Total Quality Management (TQM)

The assignment aims to study quality parameters used by companies to measure their power to meet the demands of customers. The paper takes into account four parameters, Total quality management, key performance indicators, Kaizen and Six Sigma. The study of these four quality parameters are divided into four divisions- the first in the definition, the second the explanation, the third the advantages and the last the disadvantages. The paper takes into consideration the Premire Inn, the luxurious British chain of hotels and analyses the aspects of it based on these parameters (Román and Martín 2016).

Total Quality Management (TQM) can be defined as the efforts made by the organisations to construct a climate which allows them to deliver high products and services. The organisations today perceive the demands of the customers as quality parameters and they manage their total operations to ensure that production takes place as per the demands of the customers. TQM requires the involvement of both the management and employees because it deals with total formulation of the processes. Producing high quality products as per customer’s demand earns high revenue. The customers conduct business with the producers who give their demand highest priority. Thus, TQM helps companies to retain customers which yields them high revenue. TQM is seen as a method to satisfy customers to the highest degree and earn high revenue (Goetsch and Davis 2014).

The multinational companies including the multinational hotel chains like Premier Inn, the British chain of hotels face stiff competition. The hotel industry views TQM and uses it with stakeholder theory to gain organisational excellence. The multinational hotel chains like Premier Inn face stiff completion from the hotel chains like Novotel and Hilton Properties which requires them to be more customers centric. The customers, governments, suppliers and all the other stakeholders expect these hotel chains to act in responsible ways and contribute to the community in positive ways. The hotel companies in order to cause value maximisation and earn increase in profitability bring about total change in their operations (Benavides-Velasco, Quintana-García and Marchante-Lara 2014).

The Premier Inn is a premier British chain of hotels operating in the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, India and Germany. The hotel provides its customers with world class facilities in terms of rooms, furniture, food and location. They in order to increase their customer satisfaction are located in multiple locations even within the same country like Premier Inn is located in Iverness in North Scotland to Cornwall in South England (Tsai, et al. 2014). The company provides world class hospitality services through its highly trained staff members which has earned it the premier position in the market. The management ensure maintenance of high quality room services to provide superior hotel experience to the visitors (premierinn.com 2017).

The Premier Inn as a part of its TQM is committed to operate in sustainable ways by working towards reduction in wastage of water and energy. The successful application of total quality management of the Premier Inn is evidenced from the fact that the company is among the recipient of the Carbon Trust Standard (whitbread.co.uk 2017).

Advantages of TQM

The TQM considers bringing about changes in production according to the needs of the customers. It takes the needs of the customers as quality parameters which ensures maximum customer satisfaction. This yields maximum market return and high profit. Thus, TQM emphasises on the market needs and earns huge profits (Nair and Choudhary 2016).

The management and the employees participate in bringing about changes in the operate methods. TQM ensures improvement in overall productivity and creates a healthy organisational culture. The employees are able to enhance their own performances  and increase their job satisfaction(Talib, Rahman and Qureshi 2013).

TQM requires enhancement of the total work processes of the companies which often disrupts production.  The employees need to be trained in the new processes so that they can adapt and adopt them in their activity (Singh 2015). The management needs to hold meetings and trainings with the employees which also disrupts productivity. For example, the Premier Inn operates in more than five nations and cannot suspend its services. Hence, bringing about TQM in big companies are difficult because total reformation of their large scale operations are not feasible (Christopher 2016).

Total quality management require adoption of new process by the employees in every department which may meet with resistance. The employees may not perceive the new ways as beneficial and may put up resistance. Thus, TQM instead of increasing productivity may lead to conflict between employees and employers (Kerzner 2013).

The performance key indicators are the criteria which judge the performance of organisations and their departments like finance or marketing. The KPI for different activities are different and they are based on the requirements or nature of the area being judged.

The hotel industry is a global industry which generates billions of dollars of revenue and provides employment of thousands of people all round the world. The Premier Inn is one of the biggest brands in the international hotel industry and the company operates in Europe and Asia. The operations and performances of the company impact its groups of shareholders like employees, management, governments and shareholders (Varsei et al.2014). The management and the departmental heads use key performance areas to judge and compare the performances of the employees. The KPI can be quantitative, qualitative, based on outcomes or any other standard of performances. The company is determined to provide world class services and luxurious lodging experiences to its customers to retain its global competitive position. The departments are judged against set standards of performances which act as the performances achieved like profit earned and the rate of increase in profit compared to the previous accounting year(González-Gil, Palacin and Batty 2015).

