Total Quality Management Report: The Sultan Center Analysis

This report provides an overview of Total Quality Management (TQM) and its application within The Sultan Center (TSC) in Kuwait. It begins with an introduction to TQM, emphasizing its focus on customer feedback for continuous improvement. The report then provides a detailed overview of TSC, its operations, and the diverse range of products and services it offers, including groceries, catering, and telecommunications. An analysis of TSC's financial performance and growth, particularly in retail operations across multiple countries, is presented. The report delves into the cost of quality, highlighting how investments in employee training and customer feedback, while initially impacting profitability, contribute to long-term gains. Key elements of TQM, such as customer focus and employee involvement, are discussed, along with the tools used, including cause-and-effect diagrams, check sheets, control charts, histograms, scatter diagrams, and stratification. The conclusion summarizes the importance of TQM principles and the impact of quality services at The Sultan Center. The report uses information from the company's financial reports and academic journals.

Total Quality Management

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Overview of company:.................................................................................................................3
Analysis of company and products:.............................................................................................3
Cost of Quality: ...........................................................................................................................4
TQM and its tools:.......................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6
2

INTRODUCTION
Total Quality Management (TQM) is the comprehensive approach which management of
the uses for improving quality of goods and services by focusing on continuous feedback from
their customers (Sallis, 2014).
Overview of company:
Present report is based on The Sultan Center (TSC) situated in Kuwait. Jamil Sultan is the
key person and the founder who established TSC in the year 1976. It is a shareholding company
which trade in retail sector. Basically, it deals in diversified range of products and services.
Groceries, catering, consumer goods, security, telecommunication and investments are different
variety of products. TSC is the first self service store of Kuwait which provided the organization
to expand their stores and products varieties (The Sultan Center, 2015).
Analysis of company and products:
TSC aims at 'one stop shop' for their buyer and customers. It is the giant retail company
which consists of wholesale centers, discount stores, mega markets, service stores, expressed
stores and convenience stores. In all these stores, TSC intends to serve their customers with full
efficiency. The Sultan Center recorded their growth of average rate of revenue by 4% whereas an
exceptional growth rate of 10% in retail operations at stores in Oman, Bahrain and Jordan has
been recorded. TSC has also shown an increment of 7% in telecommunication and services
divisions. TSC at present is having 65 stores, 22 restaurants, 7 industries in 5 different countries.
Company is approximately employing 10 thousand people and serving around 5 million
consumers through their products and services. TSC is spreading their hands all around and
planning to open 13 more shopping centers in Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan and Bahrain in the
coming year. Telecommunication and services divisions help TSC in strengthening their
shareholding in the market. At the end of the 2014, company's net profit was recorded at 10,
90,983 KD (Kuwait Dinar) whereas in 2013 it was only 1, 41,701 KD (Sultan Center Food
Products Company -K.S.C. (Public), 2014).
TSC provides quality services in each sector of their dealings. Furthermore, , company
organizes training sessions for their employees and staff to ensure quality services (Conti, 2012).
The organization takes feedback from their customers for improvement purposes. Security &
Technical Service Group is a subset of TSC which provides efficient quality of services and
3

