how Total Quality Management tools can help Woolworths to overcome its challenges within an organization

Executive Summary

We will be reviewing in this report that how Total Quality Management tools can help Woolworths to overcome its challenges within an organization. Further in this report, the choice of two tools and techniques of TQM will be selected for Woolworths, and their implementation will be discussed. How the manager can use these tools to overcome the challenges faced by the Woolworths supermarket. How the data will be analyzed and prioritized to address the urgent issue will also be discussed in the report.

Introduction

The company under discussion will be Woolworths Australia. Woolworths is a supermarket chain operating in Australia since the year 1924. The headquarter of the supermarket is in Belle Vista. Ever since its establishment, the company has expanded on a broad level across the country. Recently the company has been the target of some quality issues and concerns about its services to the customers. The most notable trouble that was witnessed by the supermarket was milk quality. The company has hired a manager to work with employees and find out the challenges and practices about the delivery of quality products.

Discussion

Woolworths is a reputable organization in Australia. However, the organization is facing some challenges related to quality management which requires continuous improvement (Kolb). For this purpose, a manger must look after challenges faced by the company by observing, and questioning employees. Moreover, the problems which were identified in Woolworth’s case are strategic planning and organizational design. For this purpose, the suggested quality management tools and techniques would be Histogram and Pareto Charts. These two quality assurance tools and techniques will henceforth, enable Woolworths to take corrective, measures. For example, Pareto Chart will help Woolworth’s manager to analyze which factor is troubling them the most as the factor with the longest bar will fall into the category of right. Likewise, the smallest issue causing the controlling problem will fall at the right side of the chart, which will make the analysis more easy for the manager and to treat the root cause. Pareto chart will also help them to analyze which issue needs more attention as it distinguishes important objects from insignificant matters.

The other quality management tool which will be used to analyze the issue would be Histogram. This tool will help the manager to explain what is the most occurring issue impacting quality management (McQuater, Scurr, Dale, & Hillman, 1995). This scenario will be analyzed in the context of Woolworths. The bar with high height will depict that in this particular zone the most input is required by manager else, it is going to be more troublesome in future. Not only this, the Total Quality Management issues not only cause a problem in Woolworth’s quality department but will also impact the overall effectiveness, and efficiency of all departments while impacting the loyalty of customers, too. So, the usage of these tools will help the manager to overcome challenges.

The HistogramHistogram is a tool used to categorize a group into a range of numbers. The height of the bar represents the number of things that fall in this group. The tool is used to see a graphical representation of the output of a process. It can be used to analyze whether the process is meeting the requirement of a customer. The HistogramHistogram can be used by Woolworths to analyze the quality of services and the number of people that are satisfied with the services. The problems that are being faced by employees in serving the customers will also be represented in the Histogram. The level of output from the Histogram can be beneficial to indicate the effectiveness of the strategies implemented by Woolworths. The Pareto chart helps to analyze the potential cause of problems. The tool is useful for identifying possible cause by using the inputs from various sources. The tool can very effectively separate the important from the trivial. The charts indicate the issues that need to be analyzed first for Woolworths to operate smoothly. The manger will use input from employees related to their work schedules, and the amount of load passed on to each worker to check the percentage of positive and negative feedback from the customers. The data can form the basis of actions that need to be taken by the manager based on urgency.

Implementation of tools within the business is more challenging than finding the root cause. The above-mentioned tools and techniques will be implemented by looking at the ethics and values of Woolworths. The manager must look into an existent and latent problem which may occur while implementation of these tools so they can be identified and worked upon by using a problem-solving process. However, for this purpose, the manager has to use contingency theory of leadership and should be flexible enough to make changes according to the situation because now in the era of globalization change is must, and the relation between culture and TQM should also be considered (Silvestro, 2001). The manager must call a meeting with employees where their concerns will be noted, and their opinions will be valued, so they feel empowered when these tools and techniques get implemented in an organization. However, for this purpose, the quality culture must be considered and acted upon, so total quality management could be adopted as it will be a cultural change for Woolworths. Moreover, Histogram and Pareto Charts implementation will also make employees more useful as they will be informed which cause requires treatment and Woolworths can enjoy the employee retention, and customer loyalty utmost.

Moreover, the external accreditation should be considered alongside while implementing these tools so, everyone working in the organization could stay loyal. Also, Porter’s Five Forces Model will be kept in consideration of how it will help organizations to remain competitive while the process of implementation of TQM (Nasim, 2018).

So, these are above given a few of the strategies that how quality control management could be implemented in Woolworths by using Histogram and Pareto chart.

Conclusion

In this report, the two suitable tools and techniques of Total Quality Management for Woolworths are identified which are HistogramHistogram, and Pareto charts, and have given reasoning that why these tools are essential and how they can help Woolworths to maintain its standards. The tools can be very useful in the identification of the sources that are causing the problems. The tools can also establish the priority of the issues that need to be solved. The HistogramHistogram and Pareto charts can indicate the problems that are occurring more than others so that proper strategy for taking care of these can be planned. Furthermore, it has seen how these changes can be implemented in Woolworths by empowering employees and also by considering the quality culture of Woolworths.

References

Kolb, R. W. (n.d.). Total Quality Management. Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society.

McQuater, R., Scurr, C., Dale, B., & Hillman, P. (1995). Using Quality Tools and Techniques Successfully. The TQM Magzine, 7(6), 37-42.

Nasim, K. (2018). Role of Internal and External Organizational Factors in TQM implementation: A systematic literature review and theoretical framework. International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, 35(5), 1014-1033.

Silvestro, R. (2001). Towards a contingency theory of TQM in services- How implementation varies on the basis of volume and variety. International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, 254-288.