KPI shows the market position of the companies by comparing indicators like customer services standard, customer satisfaction and increase in employee productivity. An article in a leading British daily shows the top position of the Premier Inn which indicates its high standard of global performance. The presence of  six hundred and fifty branches, five star rated customer services and legitimate refund of money acted as key parameters which placed the Premier Inn among the top hotels of the UK (Coldwell 2017).

Performance Key Indicators (KPI)

KPI helps in identifying the problems on the basis of the set parameters. This helps the companies to find out areas where they are weak and help them to improve. For example, the revenue of Hilton Inc, the American multinational chains of hotels was 11.3 billion dollars in 2015 which is more than the Premier Inns revenue thus, pointing out that the later needs to expand its business to earn more revenue (Ir.hilton.com 2017).

The key performance indicators require companies to keep a watch on them. If the supervisors or departmental heads do not keep track of the KPIs, they will get inaccurate results which will lead to wrong assessment of performances. KPIs are extremely time consuming and requires continuous supervision.

Kaizen is a Japanese word which means continuous improvement of operations. It refers to continuous improvement in the performances of all the employees and is in use in industries like banking, health and hotel industries.

The Kaizen points out towards continuous improvement in operations of the companies which requires of the management, CEOs, CFOs, top line managers, middle level managers and the subordinates. Kaizen involves enhancement in areas of supply chain management, logistics, inter departmental operations and so on (Kumar, Dhingra and Singh 2017).

The Kaizen requires total enhancement of the operations which is similar to the total quality management which originated in the United States of America. Kaizen or TQM is applied in the top chains of hotels like the Premier Inn to attain high level of performance. The international hotel chain keeps on bringing about innovation to improve its market position. The Premier Inn is known to bring out innovative bundling of products and services to increase the value of the customers’ money.

The motto of Kaizen is teamwork and aims towards creating a healthy organisational culture. For example, all the locations of the Premiere Inn work attaining highest standard of performances. This involves both the management and the employees to bring about enhancement and innovation in operations. This promotes team work and helps the employees embrace new methods of operation. It creates a better understanding between the employer and the employee thus reducing conflict (Barbieri and Álvares 2016).

The Kaizen creates better coordination and understanding between the employer and the employees. This increases the efficiency of both the groups which in turn encourages higher productivity. This in turn creates environment in which the company operations experiences innovation and improvement. The increase in employee efficiency in turn enhances the performance of the company (Andersson and Holmgren 2015).

The Kaizen require the companies to bring total change in their operations, which is very expensive. The hotel chains like the Premier Inn is located in about more than six hundred fifty location in England and overseas like the United Arab Emirates, Germany and India (Popescu 2015). It is practically impossible to bring about total change in short span of time since the chain operates in so many locations. It is again not feasible for small companies to change their systems altogether though it seems profitable. Thus, it is often not feasible to adopt Kaizen though it seems necessary (Maurer 2014).

Advantages of KPI

Six Sigma can be defined as processes which are designed to bring about improvement in the processes. The system seeks to find out defects and remove them to enhance productivity.

The Six Sigma uses quality management methods mostly statistical methods and creates a network for people who are expert in it and can measure it. The organisations carry out Six Sigma according to predetermined targets like reduce process cycle, reduction in environmental pollution, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction and so on (Pyzdek and Keller 2014).

The Premier Inn is a British chain of luxurious hotels which adheres to the Six Sigma in its operations. It ensures that the chain operates in the industry confirming to the highest standard of performance and productivity. The hotel chain aims to produce the highest quality of services like reduces the chains of production of services to make the delivery of services faster. The hotel product designing team is designing products which are capable of increasing the satisfaction of the customers. It is very important for the Premier Inn to follow Six Sigma to maintain its high international position. It is also important for the company to maintain its competitive advantage and goodwill in the market (Getu 2016).

The following of Six Sigma can help in improving the efficiency of the company because it allows the companies to measure their performances statistically. This statistical methods help the companies to measure their performances and recognise their faults. As a result of which they can take steps to rectify the defects. For example, the total revenue of the Premier Inn were 3106.0 million, 2921.8 million, 2608.1 million and 2294.3 million in GBP in the years 2016-2017, 2015-16, 2014-15 and 2013-14 respectively. The statistical graph shows that the company’s profitability has increased (Antony 2014).

