Abstract
M. Eng. (Engineering Management)
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a managerial approach that views quality to be a
result of integrating all organisational activities e.g. engineering, manufacturing,
marketing and administration work. It aims broadly at maintaining and improving quality
standards and to achieve customer satisfaction. TQM’s major components are quality
planning, quality control and quality improvement.
Quality control is responsible for transforming quality planning and quality improvement
outcomes into daily routine work. However, quality control can be implemented by
systematically going around the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) control cycle, with which
organisation may achieve continuous small steps of improvement.
An entire enterprise can be better controlled when it is regarded as a set of processes.
Process is controlled by the same systematic way of implementing PDCA cycle. Some
tools are suggested in this dissertation to control processes. These are statistical process
control (SPC), root cause analysis (RCA) and the Feedback Loop.
Beyond information gleaned from literature on quality control a case study of a steel
manufacturing and construction firm is also presented. Some areas for improvement in
the quality arena of this firm are identified based on the results of quality management
gained from literature.