Total Quality Management (TQM) And Benchmarking In Event Management Industry Essay.

• Discuss the strategies used to manage quality within an event;
• Evaluate how management within staffing will differ in an event;
• Present finding effectively through a variety to techniques;
• Evaluate information from a variety of sources
• Analytically interpret data in quantitative and qualitative forms to manage the quality of an event;

Total Quality Management (TQM) can be described as a management philosophy embracing all activities through which, the needs and expectations of the customer and the objectives of the organisation are satisfied in the most effective and efficient way.

Using Benchmarking and a tool of your choice from the list below, critically evaluate how an organisation can successfully implement the TQM tools chosen.

• Six Sigma
• Quality Circles
• TPC (Total Product Concept)
• Kaizen

Total quality management includes the organization-wide efforts to settle and create a climate in that a company continuously enhances its ability to provide the products and services with high quality to the customers. The total quality management is a methodical way, which is used for the analysis of the quality of the business operations. In the process of total quality management, employees and managers come together to implement changes in the operations of an organization. This approach of TQM brings development and improvement in the quality of products and services by fulfilling the needs and wants of customers. Most of the organizations try to develop and manage the process of total quality management. This analysis includes the implementation of benchmarking and quality management tools in event industry. The tool of TQM, which is considered in this report, is Six Sigma Tools. There are so many event organizations, which are using quality management tools for improving the quality of their services.

Event Industry is one of the sectors of the economy, which is growing at a high rate in United Kingdom. This sector consists of various event management organizations that manage and plan parties, weddings and other corporate and celebrity events. In today’s competitive business world, there are so many rich customers, who appoint the event managers for any event and these organizations ensure that they will do high quality work for their events (Akgün et al, 2014). For improving the quality of services, the event organizations maintain total quality management, as the people are very concerned about the quality of services. Implementation of TQM is an effective strategy, which can be used by the management of event management organizations to enhance the quality or services, which are offered by them. Companies in this industry ensure that their team and workers are properly trained and they will be able to manage the changes in the quality of operations (Britain for Events, 2011). The people in event industry require high professionalism in the event programs like; meetings and weddings.

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one organization’s business process and performance index to the particular sector bests and effective practices from competitors. This technique is used for measuring the time, quality and cost. In the process of benchmarking, the top management recognizes the best organizations in the particular industry or other industry, in which the processes are similar (Dale, 2015). They compare the outcomes and processes of their organization with the targeted processes and outcomes. This mechanism includes the process that examines outside organization of business to attain performance levels. Benchmarking is an important technique, which is the best in event management industry. In this analysis, one company establishes a benchmark for another company and benchmarking organization is the best organization in the event industry.

Benchmarking

In UK event industry, there are so many organizations, which are providing best event services. One of the leading players is Square meal. There is one more event organization in UK industry, i.e. Jack Morton Worldwide. This is a global brand agency that is well-known for the event and promotional marketing and many more. This organization has conducted the event to organize many series of games, like; Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games (Evans, 2010).

Implementation of benchmarking in any company is important as it needs to implement the changes in performance after considering the company, which is targeted for benchmarking. In the area of event management, quality of products and services is essential for the organization, which assists it to create a good brand value and application to the market (Evans and Lindsay, 2014). There are some stages for the implementation of benchmarking to the event organization.

When an event organization starts implementation of the benchmarking in the business processes, then it has to understand their current and existing processes (Furterer, 2016). This will help to decide on that what process needs benchmarking.

After finding the area, which needs benchmarking, the event organization will take the approval of executive and leadership team. The support and approval from top management will help in the elimination of barriers, providing the required resources and accelerating the benchmark collection process.

This is very important and necessary stage for any organization. After understanding the process, it will determine on the organization, which will be used as benchmarked organization. This stage will define the reason for benchmarking (Goetsch and Davis, 2014).

In this stage, the event planning organization will choose the best company in the respective industry, which is the best performer in the sector. The organization should be chosen by considering its performance and revenues and turnover. In UK event sector, Banks Sadler and Jack Morton Worldwide are the best performers, which can be chosen for benchmarking.

Collecting the benchmarking data is valuable. The collection of specific and required data is needed to improve the performance of the process. It includes considering the graphs, invoices, orders, tax forms etc. This data is historical record of how some problematic areas of the business handled over the years. The accurate and related data is required to compare the performance of taken organization and benchmarked organization (Gimenez-Espin, 2013).

This stage of benchmarking includes finding out the gaps between the performances of both the organizations. To attain that benchmark, the event organization needs to find the gap between performances, so that approach implementation can be completed as per that gap.

Implementation of Benchmarking to Event Sector

After finding out the gaps, the organization will reveal the results of benchmarking and imply it in the business operations (Jablonski, 2012). It will inspire the employees and managers to accept the changes. The company may take the advantage from this process to eliminate the situation of change resistance.

Every event management company has to develop an action plan, which includes the processes to attain its goals and objectives.

After that, the event organization will implement that action and plan and monitor that. It is necessary for the organization to evaluate the outcomes of new action plan. It should consider the critical success factors and eliminate the barriers.