The companies are able to measure their inventories, work in progress and finished products plotted on graphs. This helps the companies production department or the concerned to judge its ordering time and amount accuracy. The company can then change the amount of time of order of material likewise. Thus, Six Sigma helps in inventory controls and help in reducing costs by reducing very high inventory levels (Kabir, Boby and Lutfi 2013).

SixSigma is very expensive and cannot be afforded by most of the companies. The statistics often do not show complete information and can be misleading.

This part of the report is going to advise some valid recommendations in terms of the overall improvement and performance advancement of the chosen organisation. On the basis of the aforesaid theories, the recommendation is going to be made so that the organisations could ensure proper adoption and application of the theoretical works. As a matter of fact, four of the theories are essentially important in terms of business performance and they have a positive impact upon the future framework. In terms of Total Quality management, it can be said that the theory constitutes the hotel in a factual analysis of process and operations management. to ensure the total quality management in the company total most of the workforce are engaged in the core business process. This results in the disruption of work. The first recommendation would be proper channelization of the workforces and their task division. As per the investigation of the quality assurance in hotel it can be said that multi tasking effect upon the employees tends to the disruption of work n different sections. Since total quality management process brings change in the organisational performance in its business, the employees need to develop resistance to adopt all the required and proposed changes. In terms of the chosen company, that is a hotel, it can be recommended that the employees need to be acquainted with the change that has already been proposed and brought into existence.  The company needs to ensure that there is a thorough maintenance of the existing workforce so as engage the employees in a greater level. The company can design a body for the employees who would be equally efficient in dealing with the customers and the core business dealings. In terms of the quality management checking of the hotel’s management skill to deploy staff in respective fields determines the actual effort of implementation.

Kaizen

In terms of KPI (Key Performance Indicator) the employer or the hotel managers can maintain a proper checklist in order to analyse the key performance of the employees. Since there are various departments in the hotel, Key Performance analysis of the hotel staff can be verified and invigilated strictly and the performance clarity can be monitored in dues case. Proper budget planning in this case can be effective and hopefully the employees of the chosen company can be well trained about the specification of the allocated work.  It is not always possible to segregate the works done by the employees in different segments.  As the company is not able to equally necessitate the multiple performance level of the employee, it needs to cover different angles of the working staff that could have direct impact upon the company and its performance.

If the management of the hotel wants to implement Kaizen in the strategy to bring change, it needs to create a communicating link among all. Innumerable number of branches would surely hinder the smooth procedure, however proper communication level and specification of setting the objective can result in successful implementation of the theory.  The company can make a centralised a program system that would hold the exact allocation power. The centralised team would be responsible for the distribution of the goals and objective of the company to its different branches. The process of centralisation would definitely help the company in weaving all the branches and implement the change the company wants. Change management needs to specific according to the external and internal environment of the company branches. The interdepartmental operations that are driven ahead by Kaizen provide a structural specification to the company. Since the core concept of Kaizen is to deal with the managerial heads of a company, there would be no such effort initiated by the subordinating employees of the companies. Kaizen is delved through the decision making process. In this regard there is a high chance of structuring an involvement program thus understanding the views of the senior managers and the governing body. Since the change is brought through the decision making process of the CEOs or the other branch heads, they need to build a strong platform that is considered to be a common one for weaving communication.

One of the most important quality management methods in business or service sector is Six Sigma. Implementation of six sigma theory in business performances needs to specify the need of the company so as to perceive the actual understanding of the requirement of the company. While doing this the branches of the hotel need to be communicated about the propounded decision. As a part of the decision making process, the six sigma tool needs to be analysed on the business perspective and if needed the modification can be brought accordingly. Since the process of implementing six- sigma needs greater amount of money to be invested, the company needs to ensure that there is adequate surplus. Otherwise it might have adverse impact upon the core team. Hence, the company need to put a check how effective cost in the adoption of change can be controlled without being hindered. In this case the company needs to understand how the effective cost control planning is implemented thus creating a  broad scope of strategic change management.

Advantages of Kaizen

Conclusion:

Having gone through the aforesaid report, it can be succinctly said that the basic understanding pertaining to the theories or organisational performance depend on the efficacy of the implementation of those theories in to empirical study procedure. As a whole it can be said that the major strategy of hotel to advance the level of performance is proper implementation of the theories in practical level. From the aforesaid discussion, it is also clear that the techniques and the theories are all adverse in terms of implementing in the multiple branches. Hence, the head of the company needs to build a strong communicative platform that would focus on he firm distribution of the strategic plan.

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