Marks & Spencer's Strategic TQM Plans

This assignment requires a thorough analysis of Marks & Spencer's strategic plans for maintaining its competitive edge in the market, with a focus on its implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) strategies. Students are expected to evaluate how these plans help attract new customers and increase product demand, drawing from relevant books, journals, and benchmarks mentioned. The assignment aims to assess understanding of TQM principles and strategic planning in corporate contexts.

Total Quality Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Total quality management is the process which helps business to run or a loger time.
TQM means the overall quality of management process which helps to enhance the performance
of company. It is the tool in management which includes rules, efforts and quality. This increases
the business value and growth. In this present report, there will be discussion on the total quality
management its nature and purposes. Furthermore, the factors which influenced management
culture of the organisation will be highlighted as well. In this present file it will discussion on
Mark and Spencer Company. It will explain about the management techniques including
benchmarking and process of Mark and Spencer.
TASK
Total quality management is the complete cycle in which Mark and Spencer increases the
quality of products and services(Dale, 2015). It helps to accomplish the organisation's objective
in an effective manner. It helps to set the benchmarking of products and services. Which gives
huge sales of the Mark and Spencer. It is the management process which improves the quality of
product and services, processes and culture of the cited company. On the other side
Benchmarking, it is the tool of TQM which helps to identified standard of the company. It is the
positive term by which firms owns experience and brand image in the market. It is the tool of
reference for evaluating the performance level of quality management. Product and services are
the main element of the company through they earn maximum profit. Quality of the services is
very crucial for the customers. They purchase the goods and services after measure their quality
level. Furthermore, with the help of TQM M&S set the benchmarking. This increases the sales of
the product and profit revenue as well. Quality of management is based on many factors like,
employee performance, customer satisfaction level, operation functions, employee involvement,
objectives and goals etc. all these factors helps to improve the quality of management. Employee
involvement plays an important role to set the benchmarking. Regular participation of workers
helps M&S to improve their quality of services. On the other side it is possible when Employees
are happy and satisfied for the M&S environment. M&S needs to give some benefits and
motivation power to enhance the performance level of employees. Furthermore, main aim of
M&S is to give quality of products and services. Without having objective, company will never
set their benchmark for other competitors. High quality of Products and services quality is very
important to maintain the image in the market(Sallis, 2014). Benchmarking collects the data of
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all the other companies to compare its performance with others. It the process of benchmarking
to analyse the best plan for its product and services. There are many factors of Benchmarking
which affects the quality of product and services mentioned below.
External affects
 Appearance of the product: Quality of goods and services is the most important factor.
It increases the choice of products(Goetsch and Davis, 2014). M&S needs to focus on
their products. Organisation earns huge amount of profit just because of selling prime
products to the customers, so that to increases the product demand company needs to
adopt quality of commodity to attract the customers. This is the most essential factor
which affects product's demand in market. Low quality of commodity will not be
acceptable by the customers. This situation may decrease the demand of the product.
 Product Design and Labelling: Second essential factor which affects the quality of
product is product design. It means related to the manufacturing specification of products.
It includes some elements like Safety, life, Features of commodity and product design.
Products must be presentable to the customers. It helps to increase sales and to set the
benchmark. On the other side if goods design is not attracted and not according to the
customer choice, then it may lead to decrease the market attraction towards that particular
product. This factor affects the quality of product. Mark&Spencer needs to adopt
innovative ideas to design the products. Best product design helps M&S to maintain its
product image in the market. On the other side low product quality may affect the
demand of the commodities.
 Suitability for customers: Suitability is the factor which relates supply to the demand.
Organisation always try to measure the customer suitability and then sell product
accordingly. This factor may decreases the quality of product if product is not acceptable
by buyers(Oakland, 2014). M&S should sell product on the basis of customer needs and
wants. It helps to increase the quality of product. Benchmarking helps to identify the
customer suitability and then helps to make new corrective strategies.
 Reliability: Reliability is the element which affects quality of products. Customers wants
reliable products which are healthy and good for them. Otherwise, buyers are not
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interested to select this product. Due to less reliability in products customers will not
purchase, and demand will decrease. Durability: Another factor which affects the quality of Product is durability buyers select
the best product which is more durable than others. M&S needs to make more durable
products on the basis of customer's demands to attract customers. Less durable
commodities attract fewer buyers which affect the quality of products.
