Evaluating TQM of Emirates Airlines - Essay Example

? “Evaluating TQM Of Emirates Airlines” Evaluating TQM of Emirates Airlines Aim of developing a strategy A strategy is important for all companies, because it provides a plan and a map for following it by agreeing on a set decision on the activities and operations of an organization. Strategizing helps in pinpointing the activities needed to achieve the goals of the organization by making them clearer and specific and coming up with an action plan of honing into them. By providing a skeletal support for the strategies, it will be easy to allocate resources to the important goals respectively without wastage of precious resources. They also make the task easier for ever employee as it makes clear what they have to do or aim to do and they will be motivated towards a strategy. (Basil Henry Liddell Hart, 1967) Mission and vision of Emirates: The mission statement of Emirates is: “To become a leading airline with good customer relations by encouraging transparency and fair competition and adopting open skies policy.” The vision of Emirates is: “To become a leading airline by setting new industry standards that has focus on innovation, diversity and customer service.” Strategies and Goals To become a global airline and carrier of choice all over the world. To promote UAE especially Dubai as one of the safest, modern, technologically advanced. Progressive and modern commercial centers of the world. To encourage sustainability and economic efficiency through various programs To encourage diversity by having multi-cultural staff To develop and train employees and provide them opportunities to enhance their skills. To apply and develop new technologies internally as well as in the services and products that are offered t the customers. To expand and grow in the new markets. Core Competencies The core competencies of Emirates include its: Strong leverage to brands: Focus on marketing and promoting the brands by investing on them Competitive cost structure: Focus on low costs so as to offer low fares. Spoke and hub operation: The mega hub of Emirates Airlines is at Dubai International Airport that is the centre connecting the whole world. (Emirates, n.d.) Strategic Control Strategic control is very important to monitor the internal and external environment. It helps in evaluating the company’s programs from a long term perspective. For Emirates it is very important to systematically and continuously check the implementation of plans, monitor all the events that take place inside and outside the company in all situations. (Porter, 1996) Stakeholder analysis Government: Government of UAE is the major stakeholder of Emirates Airline as it is also one of the owners of the company. They have high power and are very much interested in the operations of the company. The government has the authority to build pressure and question the decisions. The government is so much involved with the company that it created a liberal market for the Airline to operate in Fast east Share holders: they are the people who have bought the shares of Emirates. They have high level of interest in the affairs of the business as they have invested their money, but they have low level of power. It is very important to develop engagement strategy for them and keep them informed about the activities. Employees: employees are one of the main stakeholders of a company as they have the power that can either make the company or break it. They are directly linked to the company. It is thus very important to keep them satisfied by providing training and development opportunities, good compensations and a good environment. Their needs should be catered and taken care of. Customers: without the customers a company cannot survive. Customers thus are very important and play a very important role. They have the power to influence the company and its success. Strategies should be made to keep the customers engaged and updated about the products and services. Public: on a larger scale the community is the society in which an organization is operating is also one of the stakeholders. Usually they are not concerned with the company but at certain times the public can have a direct impact on the operation. Therefore it is very important to keep them notified. (Thomas, 2010) SWOT Analysis Strength: It is recognized as a leading and global organization and has a strategic position. The company has the ability to adapt to the changing marketing situations and bring in innovation in order to maximize its profits. Customer-Focus orientation of the company has earned it a good reputation It is technologically updated and provides a number of services like it allows customers live text news, e-mail services and was the first one to introduce a digital Widescreen system. Weakness: The company is conservative about the labor union issues The company fears high labor cost and thus is unable to improve In some regions, the market share of Emirates is quite low The company focuses more on diversification and high-end acquisition Opportunities: To tap into new markets like China and use first-movers advantage. Focus on the internet marking and cater the need of these customers Use aggressive marketing strategies to promote the brand and get more customers. Threats: There is positive growth in the airline industry and all the airlines are now improving their services and trying hard to get more market share. If the company fails to cope up with the changing technologies and innovations then it will fail Changes in the legal and political conditions of the country where Emirates operate can also be threat. (Namaki, 2007) Demographic influences In