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 of Total Quality Management. Who is AT&T Power Systems?
AT&T Power Systems provides a verity of power products for the data processing and telecommunications industries. Power System and its 4,200 employee's design, develop, manufacture, and market electronic power systems, components, and power supplies to an increasingly international marketplace.
In the past ten years AT&T as a whole has gone through a dramatic metamorphous. It was forced to change from a large telecommunications monopoly providing universal telephone service, to a competitive global corporation providing a full range of communication services and technologies. The "new" AT&T is a potpourri of smaller, highly focussed entities. Each entity has its own customers, competitors, and operational functions.
Power Systems is the pinnacle of the "new" AT&T. In less than five years Power Systems has become the prototype for successfully implementing the cultural and organizational revolution know as Total Quality Management. It has not only received internal recognition, but external achievement as well. In 1994 Power Systems was the first American company to win Japan's prestigious Deming Prize for Quality Management. In the same year AT&T's long distance division won America's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. AT&T's TQM philosophy made it the first corporation to win these two awards.
Why did Power Systems change to TQM?
Prior to 1990 Power Systems provided equipment for only its parent company AT&T. Power Systems was a lackluster division of AT&T that reported losses in numerous quarters. As the scope AT&T and business as a w...
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...earned this remarkable achievement; they know that the real winners are our customers." I think the reason that AT&T has been successful with its TQM is that this philosophy has become inbreed into the culture at AT&T. Allen comments are a testament to that. Andrew M. Guarriello's participation in AT&T's implementation has earned a spot in the Shingo Prize Academy. The Shingo Prize Academy consists of individuals who have distinguished themselves in the area of manufacturing excellence. Other members of the Academy include Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jerry J. Jasinowski.
Bibliography:
Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing. "Shingo Prize Manufacturing Academy".
[http://www.usu.edu/~shingo/academy.html]
AT&T. "Welcome to AT&T MICROELECTRONICS". [http://www.careermosaic.com/cm/att_micro/att_micro1.html]
Byrnes, and Adele Ambrose. "AT&T wins Baldrige Award and Deming Prize in quality coup "
[http://www.att.com/press/1094/941018.chb.html]
Gualt, and Betsy Harrod. "Power Systems is first U.S. manufacturer to win Deming Prize".
[http://www.att.com/press/1094/941018.meb.html]
Dean, Edwin. "Total Quality Management". [http://akao.larc.nasa.gov/dfc/tqm.html]
Robert Zimmerman, the senior vice president of business development, for American Cable Communications (ACC) was in the process of looking for a potential acquisition target for ACC. In December 2007, Zimmerman remember a presentation that was made recently by Rubinstein & Ross (R&R). R&R was a boutique investment bank that was well known for doing deals in the media and telecommunications area. During this presentation it was suggested that ACC buy out AirThread Connections (AirThread) which is a large regional cellular provider. The current industry of these companies were moving more toward bundled service offerings and by adding AirThread it would help ACC cover an area of service it does not currently offer. In order to determine if the acquisition should be done an analysis needs to be done.
This is one of AT&T’s strengths because they are able to target a wide range of segments. They have a variety of different products and services that can be tailored to each segment’s usage demand that sets them apart from their competitors. This is an opportunity for the company because they are providing lower costs to customers for their voice and data services by with the bandwidth. It gives the company growth opportunities due to the fact that they are covering both locations as well as mobile devices. The company has started to take measures to grab the opportunity by merging wireline customers with their 21-state serviced IP areas.
Malik, O. (2011, March 20). In AT&T & T-Mobile Merger, Everybody Loses. Retrieved from http://gigaom.com/2011/03/20/in-att-t-mobile-merger-everybody-loses/
AT&T’s roots stretches all the way back to 1875, when Alexander Graham Bell created the first telephone. The main reason AT&T was created was to exploit the creation of the telephone. AT&T became a parent company to the Bell system, which was a phone company monopoly. They created a long distance telephone network that went from New York to Chicago and then on to San Francisco. Then in 1984 AT&T split into eight different phone companies. They built out to Denver in 1899 and then they hit a rough patch, the signal wasn’t too strong. Luckily, AT&T created the first practical electrical amplifier in 1913. And this made transcontinental communication possible. Bell’s patent expired in 1894 and only Bell telephone could only legally operate in the U.S. The number of telephones grew as phone wires spread across the nation, there where about 3,317,000 phones. The only downside to this early story is that, only phones with the same phone company could contact each other, this was being fixed in 1913. In 1925 there was a new president, Walter Gifford, he sold International Western Electrical Company to the ITT for 33 million to make AT&T universal. In January 1, 1984 was changed and revitalized, it no longer was the bell system. It had a new global icon, as you see today. IN 1984 AT&T carried around 37.5 million calls a day. CEO, Robert Allen, announced that on Septemb...
