Total Quality Management - Essay Example

? Innovation and technology management Supervisor] Introduction Innovation has become one of the basic necessities of businesses today. Without innovation business cannot obtain a competitive edge over their rivals. However it is not easy to manage innovation at an organization. There are certain risks that organizations have to take in order to ensure that innovation or new technology being adopted does not backfire and cause unwanted problems within the organization. Total quality management is an approach to manufacturing in which organizations strive to try and continuously improve the quality of products and services that are offered to their customers. TQM was developed in response to the continuous production of high quality goods at cheap rates. The concept of TQM became popular in early 1980s. The proper implementation of TQM within an organization ensured that process and waste from the processes used by an organization were completely removed (Ross & Perry, 1999). The problem associated with implementing TQM at a university is recognizing the main customers. Unlike most large organizations a university does not produce any product or does not provide regular service. Experts however believe that for a university its customers would be students towards whom the staff focuses on adding value. Needs of the customer TQM is a customer based approach where the organization completely focuses its efforts resources on trying to fulfill the needs of the customer and ensure that the customer remains satisfied. Value is continuously added towards the customer and it is ensured that the basic aim of the organization is the fulfillment of their expectations from the organization (Padhi, 2010). At Cardiff Metropolitan University the teaching and the support staff place a great deal of effort in ensuring that students of the university are provided with the best education and additional services. In addition the student’s expectation of the university preparing them for the real world is also worked on and students are ensured that their hard works is paid off when their career flourishes after they graduate. Investigating cost related to quality As mentioned above the concept of TQM greatly revolves around providing value to the customer. It is important that the quality provided to the customer is of top notch and therefore continuous improvements within quality is necessary. To do so organizations have to analyze the cost of improving the quality and reduce it as much as possible (Shim & Siegel, 1999). At Cardiff Metropolitan University quality cannot be compromised on. The management of the university has to ensure that the quality of education and support is such that students can easily grasp the concepts taught to them and are able to implement these concepts to enhance their careers. Furthermore the university also focuses on improving the environment that they get at the campus and ensure that it is comfortable enough for them to adjust. Developing systems that support quality improvements Systems that are developed within an organization must have their focus towards quality and must be flexible enough to include any improvements that are made to the process. Such procedures are vital with respect to TQM (Shim & Siegel, 1999). Designing processes whose main focus is quality at a university would significantly improve not only the graduation rate but would also help students with securing a bright future for themselves. Covering all parts of the organization To increase productivity within the organization’s employees it is necessary that they are provided with the proper training and ensuring all the basic parts are covered. Employees must be fully aware of their role within the organization and their role in helping establish an ideal TQM environment (Snell & Bohlander, 2011). Staff at the university must be aware of how they are to approach a student. Each student has a different nature and may react differently in different situations. Proper training is required to ensure that the staff understands this fact and handles each student in accordance to their nature. Through training the staff would be able to understand what measures are to be taken and in which situation to ensure a positive result is obtained from a particular task. Everyone in the organization is included Including everyone is another important aspect of TQM. Through teamwork this aspect of TQM can easily be achieved. Through teamwork problems of an organization can easily be solved with minimum efforts from each individual of the organization. Through team work a large task can be broken down into small parts and work that needs to be done for the accomplishment of that task is divided amongst all the team members (Baldwin & Migneault, 1996). Through teamwork the university can execute difficult tasks in an efficient manner and at much faster pace. Moreover working as a team provides different perspective to the problem which in turn helps in the development of a number of solutions for the problem. Getting things right by designing in quality As mentioned above focus on quality is important in TQM and it is therefore important to understand that all the processes that are designed for the implementation of the organization are designed by keeping in mind that quality of the end product is by no means affected (Razik & Swanson, 2009). When designing the curriculum or making test papers teachers must ensure that the objective is achieved with the assurance that at the end quality is being added to the knowledge to of the students. Moreover additional processes that are not related to the education of the student and deal with other