UAE, majority of the people working or living are foreigners who belong to different cultures and backgrounds. These people have different languages, religions and tradition. Emirates encourage and welcome diversity in its organizational culture. At Emirates it is believed that diverse workforce is an advantage and helps the company in achieving its goals. (Emirates, n.d.) Total Quality Management Total quality management (TQM) is a tool that organizations employ in order to better their internal process and in the end achieve customer satisfaction. It can help to decrease costs and achieve efficiency and economy of scale as well as better performance overall of the organization and happy customers. However it is not an ongoing aspect and needs to implement over time and continuously. (Oakland, 1989) There are many dimensions to total quality management and it has evolved overtime. But it has eight main focuses as will be discussed Customer Focus Total quality management is the first feature of TQM. The definition of quality is to meet the customer’s expectations of preferably exceeds it. The customer comes first in market because if the product is not what the customer wants and needs, then even a perfectly good product will fail. Therefore quality is also something that needs to be taken into account as a customer driven concept. And tastes and needs of the consumer evolve overtime as well. Expectations of a consumer are also not all the same; the keep changing and they are different from one consumer to the other. Emirates Airlines also realizes that it would not be in business if it were not for its customers. Therefore it gathers information overtime by various surveys and interviews to inculcate what the customers wants and they do this by offering a wide variety of services over six continents with many fleets and it is technologically updated as well by allowing for texting and other updates in the flight and also having a Wild screen and being a pioneer in airlines in that aspect. (Oakland, 2003) Continuous Improvement Another dimension of TQM is improving continuously. Traditionally, companies operated on a basis of a certain standard. Once they achieved that standard and quality they believed that their company was successful and didn’t need any further improvement. However, TQM believes that quality and improvement are never ending concepts and employees are constantly supposed to seek out problems and solve problems related to quality. And Emirates has strived to be the top choice all over the world and expand its market which shows that it believed firmly in the goal of continuous improvement. They also believe in constantly training their employees and bridging the gap between the cross cultural staff. They use tools to keep the training of employees an ongoing process and meeting the needs of customers by designing an offering that caters to their needs. Innovation, customer service and diversity are in their mission and vision as well and these require continuous improvement due to the changing demands of the market place and therefore they focus on this dimension a great deal. Continuous quality seems to be built into their culture and all their process; all the sources of problems related to quality are identified and fixed. Perfection can never be achieved and that is one must always learn and solve problems. Two approaches for achieving continuous quality are: PDSA cycle: this cycle involves planning, doing, studying and then acting. These are all the actions a company must partake in order to have continuous improvement in its operation. Mangers must analyze the current procedures and spot problems by documenting and collecting information. The information should be studied properly so that measures can be to analyze performance. The then implement the plan they decide on in the implementation process after collection of data. The plan phase is then tested and studied to figure out if the initial goals and strategy that was established is leading towards the goals or is it diverting from them. The final phase is a sum of the first three phases in which the company acts on the first three steps by communicating the results of the initial phases to employees and members of the company and then establishing a new plan and procedure if it was successful. . This is a cyclical process just as TQM is a continuous process and once one cycle is complete the process starts all over again and so on. Emirates also has a quality circle which a group of employees in production or supervisors who look after the quality problems and aims to solve them in teams. Benchmarking: Another way by which Emirates maintains continuous improvement is by benchmarking itself against other leaders in the market. This is done in the same market such as Qatar airways (which is a direct competitor). This is how they aim to become the best; by offering not only what others are offering, but so much more. They also learn what works and what doesn’t work. Learning what others do is an important part of learning as well. (George & Weimerskirch, 1994) Employee Empowerment Employees are the ones who seek out the problems and solve them. Previously, employees didn’t have the power to pinpoint mistakes for fear of being scolded or being out of place or even losing their jobs. In Emirates, with a diverse workforce, everyone has different opinions and different ideas and that is welcomed rather than reprimanded. Poor quality was also usually not perceived as a personal problem and usually pawned on someone else and so TQM is different in the way that it not only makes employees unafraid in pointing out mistakes but it also rewards those who discover and