ITPEC FE Morning October 2018 Question 76

Designing products and services that meet or exceed customers' expectations — customer focus is the first principle of TQM.

Total quality management makes quality the responsibility of the whole organisation. Its pillars are customer focus (quality is defined by the customer), total participation with empowered employees, cross-functional cooperation and continuous improvement.

Answer (a)

Why not others:

• •(b) — appointing staff with long experience is a staffing policy, not a TQM principle; TQM improves quality through processes and everyone's participation
• •(c) — TQM empowers the people doing the work; preferring central decisions contradicts it
• •(d) — TQM needs departments cooperating across functions; departments competing independently optimise the parts at the expense of the whole

Key rule: Test options against the TQM pillars (customer focus, total participation, continuous improvement, cross-functional teamwork); anything that centralises control or isolates departments contradicts them.

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