Management becomes achievable at
Toyota by setting up the mission and vision statements, objectives, and
organizational goals.

In addition, the TQM is achievable via the course of active participation in

organizational follow-up actions. These actions denote the entire activities
needed and involved during the implementation of the set-out ideologies of the
organization. From Toyota Corporation’s report, TQM has been successful
through the commitment of executive management and the organizational
workforce (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2012).

Through inventory and half the bottlenecks at half cost and time, the adopters of
TMS (Toyota Management System) are authorized to manufacture twice above
the normal production. To manage the quality in all organizational management
systems, the Toyota Production System incorporates different modernisms like
strategy or Hoshin Kanri use, overall value supervision, and just-in-time
assembly.

The amalgamation of these innovations enables Toyota to have a strong

competitive advantage despite the fact that Toyota never originated from all of
them. The 1914 Henry Ford invention relied on the just-in-time production model.
The Ford system of production, from a grand perspective, warrants massive
production, thus quality (Toyota Motor Corporation, 2012).

Kanji and Asher (1996) claim that to manage the minute set of production
necessitated by the splintered and small post-war marketplaces, the JIT system
focuses on the motion and elimination of waste materials. This reduces crave for
work-in-process inventory by wrapping up the long production lines. Toyota Corp
wraps the production lines into slashed change-over times, a multi-trained
workforce that runs manifold machines, and new-fangled cells into a U shape.

When supplementing the just-in-cells, the system of kanban is employed by the

Toyota Corporation to connect the cells that are unable to integrate physically.
Equally, the system helps Toyota integrate with other external companies,
consumers, and suppliers.
The TQM and the creativity of Toyota proprietors both support the quality at the
source. The rectification and discovery of the production problems require the
executives to be committed. At the forefront of Toyota operations, the managers
integrate a number of forms of operational quality checks to ensure quality
management at all levels.

The uninterrupted tests help the Toyota workforce engaging in the assembly
course to scrutinize the value of apparatus, implements, and resources utilized in
fabrication. The checks help in the scrutiny of the previously performed tasks by
other workers. However, the corporation’s own test enables the workers to revise
their personal advances in the assembly course.

The Toyota process owners set up the mistake-proofing (Poka-yoke) procedures

and devices to capture the awareness of management and involuntarily correct
and surface the augmenting problems. This is essential for the critical production
circumstances and steps that prove impractical and tricky for Toyota employees
to inspect.

This aspect becomes more advantageous to Toyota when dealing with quality
management. The system initially puts into practice the coordinated approach
and provides a clear structure for the suppliers, producers, and consumers
through inter-organizational cost administration. Moreover, Toyota executives can
solve the concurrent delivery, cost, and quality bottlenecks, thus replacing and
increasing the relatively slow accounting management mechanisms.

Benefits of TQM in Toyota

Customer focus that leads to the desired customer satisfaction at Toyota
Company is one of the major success factors in TQM implementation. For every
business to grow, it should have understanding, reliable, and trustworthy
customers. The principle of customer satisfaction and focus has been the most
presently well-thought-out aspect of Toyota’s manufacturing quality.

The TQM may characteristically involve total business focus towards meeting
and exceeding customers’ expectations and requirements by considering their
personal interests. The mission of improving and achieving customer satisfaction
ought to stream from customer focus.

Thus, when focusing on manufacturing quality, this aspect enhances TQM

implementation. The first priorities at Toyota are community satisfaction,
employees, owners, consumers, and mission. The diverse consumer-related
features from liberty. The concern to care is eminent in Toyota Corporation during
manufacturing.

Toyota has three basic perspectives of TQM that are customer-oriented. These
are based on its manufacturing process traced back to the 1950s. The strategies
towards achieving quality manufacturing, planning, and having a culture towards
quality accomplishment are paramount for TQM implementation to remain
successful. To enhance and maintain quality through strategic planning schemes,
all managers and employers must remain effectively driven.
Toyota Quality Management
Toyota is among the few manufacturers in the complete automobile industry that
consistently profited during the oil crisis in 1974. The discovery was the unique
team working of the Japanese that utilized scientific management rules
(Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007).
The joint effort in Japan, usually dubbed Toyotaism, is a kind of job association
emphasizing ‘lean-assembly.’ The technique merges just-in-time production,
dilemma-answering groups, job equivalence, authoritative foremost-streak
administration, and continued procedure perfection.

Just-in-time (JIT) assembly scheme attempts to accomplish all clients’ needs

instantly, devoid of misuse but with ideal excellence. JIT appears to be dissimilar
from the conventional functional performances in that it emphasizes speedy
production and ravage purging that adds to stumpy supply.

Control and planning of many JIT approaches are concerned directly with pull
scheduling, leveled scheduling, kanban control, synchronization of flow, and
mixed-model scheduling (Slack et al., 2009).

Toyota appears to be amongst the principal participants in changing Japan to a

kingpin in car production. Companies, which have adopted the company’s
production system, have increased efficiency and productivity. The 2009
industrial survey of manufacturers indicates that many world-class firms have
adopted continuous-flow or just-in-time production and many techniques Toyota
has been developing many years ago.

In addition, the manufacturing examination of top plant victors illustrates that the
mainstream them utilize lean production techniques widely. Thus, team-working
TPS assists Toyota Corporation in the implementation of TQM.
Toyota TQM Implementation Challenges
Executives and Quality Managers face some challenges while implementing
Quality Management Systems in organizations. In fact, with a lack of the
implementation resources such as monetary and human resources in any
organization, the implementation of TQM cannot be successful. Towards the
implementation of programs and projects in organizations, financial and human
resources have become the pillar stones.

The approach of TQM impels marketplace competence from all kinds of

organizational proceeds to ensure profitability and productivity. To meet the
desired results in TQM implementation, an organization ought to consider the
availability of human and financial resources that are very important for the
provision of an appropriate milieu for accomplishing organizational objectives.

In the case of Toyota, which originated and perfected the philosophy of TQM, the
Executives, and Quality Managers met some intertwined problems during TQM
implementation. The flaw in the new product development is increasingly
becoming complicated for the managers to break and accelerate, thus creating
reliability problems. Besides, secretive culture and dysfunctional organizational
structure cause barriers in communication between the top management, thus, in
turn, augmenting public outrage.

The top executives may fail to provide and scale up adequate training to the
suppliers and new workforces. As a result, cracks are created in the rigorous
TPS system. In addition, a lack of leadership at the top management might cause
challenges in the implementation of TQM. Therefore, in designing the
organizational structures and systems that impact quality, the senior executives
and managers must be responsible, as elaborated in Figure 2 below.

Conclusion
Total Quality Management is a concept applied in the automobile industry,
including the Toyota Corporation. It focuses on continuous improvement across
all branches and levels of an organization. Being part of Toyota, the concept
defines the way in which the organization can create value for its customers and
other stakeholders. Through TQM, Toyota Corporation has been able to create
value, which eventually leads to operation efficiencies.

These efficiencies have particularly been achieved by continuous correction of

deficiencies identified in the process. A particular interest is the central role that
information flow and management have played in enabling TQM initiatives to be
implemented, especially through continuous learning and team working culture.
The Toyota way (kaizen), which aims at integrating the workforce suggestions
while eliminating overproduction and manufacturing wastes, helps the company
to respect all the stakeholders and give clients first priority