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ATTs use of Total Quality Management Essay

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ATTs use of Total Quality Management The following is an attempt to analyze AT&T's use of Total Quality Management throughout its organization. Since AT&T is an elaborately enormous corporation I will focus my study to AT&T Power Systems/Lucent Technologies. This division of AT&T has been the industry standard for excellence since TQM was first introduced to the company. AT&T Power Systems has become one the world's most dynamic companies because of its use of TQM. I will provide a brief description of who AT&T Power Systems is, a description of the events that lead up to its use of TQM, AT&T's TQM philosophy, and how this philosophy was implemented. Finally I will discuss the benefits AT&T Power Systems realized through their use …show more content…

A.M. (Andy) Guarriello, Vice President & COO of Power Systems, was given the job of implementing TQM. Guarriello along with Power Systems management team launched the "Dallas Vision" project, an initiative involving physical, organizational, and philosophical changes that soon led to the adoption of Total Quality Management as the management system for the future. Power Systems consolidated several of its locations into several small internal business units. These units would become to foundation that Power Systems operated on. Each units is given the resources to develop, engineer, manufacture, and its products. Functions such as human resources, finance, marketing, and sales are provided by smaller organizations developed to support the internal units. Power Systems Dallas unit was completely redesigned. This 900,000 square foot facility was rearranged into what AT&T calls "focused factories. Each "focused factory" has the capability to accept incoming material, manufacture, and ship finished products. This layout was designed much within the guidelines of the Japanese JIT system. Power Systems took the Japanese approach to TQM and modified to fit the AT&T culture. The TQM criteria developed within Power Systems were selected to ensure the company's ongoing focus on high standards for customer orientation, process excellence,

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