Strategy mishap in the TQM journey – a system dynamics approach

Application of Total Quality Management (TQM) approach has played an important role in the survival and growth of many industries. One of the major reasons for dismal performance of many Indian organizations can be attributed to the fact that they have not been able to put strategy in place to prioritize the various enablers and results involved in the quality management systems. TQM initiatives also fall due to lack of understanding of the complex interactions and the dynamics of these variables. To overcome this limitation System Dynamics (SD) has been used to model the combined effect of different TQM variables which will help the organizations to set their strategy right. The SD model has been experimented with data from Indian auto sector. Various policy experimentation has been conducted for this purpose to drive this point. The paper illustrates that organizations without effective strategic planning are in no position to improve their results, which is very detrimental to the survival and growth of such organizations.