aspects of their grooming such as counseling must be refined to ensure that quality remains the main driving force. Developing processes of improvement Improvement can only be made in an organization if employees are aware of their weaknesses. One way of doing so is by introducing the process of recognition. Recognition of employees includes suggestions that are to be made regarding certain procedure or process. Recognition may not seem like an important part of TQM, however, recognition in TQM not only allows organizations to understand the areas that it needs to work on but recognizing employees’ efforts also provide a great deal of motivation to them (Biro, 2013). Recognition at the university could be used to assess the performance of an employee, whether he or she belongs to the teaching staff or not. Positive recognition could act as a motivating factor for that individual whereas negative recognition could be used as feedback to understand in which areas the performance of that employee does lacks. Answer 2 Copyright: In order to help the creator of a certain intellectual property obtain some sort of compensation on their work, the concept of copyright was introduced (WIPO, 2008). Under copyright laws the creator of that intellectual property has the right to decide who is to make use of his works and who has the right to reproduce it (WIPO, 2008). Originally copyright laws were introduced by the government to have a great deal of control over the reproduction of books and other printed materials within the government. Gradually copyrights became a method through which writers started making profit for the work that they printed and also provided them with a great deal of control over their work’s reproduction. In some cases copyright laws are restricted to a certain region or part of a country. Copyright laws can only be implemented in other regions only if there is some sort of agreement between the two countries and or regions (WIPO, 2008). Even though in general a number of laws have been generalized by institutions such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) specifics of these laws differ in different countries (Mincov Law Corporation, 2013). Moreover copyrights have an expiration date that is after a certain period of time the property can be reproduced, copied and used by other people without paying any compensation to its creator (Mincov Law Corporation, 2013). (Communia, 2013) Copyrights can be used to protect pieces of software, databases, books and even the content provided on webpages. With the implementation of these copyrights multinational companies and even individuals can ensure that the ideas used by them to create a certain piece of software are not copied by other companies (Mincov Law Corporation, 2013). Even with the implementation of strict copyright laws there are a number of incidents and countries where copyright laws are violated on a regular basis (George, 2012). Vendors in countries like India and Bangladesh distribute pirated copies of software and books openly. Pirated copies become a cause of loss to the authentic distributors of the piece of software or the book (George, 2012). (Mincov Law Corporation, 2013) (Communia, 2013) Patents: A patent encompasses a number of rights that the inventor of a product is provided by the government of a nation in order to help that person protect his invention from being copied or distributed without his permission (WIPO, 2009). Like copyright laws patent law also is valid for certain duration of time (WIPO, 2009). In order for an individual to protect his or her product through patent law it is necessary that they must fulfill a certain criteria. After the fulfillment of the criteria set, the government grants the inventor with certain rights. The validity and the extent to which these rights can be used vary from country to country (WIPO, 2009). As mentioned above, like copyrights, patents are valid for only certain duration of time. Unlike copyrights however patents are only valid for 20 years from the date that they are filed. Moreover to obtain a patent the inventor has to divulge some information about the invention and make it public (George, 2012). Furthermore if a third party wishes to make improvements to the invention that is under a patent they would first have to ask permission from the inventor of the invention. In case he or she does not give their permission then the third party has no right to make amendments or any improvements to the invention (George, 2012). (Dilger, 2013) Trademark: Trademark is usually used for a particular symbol, sign, design and even an expression that somehow can be associated with a certain product or the source from where particular line of products comes from (USPTO, 2013). Trademarks can be obtained by an individual or by a number of people. In a case where an individual or a group of individuals use a trademark to promote an object that is not related to the source of the trademark then legal action can be taken against that individual or group of individuals (USPTO, 2013). There are certain rights that an organization or an individual receive through trademark most of these rights are usually exercised during a trademark infringement. A number of goods have been classified by the international Classification of Goods and Services into more than 45 trademark classes. The main purpose of this classification is to help integrate various classification systems into a single classification system (WIPO, 2001). Like patent there is certain criterion that needs to be met in order to obtain a trademark. The first and foremost is that the trademark must be different from other trademarks and symbol and can be distinguished from