Introduction to Quality Management and TQM

In the present world of globalised business with innovative and advanced technologies of production and operations there is limited risk in the businesses. The businesses which have limited or squat risks are considered as the most efficient and productive in the present global markets. There is continuous use of innovative and sound business practices with updated technologies so that increased number of customer base and extended market share could be gained by the organisation. For achieving a status of being innovative and unique and to earn a certain competitive benefits, the businesses implement business practices through which they can achieve total quality management. Quality management can be considered as the business practices which not only enhances the production compliance of the company but also the customer compliance. There are several diverse set of explanations of the term ‘quality management’ in the perspectives of number of authors and researchers. But the common aspect among all the views comprises of high economic status, increased customer satisfaction, error free commercial goods and cooperative business operations. The quality management later on recognized as TQM i.e. Total Quality Management which is a more wide spectrum that comprises of several aspects including barriers free business communication, risk free production, strategic operational planning, commercial procurement, goods and product distribution, innovative measures, customer service, demand and potential forecasting, successive transportation, etc. The report will understand the significance of total quality management in respect with Amazon Inc.

Amazon.com is performing business across the nations in a renowned name of Amazon which is a cloud computing and American electronic commerce organisation based in Seattle, Washington. The company was established in the year 1994. There are a total of 541,900 employees that serves the e-commerce business of Amazon. The quality management and quality based services of Amazon are recognized across the globe (Topalovi?, 2015).

The implementation of total quality management in the business processes of Amazon is considered as the key factor in its continuous growth and success. The annual report of the company reflects its concerns related to the practices of quality management. To attain a number of competitive benefits, the strategy used by the company is total quality management along with a number of various effectual factors including proactive risk management, management of inventories, contract forecasting, forecasting of demands of product, reliability assurance, quality assurance, rapid product transportation, risk assessment, innovative acquisitions, quality assurance and effective strategic policies. There is effective management of the inventories for assuring highest growth and manufacturing yields, there is taken use of Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) as a tool for managing the quality status (Kassim and Asiah Abdullah, 2010). Amazon ensures high level of quality management in four specific aspects that offers high value proposition to the organization comprises of customer friendly services, price suitability, increased variety with specifications and timely convenience. To achieve 24*7 quality management in an on line business is extremely difficult and challenging but Amazon has attained such high level of total quality management with its business practice as even in the e-books site also, Amazon offers the customers with24*7  upload and download facility. The contact service facilities, upgraded reviews and the product recommendations and many other are embedded in Amazon quality assured value propositions. The company is also recognized as one of the highest procuring networking businesses (Topalovi?, 2015).

Drop Shipment Method

Understanding Amazon’s Quality Management Strategy

This method is particularly used by Amazon.com for the successful attainment of quality based shipping of the articles to the buyers of the orders. This particular method is similar to as ten retailers transferring the articles which are ordered to the wholesalers or the manufacturers for ensuring that there is qualitatively managed the shipping of the article to the respective buyers. The various differences in the prices are managed by the retailer and there is an arrangement dine by the manufacturers in respect with the retail based profit prices. The alliance based management of the inventory increases the quality of the shipping operations of Amazon.com (Heizer, 2016).

There is always used a tactical method or approach by Amazon in its each and every supply chain in order to have total quality management. There are particularly devised methodological measures of TQM which offer competitive benefits and success to the organisation. The company make particular strategic alliance with various other multinational companies to manage their price friendly services. In aim of achieving a proper association, Amazon follows customer care services offered by the various proposed allies independently. There are various allies of Amazon such as HomeGrocer.com, Ashford.com, Drugstore.com, Gear.com, Living.com, Della.com, Greenlight.com and Pets.com. Amazon never remained back in adding innovative and potential products so that the customers always remained convinced to order the products from Amazon. There is a vast variety of list of products offered by Amazon with high profile tactics to gain adequate customer compliance, accurate determination of artifacts, productive value, and rapid and well-organized articles transference, etc. Therefore, these were the tactical scale on which Amazon can gain quality management and increased improvement in the performances with application of the TQM methods (Goetsch and Davis, 2014).

The implementation of the TQM has been very successful and gained huge recognition. There are various fundamentals of Total Quality Management implemented at Amazon.com and have given huge success and growth to the company. This can be explained as follows:

Customer Compliance: There has been a huge success implementation of the total quality management methods in Amazon as in respect with the customer compliance fundamental, it has been identified that there has been gained responsible administration in respect with increased level of customer satisfaction by offering customer oriented services as there has been removed the various barriers which are there in effective communication channel and thus there received constructive and potential feedbacks and there has been developed increased level of trust of the customers in respect with the services of Amazon (Yoon, Choi and Sohn, 2008).

Key practices of Amazon’s Quality Management Strategy

Managerial and Administrative Controls: There has been a huge success implementation of the total quality management methods in Amazon as in respect with the managerial and administrative controls, it has been identified that there has been successful implication of the objective oriented administrative control tactics and approaches.  There has also been use of the business models which are task oriented. The successful implementations of the TQM methods can be analysed as there are highly determined and decisive managers and perform an efficient and honest administration (Brewer, Button and Hensher, 2008).

Product Distribution and Transportation: There has been a huge success implementation of the total quality management methods in Amazon as in respect with the product distribution and transportation, it has been identified that there has been upgraded and improved measures of product distribution which offers the competitive advantage of efficient and rapid delivery of products to Amazon. There are also continuous and constant efforts for lowering down the shipping time and enhanced quality of the product (Helms, et al., 2008).  