Internal affects
 High Quality of Material: This is the most essential internal factors which affects
product's quality. Benchmarking process assist to check the quality of material so that
customer doesn't face any problem. Quality is the element which helps to attract more
potential customers. M&S needs to adopt high quality of products which is not give any
harm to customer health(Benavides-Velasco, Quintana-García and Marchante-Lara,
2014). This happens may decrease the image in the market. Organisation always make
their products attractive and different from others. It helps to increase the quality of
product which is necessary to set the benchmark.
 Employee Involvement: Employee plays an important role in the organisation. He is the
person who contributes efforts to increase the sales of the product. On the other side if
employees are less motivated and has less interest of work. It may decrease the
performance level which affects the product quality. Furthermore, benchmarking gives
motivation level to increases the performance level of employees. M&S Needs to
improve the execution level of the worker by given bonus, good compensation, training
etc. it gives effective output which yield better quality of products. It assists to set the
competitive standard for other competitors which is an essential internal factor which
affects the product's quality directly(Gimenez-Espin, Jiménez-Jiménez and Martínez-
Costa, 2013).
 Technological Factors: It is the most essential factor which affects the quality of
product. M&S needs to use the best effective technologies' machinery which attract
customers. It helps to enhance the products image in market. Otherwise, not having
effective technologies it may lead to decrease the demand and sale revenue as well.
Overall Benchmarking helps company to maintain the quality of technologies used by the
company(Sadikoglu and Olcay, 2014).
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 Management: Group of team working on the product and services(Bon and Mustafa,
2013). If management has less amount of coordination employees will not concentrate on
their product plans. To set the standard target company needs to make coordination
among the team. It is an integrated approach to product quality. TQM connects with all
the department of management. To make good quality of products M&S needs to
improve their management skills.
Overall Benchmarking affects product positively. It helps to motivate
management to give effective output and give high profit. It helps to improve product design,
employee involvement etc(Wu, Lim and Yang, 2013.).
Benchmarking affects quality of Services
Benchmarking affects quality of services in terms of growth. Services are should be
comfortable for the customers Like, M&S provides online services to their customers. This
service helps buyers to get all information regarding all products. It gives flexibility and
reliability(Borji, Cheng, Jiang and Li, 2015). This increases the attraction of more new buyers
towards them. Overall, quality of services set the benchmark for the M&S company which helps
to compete in the market. Benchmark affects quality of services it increases the value, brand
image, goodwill of the cited firm. On the other side if organisation fails to reach the quality of
services this will reduce the sales and customers of the M&S. Mark and Spencer needs to adopt
best service strategies to grab customer attraction towards the company products(Bylinskii, et.al,
2015 ).
Positive affects
 It gives motivation to work in more effectively.
 It helps to increase the customer attraction.
 It gives new standard and level to work.
 It builds organisation image and gives more competitive market.
 Benchmarking Helps M&S to develop a Proper plans and strategies.
 It also helps to measure the actual performance out of desired performance.

Negative Impacts
 Benchmarking may give high work pressure for employees which creates miss
management in the organisation.
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 It creates less interest among employees towards the work.
Overall, Benchmarking affects quality of product and services are may be flexible or not.
Its main purpose is to develop new business plans through which M&S increases their profit
revenue. Criterion also lead to many changes in day to day work which harm to the employee
management team.
Factors That must be taken into action when implementing the process
Benchmarking is the tool of Total Quality Management. Benchmarking is the process
which creates new business plans to set the standard target. To implement the process of
touchstone M&S needs to identified some factors which is important to be consider while
implementing the plans.
 Proper Planning: while implementing the process M&S needs to make proper planning
of objectives and their related sources. Benchmarking process is very important to
accomplish the target of new business plans. M&S needs to identify the planning that
weather it is good or not to set the standard. Planning includes what to do and how to do,
So that this factor should be consider by the company to full fill the implementation
process.
 Proper Evaluation: while implementation of benchmarking process. M&S needs to
analyse the previous evaluation perfectly so that on the basis of this they make corrective
action plans. It gives more ideas and planning through which company improves their
quality of goods and services.
 Finance Resources: Finance is the important factor which is to be consider while
implementing a process. M&S needs to maintain enough amount of fund to full fill their
all requirements. Low availability of finance lead to decrease the performance level of
TQM. It is the responsibility of Finance manager to keep finance sources to full fill their
objectives.
 Human Resource: Human Resource management is the most important factor.
Employees of the M&S must be skilled and well knowledgeable to accomplish the plans,
Before implementing the process Mark and Spencer must check the availability of
training. It is the important factor to be consider because without having skilled
employees company could not full fill their objectives effectively.
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 Employee Coordination: In every Process Company needs good coordination between
the employees to complete the task in effective manner. It helps to maintain the quality of
employees and give more effective profit revenue. M&S needs to create more
coordination among employees by giving proper training and motivation.
