DSC 2340: Operations Management
Individual Assignment
By
Lashen Dulanjaya (CPM-20482, MC-95146)
Department of Accounting
Total Quality Management (TQM) practice in Richard Peiris Exports
(RPE) PLC
A report submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements of the subject
Operations Management conducted by the
Department of Decision Sciences Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce
University of Sri Jayewardenepura
April 2021
i
Richard Peiris Exports PLC (RPE) pioneered the manufacture and export of Rubber mats for
numerous applications with highest quality standards also RPE manufacture a range of rubber
products including food grade jar sealing rings, crutch tips, rubber shoe soles and specialized
rubber products for the US, European and the Asia Pacific markets from its inception. RPE
rubber mats range mainly divided in six product categories. At present, RPE export 300 types
of rubber mats of various colors, hardness, thickness, sizes, uses and applications. Now, RPE
plc is in a continuous journey of improvement of Quality of product, process and service to
cater to the ever increasing and rapidly changing customer requirement.
Total quality management (TQM) is an integrated and comprehensive system of planning
and controlling all business functions so that products or services are produced which meet or
exceed customer expectations. TQM is not something that happen overnight. There are some
underlying philosophies that the company must integrate throughout every department of the
company and at every level of management. Irrespective of other resources used by the
company, the company should adopt the important principles of TQM as the foundation for
implementing TQM. In the context of TQM, quality means getting it right first time, and
improving continuously. Key element of TQM include preventing the cause of defects in the
first place rather than relying on inspecting to a predefined level of quality and aiming towards
an environment of zero defects at minimum cost.
Under the TQM philosophy, each and every component of Richard peiris plc is equally
important and responsible for the assurance of quality. It is a culture and an attitude to be
developed within an organization. According to RPE plc, their quality is their philosophy, the
secret behind their success story over three decades is their strong focus towards the quality in
every business activity. They mainly categorize their quality into three main categories namely,
Product quality, Process quality and Service Quality which consist all their business activities.
As far as characteristics of the TQM environment of RPE plc are concerned, first one is being
customer focused. In a TQM environment, quality is based on how customers are satisfied. It
doesn’t matter what organization can or prefer to do. What matters is what customer needs.
This is also called customer driven quality. According to RPE plc, “they are highly focused in
the quality of their service to their customers, from the order inquiry stage to order delivery
stage their teams is continuously communicating with their customers and ensure that they are
updated on the status of their order and its delivery. After the shipment made company’s
customer service team is continuously in touch with customers to ensure that they are
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comfortable in selling company’s product in the market. For any claims from the market,
customer service team attend to it in urgent basis and help the customer to resolve it in most
effective way”. Now it is clear that RPE plc are blessed with a TQM environment and customer
driven quality in terms of their products.
The second one is continuous improvements. Continuous improvement implies a practice
striving towards little improvements achieved every day. RPE plc are also dealing with
continuous improvements and those are often associated with incremental changes in the day
to day business suggested by employees themselves. As the management says, this is not a
radical change but a small change. They expect quantum leaps in performance and quality can
occur when cumulative improvements synergize, and the sum of all the small improvements
causing a profound net effect is greater than the sum of all the small improvements.
As far as quality standards that RPE PLC follows in order to keep pace with TQM practices
are concerned, quality standards are set by Health & Safety legislation and enforced by Trading
Standards Officers. This is especially important in areas such as shoe soles, industrial mats,
security mats and etc. Consequently, the company has obtained some important and necessary
standards in order to satisfy quality standards. Adhering to those is also within TQM practice
and it is conducive for the company to meet customer satisfaction in terms of better quality.
According to RPE PLC, their products are made from a blend of high quality natural rubber,
synthetic rubber and recycled rubber using state of the art technologies. They are maintaining
a strict quality standard from raw material receiving to shipment arrangement to the customer,
their raw materials are sourced from reputed reliable suppliers in the market and its goes
through a RM incoming inspection process to ensure that RPE plc gets the best quality raw
material. The company has obtained test certificates from laboratories in UK and Germany.
RPE plc is an ISO 9001:2015 certified company. In addition to that, they have numerous
internationally recognized quality certificates.
In order to maintain a well-established process quality this company also defines the quality of
process not only as the production process they define it as it is total quality management
process of all activities. They go through several techniques to enhance the process quality.
Online inspection is one such technique. In terms of production process online inspection
points have been established throughout the production line to identify the level of quality of
the products and its components that are being manufactured. The operators of machinery are
provided with guidelines and specifications of the level of quality required and further trained
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to understand, identify, appreciate and adhere to the quality standards of the company. The next
technique is defect classification: The system adopted for classifying defects allows
management to identify the gravity of the quality variance as well as to be able to trace back
the variance to a machine, process or batch of production.
We can identify RPE plc as a one company which derives higher consumer satisfaction with
TQM concept. Some of their customers are being with them from the inception and some are
over 15 to 20 years. The key factory for this long-term business relationship is their strong
focus toward quality in every aspect. That is the most important benefit they get from
implementing a TQM practice. Profitability can also be increased by the elimination of waste.
Since TQM aims at getting thing right first time, waste can be eliminated or reduced. Further,
non-value adding activities can be eliminated when TQM practices are being adopted. So, in
RPE plc non-value adding activities hardly appear. Further, RPE plc has won some quality
awards thanks to TQM practices. RPE plc has a greater competitive advantage over its rivals
in terms of quality. Since they are following TQM practices they are able to provide quality
products suitable for customer’s quality perception.
In the current economic climate, the company is trying to eliminate unnecessary costs as much
as possible. But, sometimes TQM can be too expensive to implement and run. Training
employees is expensive and any changes to quality procedures mean additional costs. All
quality programs must be managed, which is another costly requirement. Remuneration for the
individuals who are directly dedicated to the TQM effort full time rather than production as
well as remuneration of other experts and executives who are involved in TQM effort full
implementation and providing data are another costs of implementing a TQM practice.
It can be concluded that TQM is a management approach of an organization like RPE plc
focused on quality, based on the participation of all its members. Moreover, some good aspects
of TQM practices could be seen in the business of RPE plc whereas some aspects to improve
could be seen in the presence of the company as well. So correspondingly, it would be better
for the company to introduce some improvements and changes to the TQM practice.
In order to achieve successful results, some other aspects related to the TQM practice such as
lean manufacturing could be introduced to the business practice and to eliminate waste, reduce
cost and increase the quality. Furthermore, if the company can comply with following key
elements more and more it will be conducive for the company to get a competitive edge and
meet customer satisfaction over its rivals. Those are, recognition of the all-pervasive nature of
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the customer-supplier relationship including internal customers, obsessive attempts by all
departments to get things right first time, emphasis on the cost of poor quality because good
quality generates savings and monitoring customer reactions.
References
1. PLC, R. P. (2019/20). ANNUAL REPORT.
2. Richard
Peiris
PLC.
(2021).
Retrieved
from
https://www.arpicorubber.com/index.php#atAGlance
3. RICHARD
PEIRIS
EXPORTS
PLC.
https://www.arpicorubber.com/index.php#atAGlance
Thank you!
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(2021).
Retrieved
from