Question

Al-Ain Electronics Company is a large manufacturer of electronics and home appliances in the UAE. Over the past few years, Al Ain Electronics has watched overseas competitors take away market share with products that are priced lower and that at the same time, have developed a reputation for better reliability. The company is not in a dangerous position yet, but the Board of Directors wants to see a concerted effort to improve the company's competitive posture. Among the senior management, two factions have developed. One, led by the vice president of operations, is pressing the CEO to implement total quality management. After all, the aim of TQM is to improve competitiveness, and that is just what is needed. On the other hand, the manufacturing vice president and the director of quality assurance are making the case for ISO 9000:2000.

Question-1: In your opinion which approach is more appropriate in these circumstances? Why?

Question-2 Provide your arguments "for" and "against" the implementation of each approach.

Answer 1

Question 1:

In our present scenario, our company seeks to acquire a competitive position in the worldwide market and as we see the relative analysis of the concepts of TQM and ISO 9000:2000 we can see that :

• TQM is more focused on customer requirements by instilling the concepts of quality in the organizational framework and tend to create customer requirements oriented products.
• TQM will also seek to improve customer satisfaction by performing customer satisfaction surveys and performing quality audits.
• TQM will also help in standardizing and proper management of processes thus enabling the company reduce its overall product cost.

Since in our case, the company seeks to establish a competitive position and in order to establish a positive image in the customer's minds, the company should focus on a more customer requirement understanding process and hence should direct its strategy in that direction by implementing TQM in its organizational culture.

Question 2:

TQM

Arguments For :

• It will help in building customer-focused and customer-oriented products.
• It will aid in understanding customer requirements and fulfilling them.
• It will help promote team working and employee empowerment training programs.
• This will help in achieving low-cost production by standardizing the processes and minimizing the wastage.

Arguments Against :

• Implementing TQM is a cost-intensive process.
• Implementation of TQM requires the willingness of the employees to accept and engage themselves in change management, thus its success depends on the acceptance of the employees and the organizational willingness.

ISO 9000:2000

Arguments For:

• ISO standard will help in establishing official quality standards for the company thus driving its growth.
• ISO quality standards are based on international quality standards and will ensure that the international standards to quality are satisfied and will enable proper quality implementation.
• ISO 9000:2000 will establish process management in the organization.

Arguments Against :

• Setting quality standards will require the company to changing its quality assurance practices in order to satisfy the ISO 9000:2000 standards
• Implementation of ISO 9000:2000 does very little to help to understand the customer requirements and adoption of a customer-focused approach like TQM and hence is not suitable for our present case which requires the satisfaction of customers to drive sales and growth.