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Quality Management Tools
Clifford Floyd, Marie Brkljacich, Sylvia Frickey
University of Phoenix
MGT 449
Benchmarking and Brainstorming
Team B was retained by Saturn to evaluate their current quality management plan. Upon evaluation, benchmarking and brainstorming were identified as areas where Saturn has excelled. This paper will review these quality management tools and explain why they are important not only for Saturn, but for any organization striving to achieve total quality management.
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is a tool that can be used in conjunction with other tools and processes to aid organizations in building a total quality management program. Benchmarking is used to evaluate a current process or product to that of a recognized leader (Burrill and Ledolter, 1999). Three prerequisites must be identified before an organization attempts to use benchmarking. The steps are as follows:
1. Organizations must have an environment conducive to benchmarking. Understanding that other organizations are more effective in certain areas and even the best have room for improvement.
2. Develop an effective benchmarking process and be able to train employees how to use the process.
3. Determine how and what the information will be used for before the benchmarking effort is started.
(Burrill and Ledolter, 1999)
Once these prerequisites have been evaluated an organization is ready to begin the benchmarking process. This process has four major steps as outlined below.
1. Decide what to ben ...