Question

What are the similarities and differences between Kaizen approach and Total quality management? Provide your opinions on the resistance to implementing both approaches.

Answer 1

The following are the similarities between Kaizen approach and total quality management-

1- Customer satisfaction- As both the approaches aims to provide full customer satisfaction to their customer, customer needs and demands are always have their preference and these approaches provides with ultimate customer satisfaction to their customer.

2- Deals in improving quality- As both the approaches directly deals in improving the quality in order to provide satisfaction to their customers the company through these approach try to improve the quality of their product as it constantly involved in the improvement process until it is achieved.

3- Interdependent- As both the approaches are inter-related and inter-dependent among one another

The following are the difference between the two approaches i.e Kaizen approach and Total quality management approach-

1- Cost- The implementation of Total Quality Management approach is more costly as it involves the total quality improvement of the whole process which is quiet a long process and thus incurred high cost in its implementation whereas compared to the Kaizen approach which proves to be less costly as it focus on the quality improvement of the small process instead of focusing on the whole and also the improvement is made with the available resources.

2- Focus- The Total Quality Management features primarily focuses on customer satisfaction through improvement of quality. It refers to both the top-down and bottom-up approach whereas the Kaizen approach is a processed focused and refers to a bottom-up approach of small incremental change.

3- Goal - Total Quality Management is centered on quality as it is a management approach based on the participation of member and aiming towards long term success through customer satisfaction whereas the Kaizen approach they involve people to go beyound contractual role to identify and develop a better way of doing a aroutines job and enhance organisational performance.

4- Scope- Kaizen approach can apply in order to encourage improvement to the existing process , thus the scope of it is limited to the selected project whereas in TQM the scope of it is spread all throughoutt the organization as it works on every process at every department of an organization.

The opinion about the resistance for the implementation of both the approaches is that resistance do exist where the change occurs as both the approach is related with the change the only way to get over this resistance is to create awareness about the necessity of the change and convincing people for the change by letting them know why it is important for the change to take place as this change vrelated to the improvement in quality so the point is to make people aware about the neccessity of the improvement needed in the quality