Mix Intensity- AT&T is a leader in wireless products and services by offer voice PTT, voice –IP, video share, HSPDA.
In an industry with favorable conditions, a company with a solid history of investments and rates of return. Duke Energy has a bright economic outlook due to strategic investments internationally and market dominance in the rapidly growing southwest. Although a highly-regulated industry Duke has shown to maintain its value over the long term making it a high performing investment. The income potential is small when compared to other industries but with its document history of growth it is a wise
Sharplin, Arthur. (1989). Lincoln Electric Company Harvard Case Study. McNeese State University. Retrieved from http://my.uopeople.org/pluginfile.php/59756/mod_book/chapter/39460/Lincoln_Electric.pdf
This document identifies AT&T as one of the leader communications holding corporation in the United States and global. Operating worldwide with 307,550 employees, AT&T established its global headquarters in Dallas Texas, AT&T is known as the worldwide leading provider of IP-based communications services to businesses and the principal U.S. provider of wireless, high speed Internet access, local and long distance voice, directory publishing and advertising services for more than a century . AT&T continues to build on the heritage of its predecessor Bell by serving customers with a continuing assurance to the operation of pioneering products and services, consistent, high-quality service and excellent customer care.
AT&T had developed a reputation for providing high-quality long distance telephone services. It moved rapidly to exploit this reputation in the newly competitive long distance market by aggressively marketing its services against MCI, Sprint, and other carriers. Also, AT&T had traditional strengths in research and development with its Bell Labs subsidiary. To exploit these strengths in its new global competitive context, AT&T shifted Bell Labs' mission from basic research to applied research, and then leveraged those skills by forming numerous joint ventures, acquiring NCR, and other actions. Through this process, AT&T has been able to use some of its historically important capabilities to try to position itself as a major actor in the global telecommunications and computing industry.
In the mid 1980s, and into the 1990s, business leaders realized that a renewed focus on quality was required to continue to compete in an expanding global market. (NIST, 2010) Consequently, several strategic frameworks were developed for managing, and measuring organizational performance. Among them were the Malcomb Baldrige National Quality Award, which was created by and act of congress and signed into law by the President in 1987, and The Balanced Scorecard, which is a performance management tool that was born out of research conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Robert S. Kaplan, and David P. Norton published in 1996 (Kaplan, 1996). Initially, the renewed emphasis on quality management systems was a reaction to the LEAN approach to quality management implemented by many Japanese businesses to great success post World War II.
The controversial topic of whether or not AT&T should merge with Time Warner Cable is based on two perspectives. The first outlook onto the situation is based
Siemens is a German conglomerate that specialise in electronics and electrical engineering. They currently operate in four different sectors, these being Healthcare, Industry, energy and Infrastructure & Cities sector (Siemans a). They are represented in 190 countries (Siemens b), employ around 362,000 employees (Siemens c) and in 2013 achieved a revenue of €75,882 million and a net income of €4,409 million (Siemens d). This essay will focus on Siemen’s energy sector.
CPS Energy, the largest municipally owned energy provider in the nation, was basking in its present bond ratings (which were the highest among all the energy providers), contented workforce, generally satisfied customers and profitability. However, they noticed that there was a huge difference between their business operations and other companies who had large mobile workforces like their...
Quality is a word which has been used for a very long time, lots of books have been written about it, and many of the world's scientists have defined it in many different ways. In this research paper, I will emphasise the Quality Management System, why is it important? What is it used for? What is the importance of having a Quality Management System? Many people think implementing QMS costs a lot and all the benefit is a piece of paper which says that your company is certified in having QMS.
Even though Total Quality Management (TQM) has been replaced by other quality methodologies in many cases, organizations that have taken the long arduous journey to properly implement TQM benefited from it immensely [1]. While TQM may be perceived by many employees as just another passing fad that will soon fall by the wayside, the environmental conditions that exist within the organization will determine if TQM can be successfully implemented and take root. What is Total Quality Management (TQM)? TQM is a system of continuous improvement of work processes to enhance the organization’s ability to deliver high-quality products or services in a cost-effective manner [2].