A method of management that creates a culture whereby people come to work everyday in the spirit of continuous improvement may seem far-fetched. In fact, it exists in the form of total quality management and has been adopted by a number of Irish companies.

Total quality management, as defined by Mr Patrick O'Neill, chief executive of the Irish Centre for Business Excellence is "the creation of a culture in the organisation that focuses on increasing the value to the customers of the business, through a systematic approach to continuously improving the processes of the organisation".

Founded in 1997, the centre for excellence is a network of 40 leading companies which sees value learning from each other's best practices. It evolved from the National Centre for Quality Management, which has the teachings of total quality management as its core approach.

The centre for excellence, however, is more concerned with learning around total quality management. It aims to inspire the practice of total quality management and the pursuit of business excellence in all sectors of Irish society.

Many leading multinationals and leading prominent Irish companies, Mr O'Neill believes, would have some sort of programme based on these principles in place, whether they called it total quality management or not. They practise total quality management by focusing on the external customer, creating an internal culture of continuous improvement and educating people on total-quality management tools like problem solving, he says.

"Organisations which practise total quality management successfully don't just go out and say `we'll get you all to come to work with an attitude of improving your work'. That is supported by education and training and what are called total-quality-management tools and methodologies."

Companies which have implemented total-quality-management quite well have, according to Mr O'Neill, "generated exceptionally good results for their customers through continuously improving their products or services, high levels of customer satisfaction, particularly high levels of customer loyalty, and customers that are willing to refer them".

As a CEO once said to Mr O'Neill: "I know I have a total quality-management culture when the majority of my employees come to work every day with a kind of attitude of `what more can I do?' "

The centre for excellence adapted the European business excellence model from the European Foundation for Quality Management. "It is a nine-dimensional way that any organisation can assess its progress or journey to long-term achievement of business excellence," explains Mr O'Neill. These are leadership, people, policy and strategy, partnerships and resources, processes, people results, customer results, society results and key operational results. The European model is based on the premise that "excellent results with respect to performance, customers, people and society are achieved through leadership, people, policy and strategy, partnerships and resources, and processes".

Although it is still at the core of excellent organisations, total quality management has moved on. "The broader business excellence framework is the strategic context that was missing with early experiences with total quality management," says Mr O'Neill.

Business excellence used by the Irish excellence centre to help companies learn from each other, attempts to ensure that future total-quality-management strategies have a strategic reference point. Mr O'Neill insists total quality management needs to have a strategic framework. It also needs to be externally focused on creating value for the customer. The missing dimension that would distinguish successful companies from companies which fail in the total-quality-management area is that of leadership. The top management needs to understand and demonstrate the practice of the tools, he says.

The company with one of the most developed sets of total-quality-management tools and problem-solving methodologies in Ireland, Mr O'Neill believes, is Analog Devices, a semiconductor multinational in Limerick.

Other companies practising total quality management and business excellence include IBM, Hasbro, Avaya, ICS - the mortgage division of Bank of Ireland - Royal & SunAlliance, Bord na Mona Fuels and Shannon Development.

Analog is a founder member of the Irish Centre for Business Excellence decided to adopt the European business excellence model as a framework. Although it was in the early 1990s that Analog formally went about something called total quality management, it always had quality systems in place, says quality manager Mr Ger Buckley.

Analog in Limerick no longer uses the term total quality management, but opts instead for total-quality-management/ business excellence.

According to Mr Buckley: "At the beginning of any business cycle you look at what your historical results are, you look at the things you think competition is doing to you, and what your environment is. Out of all your analysis you come up and say what are the priority things we need to do?"

These are called "Hoshins" which comes from Japanese and means a course, a policy, a plan, or an aim. Everyone at the plant would know these goals and everyone has an individual booklet with the information.

Analog's four Hoshins for the current business cycle are:

Making sure the company has the right capacity and balancing that capacity need;

Organisational development;

Making sure the company has the right technologies;

Looking at the key processes within the business and making sure they are structured properly.

There is a difference between the US model and the one used in Ireland. Here it's more about networking, whereas in the States it is more about tool development. The US is particularly strong on "educating industry leaders, whereas ours is more about getting the people together to share what they had and learn from one another," says Mr Buckley. The Irish focus is on what needs to get done, and the tools are secondary. However, the end results are the same.

In the US, students are taught the fundamental tools of total quality management and Mr O'Neill hopes to bring total-quality-management teaching to secondary schools in Ireland.

"Nobody should leave secondary school without having an understanding of how to do systematic problem-solving."