As the modernity and changes with the time are very common in event sector, so recalibration process is very important for an event organization to stay updated with the changing situations and the processes for getting a mature benchmarking position, which helps in achieving higher performance (Kubilius et al, 2015). The non-implementation of this step raises the illusion that any successful benchmarked practice makes a permanent improvement in the event organization.

Six Sigma tools are very important in the process of total quality management. It includes the set of techniques and tools, which are used for process improvement. Six Sigma techniques are used by organizations to remove the errors that in turn assist in improving the quality of products and services, offered by the company. Six Sigma tools is a data driven and disciplined approach, which is implemented by the organization to eliminate the defects and inefficiencies in the products and services.

The organizations in event management industry implement Six Sigma tools that assist them to mitigate and manage the associated risks in the event, which the organizations are going to conduct. Six Sigma tools include some specific stages, i.e. DMAIC, which means Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. The implementation of this TQM technique for event management industry is stated below;

For an event management organization, there is need of successful implementation of the tools and techniques that develop changes and improvement in the organization. Quality is an important aspect in the event management industry. Each and every customer wants to have the best quality services (Zhu, 2014). Six Sigma tool assists the organization to enhance to quality of services, which organization is offering to customers.

This is the first step of the Six Sigma tools, which includes the goals and objectives, which are constant with the customer needs and demands. It includes defining the challenges and opportunities for any event. In this stage, Event Management Company has to recognize the opportunity for improvement in an event. It includes identifying the issues relevant to the resources gaining, timelines and customer expectation for any specific event.

Understand the current processes of organization

In this process, the event management company needs to ensure that the resources, which are needed for managing any particular event, are procured by the event team. These resources include human resources, which possess proper skills and knowledge about the event. Moreover, in this process, the organization considers the expectations and demands of clients (Oak &John, 2015).

The second step of Six Sigma technique is to measure the production process capability, risks and product capabilities. The major aspects of this stage are to gather the related information and evaluate the capability of process. In this step, the organization need to measure and evaluate, which indicate that process performed. This measurement includes the problem frequency and capability. In order to analyze the capability, the skills of employees are evaluated that shows that how much tasks they can perform to the objectives of organization. In the event management, there may be some problems (Zhu, 2014). So, the organization will analyze the issues properly and find out the solution for them. It can eliminate the errors and faults in any event organized by organization.

This step uses the collected data to find out and validate the cause-effect relationships. In this step, the event organizations can determine the factors, which need to be considered. It includes statistical analysis of the performance to recognize the root cause issues, which are faced in any event. This step helps the organization in identifying the failure of the services, so that organization can implement the changes (Meybodi, 2015).

In this analysis, the root cause is the fundamental reason of the issues, which can occur in event management. An event organization needs to identify the issues and create strategies for resolving them. In the step of service failure, the event manager and his team come to know about the causes of failure of services or event. Detection of variances helps the organization in removing failure and errors in the services, which the organization provides its customers.

It includes improving the current processes on the basis of data analysis, done by using the techniques like; experiment designing, error proofing, poka yoke etc. After finding the solutions for the problems and challenges in event management, the organization will improve the processes by implementing those solutions and strategies (Zhu, 2014). The changes and solutions can be implemented by motivating the employees towards their jobs. The event team management team needs motivation to perform the tasks in any particular event. Motivating them enhances the efficiency and productivity of employees. People in the team, who have experience, can get the solution of the issues by performing the experiments. These experiments can generate the solutions for an event manager.

Obtain the approval of executive team

This stage includes controlling the future process to make sure that any deviances from the goal is revised before they outcome in the defects. This process includes evaluating the process, detecting the errors and enhances the performance. In this step, the company should analyze faults or errors in final stage. Event management should manage the operations and eliminate the errors and mistakes (Meybodi, 2015). In an event management company, there is a need of monitoring the behavior of process. In this step, the organization needs to apply the plans for the near future.

Thus, the event management company can use the six sigma tools for improving the quality of services.

Conclusion

This is hereby concluding that benchmarking and Six Sigma tools, both are important techniques, which can be used by any organization to improve the quality of products and services. An event management company can provide high quality services to the customers with the help of these quality techniques. Implementation of these techniques is beneficial for the organization. Event Management Company will follow the above-mentioned steps to improve the quality of services. Thus, total quality management is very important concept for any organization.

References

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Britain for Events, 2011, Opportunities for Growth in the UK Events Industry Roles & responsibilities, retrieved from https://www.hbaa.org.uk/sites/default/files/Opportunities%20for%20Growth%20in%20the%20UK%20Events%20Industry.pdf.

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Gimenez-Espin, J.A., Jiménez-Jiménez, D. and Martínez-Costa, M., 2013. Organizational culture for total quality management. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24(5-6), pp.678-692.

Jablonski R, 2012, Implementing TQM. 2nd ed. Albuquerque: Technical Management Consortium.

Kubilius, A., Winfrey, K., Mayer, C., Johnson, G. and Wilson, T., 2015. Applying Lean Six Sigma tools to reduce the rate of slips, trips and falls for Joint Commission field staff. International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, 9(1), pp.37-55.

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