AT & T Total Quality Management (TQM).
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's standard for excellence since TQM was first introduced to the company. AT&T Power Systems has become one of the world's most dynamic companies because of its use of TQM. The researcher will provide a brief description of which AT&T Power Systems, and the description of the events that lead up to its use of TQM, AT&T's TQM philosophy, and how this philosophy was implemented. .
Finally there will be discussion on the benefits of AT&T Power Systems realized through their use of Total Quality Management. AT&T Power Systems provides a variety of power products for the data processing and telecommunication industries. Power Systems 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 focused 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 known the 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.