Contents

• Introduction 2
• Toyota Corporation 3
• Quality 3
• Lean Production in Toyota 6
• Just in Time Approach 7
• Jidoka 8
• TQM in Toyota 9
• Kaizen 10
• Recommendations 11
• Conclusion 12
• References 13

Description

Quality is a set of characteristics of a product or service that provides value addition and satisfaction to the customer upon consumption. The field of quality management is probably as old as any industry itself. Any product or service needs to be checked before it is handed over to the customer for consumption so that needs and expectations of the customer are met. Traditionally, quality control process was done at the end of manufacturing or production process of a product or service. The finished good was checked for compliance of product specifications and those which passed the test were sent for packaging and the rest were either discarded or resent to an earlier stage in the production chain. There used to be separate quality department, which ensured that finished products are checked for required quality standards. However, in the recent years the concept of quality has spread to encompass all the organizational activities including that of housekeeping. This approach although appeared to be cost intensive in the initial years of conception, soon companies started realizing the impact of quality management at all departments of organization, be it production, human resource, accounting or marketing. The companies that adopted such quality approach soon stood out in the market for quality and durability of the products manufactured. It was soon realized that such comprehensive quality management approach not only resulted in efficient and speedy deliverance of services and goods, it also ensured huge cost savings since each of the departments started contributing effectively to the core process of the company. This approach can broadly be called Total Quality Management or TQM, which will be discussed later in this paper. And one of the pioneers of implementation of total quality management is Toyota, which started its quality practices way back in the 60s. This paper tries to understand Total Quality Management with the help of scholarly articles on the topic. The paper then discusses the implementation of Total Quality Management in Toyota Corporation.