Essay Topic:

The benefits of the Total Quality Management of the Xerox Company.

Essay Questions:

Why is Xerox considered to be the #1photocopier manufacturer? What is the quality philosophy of the Xerox Company? What is the essence of the Total Quality Management of the Xerox company?

Thesis Statement:

The Xerox Corporation is a company that has definitely proved thought its practice that the “right management” and the ability to be flexible can lead to a great success no matter how stiff the competition is.

Xerox Business Systems Expository Essay

 

Introduction: Xerox is known all over the world as being the # 1 photocopier manufacturer. The Xerox Corporation is a company that has definitely proved thought its practice that the “right management” and the ability to be flexible can lead to a great success no matter how stiff the competition is. The history of its outstanding management starts in the 1980’s, when the company changed its market strategy and introduced a new kind of management that lately transformed into their fantastic quality management practice. Their program “Leadership through quality” against the Japanese competitors set new quality standards for the market and opened their way to success. The program established the manage-for-results as the primary goal for all of the operations within the company. The expected results were improved productivity and increased revenue growth achieved through the quality-oriented strategy; after experiencing difficulties on market before the company opened a new era in management and created a model that will lately be followed by almost every single one company.

 

The quality philosophy of the company- the customer-demands orientation- is one of the most remarkable traits that makes Xerox an upstart company. The customer-based orientation was the first one at that time, due to the major orientation of the companies on the quantity, not quality of manufacturing. This philosophy is completely based on the quality of every aspect of the company’s activity, including the final product. It starts with the employee’s management and ends up in the final result of their work – Xerox products. This final result started being evaluated from the objective point of view of a customer. The three factors that are taken into account the most are: the customer, the process and the people. The goal of the company was, is and will be “Total customer satisfaction”. Basically saying the customer was to become the “quality controlling team” of the company. This philosophy is reflected in their introduction of Total Quality Management (TQM). The main change that this management philosophy brought to the Xerox Corporation was moving from a production-based over to a customer-based company. The Total Quality Management of the Xerox Corporation includes principles that are used by the company’s employees and directors: strong customer focus, entrepreneurial spirit of the employees, integrations through market focus and quality control. Nowadays, owing to this philosophy the company is eager and able to meet all the requirements that the customer has. The satisfaction of the customers became the criterion of evaluation of the company’s work. The main orientation of the company is continued integration through total quality of their products and of the customer service. The knowledge management of the Xerox Corporation resulted in a very deep research of the market and the customer needs and made a great platform for the realization of the philosophy of the company. The whole Xerox Corporation is a quality control mechanism with an extremely high level of quality assurance that makes the customers turn to this company over and over again.

The main criterion for measuring quality for the company has always been the customer. The satisfaction of the customer through high-quality products was a thing that Xerox always achieved through quality control. At the same time customer satisfaction is a generalized term and in its turn it depends on many factors. The quality control is than achieved through analyzing such data as the conformance to specifications of the company’s product, comfort in usage and the price of the given product. To measure the quality of work Xerox made an accounting of defects per every produced machine and kept track of all the breakages and complaints through the “Automated Installation Quality Report” system. All the complaints on the performance of the machines after being analyzed by special teams later on improved and modified the manufacturing process in order to prevent their repetitions. Avoiding the possible and known defects became the most important part of the company’s activity and the machine performance data became a tool to measure the quality of the products. The quality-improving phase is the most important in the “Leadership through quality” program. As the Xerox management model (XMM) developed, it also produced six main categories of evaluation of the quality level: the level of management leadership, the level of human resource management, the level of customer and market focus, the level of business process management, the level of information utilization and quality tools and finally the level of the business results achieved. All this categories in the long run result and define the quality level of the company. These activities in connection with the effectiveness of the organizational structure provide the guarantee of obtaining first-class quality. So generally speaking the main criterion of measurement of the quality is the defects data, obtained through putting the customer at the center of the business process with its future evaluation and improvement changes made. The quality approach is to be measured by the changes that were made in it in order to correspond to the Total Quality Management goal. So converting the performance of the machines into a measurable data and its future evaluation is the secret of the Xerox’s high level of customer satisfaction.

Quality management did result in a great success for the Xerox Corporation. The examples of this success are very easy to trace and are known all over the world. Its first and main success was the impossibility to reproduce the quality of the company products. The adjusted work of the new management model of the company showed an excellent ability to function and improve the manufacturing. Therefore, the quality level take-off of other became very significant. Xerox built its own information model that provided data required to support the business quality planning and therefore giving strategic advantage over other companies. The policy of workforce empowerment increased the level of customer-satisfaction, through high-level human resources approach and the introduction of quality improvement teams. Xerox became the leading company not only in the production of the copying machines but it also helped in creating the personal computer. The company showed an outstanding ability to stand all the market changes owing to its unique organizational architecture and quality principles as the base of this structure. Nowadays, Xerox offers the document industry's best variety of business -proposals.

Conclusion: The company supports its vitality for the customers and employees by the manufacture of fundamentally new products. The company culture is very strong and besides caring about the business results the environmental problems are one of its vital problems. The company tries to achieve:”Zero defects”, “Zero disposal” and “Zero pollution”. The customers of the company can contact the company and report any defects found in the machine they purchased, which gives two main advantages: the breakage can be fixed and the data about the breakage can be collected. The collected data allows the company to improve the quality of the process of manufacturing of the machine and therefore put in a new level of quality. Xerox has always been a client-focused and market connected company and truly achieved their leadership in the market through the quality level of its products. The Xerox Corporation was not on top of the existing market – it created and leaded its own market by being able to recognize the true requirements of the customers. The values of the customers resulted to be not just “recommendations” for the management process of the company, but its driving force. The quality strategy of the company results was primarily reached directly by the management leadership. Even now, when almost every company uses this scheme Xerox still remains a benchmark.