CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Total quality management can be defined as a strategy for improving business performance through the commitment of all employees to fully satisfying agreed customer requirements at the lowest cost through the continuous improvement of products and services, business processes and the people involved.

Deleforge (2000) also pointed out that total quality management is concerned with the management of all aspects of quality services provided to the customer. This includes quality of goods delivery price of services, quality of promotion and merchandising. The importance quality to an organization cannot be overemphasized because of it attribute to the fact that quality determines to a large extent, productivity, customer satisfaction, profit and other key performance element to an organization.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is one of the approaches used to enforce quality in the system and process of and organization as a concept, it sees the participation of all and sundry. Organization in the pursuit of quality so as to ensure customer satisfaction and organizational and societal benefit. The rationale behind the total quality management (TQM) concept is that, since a major objective of most corporate organizations (especially the profit concerns) is to gain and maintain competitive advantage every key elements that has a direct bearing on the achievements of that goal is to be accorded priority attention, among these elements is a quality as it is central to the organization’s competitiveness.

The concept of TQM view that, to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. A firm has to be at the best (optimum productivity) and on the other hand, the expectation of customers has to be met or satisfied. For the reasons quality which is true fundamental element in the productivity index assessment has therefore become and remain a business of all within the firm as it has direct linkages to both productivity and customers satisfaction problem surrounding the status of a company’s competitiveness cannot be in connected with it product performance that how well a product deliver to expectation, largely determines how competitive the company become.

1.2    Statement of the Problems

The continued effort of firm to grow and improve their performance, both internally and in the market place is constantly being challenged by a number of fundamental issues, for firm to perform credibly important key elements of its internally processes has to be looked into in relation to its market role and relevance, crucial among these basic is the subject of quality.

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