TQM Research - Seeking real TQM Implementation examples

otterjer

Registered
I'll start this by saying that I am mostly a lurker at Elsmar Cove and tend to stop by when I have questions related to my company's quality management system (I work in medical devices).

With that being said I am work towards my graduate degree in Quality Management and have been tasked with a research paper regarding TQM. Specifically, we are to find a company and analyze their practice against that of the TQM principles.

My real question to everybody here is; Are there any companies, organizations or corporations that have implemented TQM and have written extensively on their implementation that you are aware of?

My team and I are at the beginning stages of our research and really looking for a way to narrow our search for organizations that have plenty of information available.

In conclusion, I am not looking for answers/information to our research project. We are happy to do the legwork, however this being a "quality minded" forum has led me to believe that some bright individuals may have run across the same kind of project and can help us with a launching off point.

Thanks for the help.
 

BradM

Leader
Admin
Hello there! :bigwave:

Always good to post, even though you have been lurking for a while. :D

I think that generally TQM has somewhat rode into the past, so to speak. Don't get me wrong, there are still several organizations that are serious about quality and such. I'm just not sure if they label it as TQM or not.

I guess I might turn the tables and such and ask about what you are interested in? Is there a particular facet or function of quality that interests you?

Do you have access to any of the journals, Like Quality Management Journal? Maybe there are some particular topics and such that interest you.

NOTE: I'm just throwing one out here.... but there has always been a lot of discussion about Six Sigma. Maybe you could analyze companies actively using SS, and compare to similar SIC codes of businesses without Six Sigma. SIC codes being the codes that establish a particular industry a business would fall in, starting with the most basic, drilling down to further and further levels of detail. Does Six Sigma produce a significant difference in stock price, compared to those that don't ?

Do you have any quality issues yet that you are interested in?:)
 

otterjer

Registered
Thank you I appreciate the reply. To your point, the fact that the TQM terminology seems to be a dying entity in the US has been apparent in some of the journal articles that I have read.

Particularly, I am interested in the drug, biologics and medical devices industry, having worked in all three in one way or another.

Unfortunately, we are specifically tasked with comparing a company's (of our choice) quality system against the TQM principles. We do not necessarily have to perform the comparison on a company that is practicing TQM, however I thought if information was readily available that it might be structured in a way that was easily comprable to the TQM principles and thus a more clear conclusion could be drawn.

What I was hoping to find was a well know corporation that has instituted the methodology so that a branch would be readily accessable for interviews. In the past I know that Kinko's was a company that was researched for this project, however I do not know if they've instituted TQM.

Again, I appreciate the feedback and good ideas that you've suggested. If all else fails my own company is an option for the research. I was just hoping to find something interesting that had a plethora of information available.
 
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