These are the factors which is important to follow while implementing the process. These factors
helps to utilize all resources and give best output. Benchmarking process helps M&S to increase
the Total Quality Management(Rato and Reis, 2013). It gives challenges to the other
competitors. Total Quality Management is most important part which shows the actual position
in the market. On the other side Benchmarking is the tool of TQM which helps to increase the
quality of product, services and management. M&S company is a big retail store situated in
across the world. TQM is very necessary to maintain its quality of services. It helps to retain
existing customers and attract new buyers as well. M&S organisation current position is on high
level. Its product and services are very effective and attractive. It is the highest earning retail
store in the British. To maintain exist performance. It needs to modify their benchmarking plans
to enhance their quality of services.
Recommendation:
According to the study of Mark and Spencer TQM. It is showed that they need to work
on their employees coordination and try to maintain its brand positioning in the market by given
more new product and services. On the other side M&S needs to adopt latest updated
technologies. It helps to implement Benchmarking plans more effectively and give better results.
It need to adopt new product strategies. To maintain its product image in the market. On the
other side there are mentioned some precautions to prevent the risk of failure given below:
 Manage Cash flow: Mark and Spencer needs to manage their cash to cover the all
expenses in the organisation. Cash is the most important factor which involves heavy risk
in terms of unwanted expenses.
 Develop a strong business plan: to prevent the risk M&S needs to develop proper
strategies to accomplish the objectives. On the other side best development plan helps to
stable the total quality management. It increases the company image in front of the
customers and helps to set the standards for the competitors.
 Effective Operations Management: To protect business environment and reduce the risk.
It is very important for the M&S company to control the operations risk. Operation Risk
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includes day to activity and functions performed by the employees. It needs to be check
properly to protect the uncertain risk. It helps M&S to work in safe environment.
 Identifying potential problems: M&S also needs to solve other management problems
which is related to any issue otherwise in future they create many problems. Before put
up the plans company needs to identify and take corrective action plans, so that it helps to
focus on main objectives.
 Rules and regulation: it is very important for the M&S to aware of rules and regulations.
Basic knowledge of law can help the company in illegal acts.
 Protect trusted Reputation: M&S needs to maintain its brand value in the market by
giving standard of products to the customers. It helps to protect the future risk and attracts
more new customers.
These are the recommendation to maintain its position in the market. And helps to
protect from uncertain risk.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it concludes Total Quality Management nature and scope. It is
important to maintain the performance level in the organisation. Furthermore, it was concludes
that Benchmarking is the effective tool of TQM which helps M&S to protect from uncertain risk.
Overall M&S needs to adopt new technologies and strategic business plans by which they
improve their quality of product and services. Benchmarking Process helps company to set the
competitive standards for the other competitors. Adding to that above also it was concludes the
factors which affects implementing process of the M&S like, Proper planning, resources,
employee satisfaction etc. M&S company also make strategic plans to maintain its position in the
market. It helps to attract more new customers and increasing product demand.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Dale, B., 2015. Total quality management. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sallis, E., 2014. Total quality management in education. Routledge.
Goetsch, D. L. and Davis, S. B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Oakland, J. S., 2014. Total quality management and operational excellence: text with
cases. Routledge.
Benavides-Velasco, C. A., Quintana-García, C. and Marchante-Lara, M., 2014. Total
quality management, corporate social responsibility and performance in the hotel
industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 41. pp.77-87.
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.
Sadikoglu, E. and Olcay, H., 2014. The effects of total quality management practices on
performance and the reasons of and the barriers to TQM practices in Turkey. Advances in
Decision Sciences. 2014.
Bon, A. T. and Mustafa, E. M., 2013. Impact of total quality management on innovation in
service organizations: Literature review and new conceptual framework. Procedia
Engineering. 53. pp.516-529.
Wu, Y., Lim, J. and Yang, M. H., 2013. Online object tracking: A benchmark.
In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition (pp. 2411-
2418).
Borji, A., Cheng, M. M., Jiang, H. and Li, J., 2015. Salient object detection: A
benchmark. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. 24(12). pp.5706-5722.
Bylinskii, Z., Judd, T., Borji, A., Itti, L., Durand, F., Oliva, A. and Torralba, A., 2015. Mit
saliency benchmark.
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Rato, T. J. and Reis, M.S., 2013. Fault detection in the Tennessee Eastman benchmark
process using dynamic principal components analysis based on decorrelated residuals (DPCA-
DR). Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems. 125. pp.101-108.
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