Total Quality Management is the best so far to Tanzania Public sector Reform

Tanzania is flooded with evidence of the need for society transformation especially in public sector reform, scholars has been proposing on the form of management it has to adopt. Prof. Dennis Tachiki presents through videoconference to Japan International Cooperation Agency – JICA at Tanzania Global Development Learning Centre. NYASIGO KORNEL briefs on the presentation.

Tanzania must undergo transformation by structuring its management by reforming the prevailing management system. The view from Japan system of Total Quality management can be applied in Tanzania. It is believed that the system can lead to economic and social breakthroughs.
The more Tanzanians demand to improve towards good living standards, families need rebuilding because jobs are scarce. The cost of living is increasing and children do not have a level playing field for every intellectual, social and emotional development. We are flooded with evidence of the need for societal transformation.
Total quality management offers a pedagogical method to managers where participants teach each other through group problem-solving activities.
According to Prof. Dennis Tachiki of Tamagawa University in Japan, when presenting to Japan International Cooperation Agency - JICA, total quality management can help Tanzania in reforming its public sector by equipping its individuals with the understanding, skills and access to information, knowledge and training that enables them to perform effectively.
Prof. Tachiki is very proud of the steps his country has taken through adopting the synergy. He believes that it is high time to Tanzania to use it so as to match with modern economic markets.
The concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) was developed by an American, W. Edwards Deming, after World War II for improving the production quality of goods and services. The concept was not taken seriously by Americans until the Japanese, who adopted it in 1950 to resurrect their postwar business and industry, used it to dominate world markets by 1980.
Taking an example of Tanzania primary schools, just to explain the concept of QM, traditionally Tanzania school-education has been prone to individual and departmental isolation. However, according to Prof. Dennis Tachiki, this outdated practice no longer serves us public sector reforms.
In other words, teamwork and collaboration are essential. In a Tanzania classroom, teacher-student teams are the equivalent of industry's front-line workers. The product of their successful work together is the development of the student's capabilities, interests, and character.
In one sense, the student is the teacher's customer, as the recipient of educational services provided for the student's growth and improvement. Viewed in this way, the teacher and the school are suppliers of effective learning tools, environments, and systems to the student, who is the school's primary customer.
The school is responsible for providing for the long-term educational welfare of students by teaching them how to learn and communicate in high-quality ways, how to access quality in their own work and in that of others, and how to invest in their own lifelong and life-wide learning processes by maximizing opportunities for growth in every aspect of daily life.
In another sense, the student is also a worker, whose product is essentially his or her own continuous improvement and personal growth.
‘When I close the classroom door, those kids are mine!’ This notion is too narrow to survive in a world in which teamwork and collaboration result in high-quality benefits for the greatest number of people.
Total Quality Management purport to lead to enhanced levels of product quality or lower costs and thereby provide the ability to achieve and sustain a global competitive advantage.
To achieve these spoils, however, TQM directly and covertly alters the values, culture, and mind-sets within an organization. As a result, and parallel to these technological modifications, TQM establishes a carefully integrated program of social and psychological engineering which is critical to the ‘successful’ implementation of TQM and which has a significant impact on the behavior and consciousness of both managers and workers.

"The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people,” says Prof. Tachiki.
Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to.
“Processes, not people are the problem in many government bureaucracy and state owned enterprises,” says Prof Tachiki.
The very application of TQM to organization emphasizes the synergistic relationship between the "suppliers" and "customers". The concept of synergy suggests that performance and production is enhanced by pooling the talent and experience of individuals.
“Successful management begins with a vision, which reflects the shared purpose. The ability to articulate a clear, practical, transformational vision which answers the question, 'where are we headed?’” says Prof Tachiki.
Nyasigo Kornel is a Communication Officer of Health and Poverty Resource Centre and an experienced journalist

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