solve good quality problems. Workers are empowered in this way and high quality is achieved in the organization. Even in Emirates, workers are given continuous training to make them adept at spotting these mistakes. Internal customers and external customers both are given the benefit of adopting this stance of pointing out mistakes and correcting them and these are the employees of the organization which are the internal customers and the external customers will be the purchasers of the service that Emirates Airlines has to offer. Team building strategies also lend quality to TQM and stress that every feat is an organizational feat and two people are better than one. They also help in maintaining quality, generating ideas, and regularly look to bring out the problems and solve them. This includes the aforementioned quality circle which is also a team. There are many other types of teams and they are important for the company and simply do not discuss and meet for a formality. The results are seen in the success of the company. Employees and customer service are very important to Emirates as well and that is why they deliver exceptional quality. Monitoring is important in quality and especially in service industry that serves millions of people. The effectiveness is determined by the continuous quality that Emirates has managed to maintain over the years. Individuals are adept in their own job and know the best tricks and tools to maintain quality because Emirates Airlines has given them that authority. (Williams, 1994) Use of quality tools In order to empower employees, they need to be trained sing the proper tools so that they understand and analyze the problems they find and interpret and solve them too. Components are managed, materials are provided and warehousing is done in Emirates, however, they can use a few tools to help determine the quality and effectiveness because these individual components need to function smoothly in order to determine the final output quality. Cause and effect diagrams are charts that help with product design quality that help to make sure that the product is up to the customer’s expectations. This is difficult to maintain across the board due to different consumers and different needs. Technical aspects also need to cater to customers. This tool is basically used to inculcate everyone’s voice into the product and it even enhances the communication system between different departments in the organization. The safety requirements etc. can also be monitored accordingly and the customer’s requirements as well as the technical aspects of the airline can be seen with this diagram. With a technical product like Airlines, this tool is helpful. A matrix method of some sort could also help such as one which shows the importance of service features to service quality. (Besterfield & al, 2003) Product design Products need to be reliable which means that it will perform till the duration that it is intended to under circumstances of normality. This is usually for products such as warranty however services can also offer guarantees in the form of customer satisfaction, safe flights etc. Customers also look for a certain requirement in an offering and will purchase it if it matches with their needs. And the sum of all the products will end up creating a good customer experience and therefore the design for all the elements has to be right. Critical elements like the navigation systems of airlines are extremely important and cannot fail under any circumstances and also backup should also be designed. Process Management Quality is to be inbuilt in the process to receive a quality product. It s better to correct the process than discard defects later on after the process is over otherwise the problems will continue to rise. And Emirates has a good quality process which allows it to have a good service and offering otherwise costs are usually passed on to customers. Managing Supplier Quality Suppliers are also involved in the process because they provide Emirates with the inventory and if their planes and parts are not in good shape, their service offering will not be of good quality. So when the materials for the inventory arrive, they are checked for defects and quality. Good quality theory is extended to the suppliers so that the culture of Emirates is also followed by their suppliers and they have a shared vision. At every step, this quality check is done to make sure that the internal processes are good enough and allow the organization to function smoothly and try to achieve the goals it wants to which in the case of Emirates is to become the number one airline which is customer oriented and believes in fair practices and innovation. It will extend its business and for that its previous process need to be in proper condition and under continuous improvement to improve further. References Basil Henry Liddell Hart, S., 1967. Strategy. s.l.:s.n. Besterfield, D. H. & al, e., 2003. Total quality management. s.l.:Prentice Hall. Emirates, n.d. [Online] Available at: www.emirates.com [Accessed 2012]. George, S. & Weimerskirch, A., 1994. Total quality management : strategies and techniques proven at today's most successful companies. s.l.:Wiley. Namaki, P. D. M. S. S. E., 2007. Emirates Airlines: in a League of its Own. Capital Magazine, pp. 8-10. Oakland, J. S., 1989. Total Quality Management. s.l.:Oxford. Oakland, J. S., 2003. Total quality management : text with cases. s.l.:Butterworth-Heinemann. Porter, M., 1996. What is Strategy?. Harvard Business Review , pp. 61-78. Thomas, F. M., 2010. Strategic management. s.l.:Cengage Learning. Williams, R. L., 1994. Essentials of total quality management. s.l.:Amacom. Read More