products to their employees as well as to the buyers. It renders quality, 24/7 over their products
which includes security personnel, valet parking, reliable cleaning and efficient security system.
Company uses updated technology for the diversified sectors.
Cost of Quality:
TSC's continuous success is affected by their commitments of serving to goods and
services according to the expectations of customer and also delivering best products. Company is
providing secure services for their employees and customers. In addition, for providing advance
services, company makes designs, install them, supply those designs and maintain their quality
services over products. Company incurs cost to manage all the training sessions for employees
(Sadikoglu and Zehir, 2010). In initial time period, the incurred cost has negative impact over the
profitability of the company. But the same cost incurred for maintaining and improving quality
will increase profitability in the future. These initiatives will attract more customers which will
increase their sales turnover and overall profit ratio. For example, company creates survey and
collects feedback about their products from customers. The company will have to bear large
amount of cost.
TQM and its tools:
TQM is a management technique which makes company to focus on improving quality of
the product served to the customer. Some of the primary elements of TQM are: Customer focused: TSC creates an image in the minds of the customers by providing
them with their best quality of the products and services. Customer only determines the
worth of the quality programs organized by the company. Organization’s initiative for
quality improvement techniques does affect the consumer behavior. (Vanichchinchai and
Igel, 2011).
 Total Employees Involvement: TSC provides a proper environment to their employees at
workplace. It will lead Employees to work efficiently to meet desired goal of serving
quality products to the customers. High performance system will improve efforts for
regular business operations (Gutiérrez, Torres and Molina, 2010).
Process-centered: This element of TQM is the fundamental part which involves process
working. Quality can be improved over each step of the process. TSC involves a process
of transferring inputs into outputs and finally delivering to final buyer. Last step includes
4

monitoring or feedback which can help in initiating the quality by improving the
loopholes. There are several tools which are used in total quality management. Some of
these are discussed here:
 Cause and effect diagram: This tool will help TSC to identify its problem causing areas.
It will help in determining ideas and will help them in for solving problems. TSC can
meet success by evolving the areas where the company is lacking.
 Check sheet: It is a structure form of sheet which can be used by TSC for collecting and
analyzing data. This generated information can assist the company to improve their
strategies and will help to manage quality aspects.
 Control chart: It a sort of graph which is used to study the effects of changes caused
over time (Jun and Cai, 2010). TSC can use control chart to evaluate the effect of quality
changes caused over customers for particular time period.
 Histogram: The graph which is used to show the frequency distribution or to show the
values for different of set of data (Sallis, 2014). TSC can make use of it by plotting the
feedback over graph which are received by the customers over the quality served.
 Scatter Diagram: This diagram shows the relationship between two or more items in
pairs of quantified data. TSC can use this tool to see the relationship between the quality
served and profitability of the company. Stratification: It is also known as the flow chart or run chart. It gives the direction of
flow with the help of arrows and line (Conti, 2012). TSC can use stratification to make
the process and can also use the same to make their employees understand the goal.
CONCLUSION
The aforementioned report gives a brief overview of The Sultan Center, Kuwait. It
contains information about use of Total Quality Management in the company and also gives
emphasis on the quality services. In addition, report concludes the important element used in
Total Quality Management.
5

REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Conti, T., 2012. Building total quality: a guide for management. Springer Science & Business
Media.
Gutiérrez, L.J.G., Torres, I.T. and Molina, V.B., 2010. Quality management initiatives in
Europe: An empirical analysis according to their structural elements. Total Quality
Management. 21(6). pp.577-601.
Jun, M. and Cai, S., 2010. Examining the relationships between internal service quality and its
dimensions, and internal customer satisfaction. Total Quality Management. 21(2).
pp.205-223.
Sadikoglu, E. and Zehir, C., 2010. Investigating the effects of innovation and employee
performance on the relationship between total quality management practices and firm
performance: An empirical study of Turkish firms. International Journal of Production
Economics. 127(1). pp.13-26.
Sallis, E., 2014. Total quality management in education. Routledge.
Sharma, U., Lawrence, S. and Lowe, A., 2010. Institutional contradiction and management
control innovation: A field study of total quality management practices in a privatized
telecommunication company. Management Accounting Research. 21(4). pp.251-264.
Vanichchinchai, A. and Igel, B., 2011. The impact of total quality management on supply chain
management and firm's supply performance. International Journal of Production
Research. 49(11). pp.3405-3424.
Online
Sultan Center Food Products Company -K.S.C. (Public). 2014. [pdf]. Available through:
<http://www.sultan-center.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Q1-2015-Financial-Report-
English.pdf>. [Accessed on 26th March 2016].
6