Characteristics of Total Quality
Management can be divided into several subcategories. Below shows a detail
description about each and every category.

Elements of TQM

These are the fundamentals or the
base of Total Quality Management. Organizations can’t maintain a Quality
Management without these elements.

Ethics

This means understanding good and
bad in the office. Every organization is consisting of people. Different people
understand good and bad in different ways. So, the organization has to create a
Code of Ethics statement and conduct ethic management programs for workers to
maintain organizational ethics.

Integrity

Integrity mean doing the right
things when no one is supervising you or being honesty at the workplace.
Workers have to respect to their organizational rules. Total Quality Management
can’t maintain in an organization without Integrity.

Trust

Trust is a combination of Ethics
and Integrity. In organization workers should trust each other because
relationships can build only if there is trust. So, it is also useful for
decision making and help to implement Total Quality Management.

Training

This is important to increase the
productivity of the company. From training workers can improve their technical
and interpersonal skills, knowledge, decision making ability and lot of skills.
Supervisors or experienced workers have to teach TQM methods to new comers.

Teamwork

Every organization is consisting of
people. They have to work together to achieve organizational success. For this,
teamwork is an essential factor. Teamwork means working with other people in
effectively and efficiently. For an example, making decisions by gathering
others ideas is more efficient than making decisions alone.

Leadership

Every process of an organization
has to be lead by someone. It’s same to the Quality management. Management in
the organization has to set the Quality Management goals and transmit down to
other levels. 

Communication

 This is a must for every group of people.
People have to express their ideas to others. So, they have to communicate with
each other. This means sharing a common idea between the sender and the
receiver.

Concepts of TQM

Employee involvement

TQM can’t be maintained without the
participation of Employees because employees are one of the key factors in
Quality Management. So. This makes better interaction between suppliers,
customers and other parties.

Continuous Improvement

Whether company produces a product
or a service, it is important to improve the quality and technology of the product.
Products should be up to date with the technology. This improvement can be a
design improvement, specification improvement or whatever. 

Troubleshoot Failures 

The process in the company should
be zero defect and if there is a mistake, it should not be neglected. The
organization has to take necessary steps to not to happen that mistake again.

Delegation

Delegation means decentralizing
authority from a higher level to lower level workers. This motivates workers,
increase productivity and give more responsibilities to workers. Because of
Delegation, workers can enroll to the decision-making process of the
organization.

Documented Quality
assurance

This means all the important data
about Quality Management should track and documenting. From that organization
can analyze passed data and make proper decisions and improve the quality of
the production.