Total Quality Management
& HSE Management
SUMMARY
Total Quality Management & HSE Management
SUMMARY
TQM is the acronym for Total Quality Management, which is an approach to doing business that maximizes the competitiveness of an organization through continuous improvement of its products, services, people, processes, and environments. TQM achieves its purpose by developing the following characteristics in an organization: customer focus, obsession with quality, scientific approach, long-term commitment, teamwork, continual process improvement, education and training, freedom trough control, unity of purpose, and empowerment. TQM can solve the same problems for safety managers that it solves for managers concerned about quality. TQM makes quality everybody’s responsibility, rather than limiting responsibility to quality personnel. It can do the same for safety managers. In addition, a quality product is a safe product, and the best environment in which to produce quality products is a safe and healthy environment.TQM is implemented using a 20-step process. These steps are divided into three distinct phase: preparation, planning, and execution. Safety and health should figure prominently in each of these phases.
In the preparation phase, safety managers should ensure that safety and health are spoken to in the vision and guiding principles of the organization. In the planning stage, the safety manager must decide whether or not to encourage the steering committee to make safety the starting point for the implementation. Unless the probability of success is high, the implementation should being elsewhere in the organization. In the execution phase, the safety manager works with other members of the steering committee to monitor the progress of teams that have been activated.
A Total Quality approach can be used for managing safety even traditional organizations that reject TQM overall. This is termed Total Safety Management (TSM). In the execution phase activated teams being their work. Old teams complete their assignments and are disbanded. New teams are formed to pursue new improvements. Recommendations are made to the TSM steering committee, which seeks the approval of executive management as appropriate.