the rest. Secondly the trademark must be presented to an examiner for inspection. Trademarks can only be approved if the examiner feels that it is distinguishable from all other trademarks and is unique in itself (Bout & Tankha, 2010). (USPTO, 2013) Trade secret: Trade secret can either be a method, a formula or even an instrument that is used by a company to try and gain some kind of competitive edge over its competitors (Elbaum, 2011). Trade secrets in general terms are not known by the mass population and are usually confided to the owners or the executives of the organization. In order to protect trade secrets from their competitors and to ensure that employees at the lower level are unable to figure out the secret, special precautions and handling procedures are implemented (Elbaum, 2011). Furthermore, employees at managerial positions are made to sign an agreement that has a non-compete and a non-disclosure clause. These agreements ensure that an employee doesn’t reveal the organization’s trade secret during their tenure as employees at the company nor after their termination (Elbaum, 2011). Violation of such agreements could lead to heavy fines being paid by the employee of the organization. However proving violations of such agreements is very difficult and becomes even more difficult if that employee starts working for the organization of a competitor (Sendek, 2009). Unlike patent, trade secrets have no expiration date and can last for a great deal of time. Moreover, trade secrets do not have to be provided for public viewing. However, trade secrets do are not protected from the process of reverse engineering whereas patent protects products from processes such as reverse engineering (Pendergast, 2013). Answer 3 In the past a number of innovators that have received a great deal of recognition and their work has been invested and popularized over the years. These innovators worked alone and had little help from large corporations. This culture of innovators prevailed over a long period of time and inventions provided by these individuals became a basis for the modern civilization that has been established today (Bessen, 2004). With the passage of time however the culture of innovators gradually declined and corporations began to replace these innovators and started coming up with new methods of production and new innovative designs of machinery for production. A number of factors have contributed to this phenomenon (Bessen, 2004). The first is that in today’s world innovators and their inventions are not getting the exposure that was given to innovators before them. For example according to a survey in 2001 Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, featured in more than 4500 articles of New York Times during his life time, whereas, Steve Wozniak the creator of Apple 1, has featured in only 144 articles of New York Times (Bessen, 2004). The lack of exposure leaves a number of innovative ideas from reaching the attention of the mass population which discourages the innovators from working on publicizing about their ideas (Bessen, 2004). Another strong fact that has reduced the number of innovators across the globe is the commercialization of ideas (Girotra & Ulrich, 2010). Large corporations either hire innovators or purchase their ideas from them. This prevents innovators from protecting their ideas through the use of patents. Since large corporations buy these ideas they can legally brand these ideas as their own. Moreover there are a number of innovators working in a company submitting their ideas on a regular basis. Once these ideas are submitted to the company it becomes extremely difficult to figure out which idea came from which individual (Girotra & Ulrich, 2010). The amount of knowledge that is available today, compared to 18th and 19th century, is vast. For a single person to obtain and understand all that information would require a great amount of time. However for an organization it is relatively easier as they hire a number of individuals from different fields that have knowledge regarding different fields and bring something different to the team. Finally there is also the issue of financing an idea. There are a number of ideas that do not take a physical form mainly because the inventor of the idea does not have sufficient funds to pursue their idea. In some cases money isn’t the problem but rather time is. An individual is unable to find the time to work on their idea. Even if an individual has enough resources to carry out the required research and development processes they do not have the required funds or resources to market and distribute their products to different parts of the country or even the globe. Corporations on the other hand can afford to utilize their resources and spend a large sums on an idea that they find interesting and they feel can generate enough revenue for them (Bessen, 2004). Conclusion Innovation has in recent times become one of the most vital components of society and businesses. With the help of innovation, inventions have been introduced to our societies that have significantly improved the way we live and carry out day to day tasks. However managing innovation can be a tricky process. One approach to introducing innovation is through the approach of following TQM. Inventions of individuals across the globe are protected by government through certain laws. These laws enable them to make money through their inventions. Recent times have however seen innovative ideas rising from organizations rather than individuals. One of the main reasons is lack of resources that are available to individuals to research and market their products. 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