Quality Enhancement: There has been a huge success implementation of the total quality management methods in Amazon as in respect with the quality enhancement, it has been identified that there has been upgraded and improved service quality gained by Amazon and have also assured that there will be delivered product with increased level of quality in terms of return facility, safety assurance. There has also been analysed the success of the implementation through the improved website technological features (Swaid and Wigand, 2009).

Task Management: There has been a huge success implementation of the total quality management methods in Amazon as in respect with task management, it has been identified that there has been achieved strong and effective administration in respect with the assurance of the existed d task. There has also been attained huge success in terms of implementation in context with progressive and effective task oriented processing and capacity building (Lowry, et al., 2008).

It has been claimed by Amazon that it comply all those logistics TQM potentials which have been proposed by the business experts and the academic scholars. Amazon welcomes the innovative and smart ideas to achieve continuous improvement in the products, supply and delivery band (Liu, et al., 2008). In a similar way, Amazon is one of the most significant global organisations which particularly assured that there is a proper and well-structured policy of the organisation. And this is one of the reasons behind implementing a program of total quality management within the managerial sector of Amazon. Moreover the various business administrations also recommended that there must be detailed audit of risk assessment in order to identify all the threatening as we well as potential business opportunities and risks. Therefore, the organisation must take use of continuous risk monitoring as well as risk management techniques for achieving success of the total quality management programs in Amazon (Stiakakis and Georgiadis, 2009).

Fundamentals of Total Quality Management implemented at Amazon.com

By analysing the various operational activities as well as the implementation of total quality management within Amazon, kit has been identified that there are a number of limiting probabilities that took place as the barricades in the change process and can become one of the major reason behind the probable business regression. First of all it is essential for Amazon to recognize these potential barricades and then take appropriate steps to deal with the change process in respect with implementation of total quality management. The primary challenge at the time of change occurs is the impact posed by the factor is to have increased level of quality consistence and quality maintenance (Chung, et al., 2008).  Thought there has been implementation do TQM within Amazon.com but there still sustains a need to have competent and skilled managerial control so that there can be effective understanding of the management requirement and can fulfil these requirements in an effective manner. There are a number of disruptive events and predictive economic risks and to manage the change and these risks, there will be used the experienced managerial and administrative controls (Ipeirotis, Provost and Wang, 2010).

The next key issue or managing change within Amazon was in respect with its innovative investments as according to the strategic policy of Amazon, the company introduce new products on a regular basis. But there is no assurance or surety in respect with the investment profitability on the new products. For the same, there is a need to introduce total quality management but the non-assurance of profits is not substantially satisfying. Although to manage these changes, Amazon introduced various technological advances in their website on a continuous basis but, the effective management of these fluctuating advances is a point of concern for the company. The TQM offers control over these products and also on the sale of these products. But there is an issue of improper management of the cloud of networking technology. And for this, to manage the change, Amazon has hired effective and technologically robust managing group such as cloud computing etc. Thus, to manage the various changes, Amazon takes use of an effective managerial and administration so that these changes do not impact the implementation of the total quality management at Amazon (Foster Jr, Wallin and Ogden, 2011).

The total quality management help a number of businesses in assuring as well as increasing the productiveness. There are various issues which have been discussed above are required to be considered and there are various cons and pros of the system which the TQM program is implemented in the company. Amazon is one of the best e-commerce business platforms and the marketing spectrum is international in nature. The business inventories of Amazon experiences a substantially extended coverage area (Evans and Lindsay, 2013). And this results in increasing productivity and sophistication at a similar point of time. There has been ensured high level of quality within Amazon in respect with enhanced performance quality status, improved culture based business quality and increased quality assurance. After discussing the successful application of the total quality management within the business of Amazon, there has been learned a number of business lessons and following are some of the recommendations which are required to be followed by the company to have more successful implementation of total quality management (Ladhari, 2010).

• There is a need to have strategic inclusion of the new arrivals and products within the existing e-commerce business of Amazon as it is necessary to pre-requisite for recognizing to have more innovative and smart business.
• The application of total quality management in any small or large business is highly significant for progress and success as it helps the company in increasing the performance status of the company, the durability, profitability, quality and productivity of the organisation. Thus a proper implementation process must be structured.
• There is also a need to have tactical and strategic business moves which must be followed so that there can be assured continuous success of the business (Peer, Vosgerau and Acquisti, 2014).
• Inspire of the fact that Amazon web services take use of methodological tactics but still it is recommended that there must continuous and regular updates in respect with these tactics so to have successful business moves.
• Another recommendation is that there must be individual capacity building along with the continuous business auditing so that there can be strong business networks and effective marketing succession (Chesbrough, 2011).

Challenges faced by Amazon in implementing Total Quality Management

Conclusion

The study of TQM within Amazon offers a number of qualitative productivities which increased the gross market share and profit of the company. Total quality management comprises of various fluctuating parameters which are required to be incorporated within the organisation so as to ensure there is performance improvement. From the overall analysis, it has been concluded that Amazon has gained huge success, recognition, quality insurance and value through the implementation of total quality management tools. There are various changes and issues which are also required to be managed and for the same must be effective use if strategies and approaches. It is also concluded that if Amazon follow the recommendations offered then it can have better and successful implementation of total quality management tools within the company. Hence, it is concluded that the implementation of TQM within Amazon has offered excess positive outcomes and it is also suggested that there must be continuous improvement in the management sector for future progressions and success.

References

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