Final Paper use a Fortune 500 Company as the main organization to critically analyze and provide suggested improvements steps/actions based on what you have learned in this course to help the company achieve performance excellence.

Final Paper use a Fortune 500 Company as the main organization to critically analyze and provide suggested improvements steps/actions based on what you have learned in this course to help the company achieve performance excellence. Refer to the Healthcare’s Horizon article found through:
Six Sigma (Links to an external site.)
Please create a critical analysis through answering the following:

The Total Quality Management methodologies or practices that the organization uses or plans to use to align performance excellence with its business objectives,
Knowledge of Total Quality Management marketing that focuses on meeting customers’ needs and practices to help build a customer-focused culture.
Evaluate techniques to enhance design of work processes, process control, and process improvement,
Examine tools and techniques that support Six Sigma philosophy, quality in product design, process design, and/or statistical process control (SPC) for monitoring either the company’s service processes. Illustrate by using at least two relevant charts or figures in describing the tools and techniques.
Writing the Final Paper
The Final Paper:
Submit the assignment as an MS Word document.
Must be 2,400 – 3,500 words (9-13 pages double spaced) (excluding title page and references page) in length, double-spaced and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Eastern Florida State Writing Center. Contextual (Level One) headings must be used to organize your paper and your thoughts. Must include a title page with the following:
Title of paper
Student’s name
Course name and number
Instructor’s name
Date submitted
Must address the topic of the paper with critical thought.
Must utilize at least four scholarly and/or peer-reviewed source from the Eastern Florida State Library in addition to the textbook.
Must document all sources in APA style, as outlined in the Eastern Florida State Writing Center.
Must include a separate reference page, formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Eastern Florida State Writing Center.

ANSWER

Quality Management Methodology for Walmart

Performance excellence is an aspect that every organization wishes to achieve. Any organization that seeks to realize this initiative must adhere to providing better value to customers as well as stakeholders. Being customer-centered and ensuring the provision of excellence is important as it differentiates between the brand and the wellbeing of different organizations. Many business leaders, however, have no idea how performance excellence is achieved. There could be no single avenue through which organizational excellence can be realized. Companies must resort to multi-channel approaches to improving and optimizing business processes to realize performance excellence. Based on a fortune 500 company, this paper will critically evaluate how the company ought to do to achieve performance excellence. The paper will specifically evaluate the quality management practices used by the company, its quality management marketing directed towards meeting the needs of customers and the tools and techniques that support the Six Sigma philosophy of the company.

The Total Quality Management methodologies or practices that the organization uses

Walmart is one of the respected companies under the Fortune 500 companies. The American multinational company operates a chain of hypermarkets as well as grocery stores departmental stores for discounts. It started operations in 1962 with its head office being in Bentonville Arkansas. The company’s performance excellence initiatives have made it be respected with a clear-cutting edge among its competitors. The management model being used by the company ensures that it realizes continued growth at all times.

The company’s operations management is based on a variety of approaches that specifically streamlines its supply chain and the inventory and the sales performance. The first approach regards the corporate culture of the company. According to management, this is the greatest contributing factor as to why the company is admired in the world. When the company was established, employees and other stakeholders were subjected to a belief system that still exists to date. The existence of the company and its business operations have been based on four key principles of ensuring quality service to the customer, respect for the individual, ensuring that they strive for excellence at all times and lastly Acting with integrity. All these important tenets of the organization can be traced back to when the organization was established. In terms of service delivery, the company has a lot of value for its customers and as such, they are treated as a priority at all times.

The organization has also come up with strategies of appreciating its employees. It recognizes the contribution that each employee makes to the success and wellbeing of the organization. Employees enjoy autonomy which makes them innovative as they are free to come up with their suggestions on how to make the organization better. The culture of the company also dictates how leadership responds to challenges that the organization may face. Furthermore, the corporate culture has had a great influence on the resilience developed in human resource management practices. The company recruits and retains its skilled employees and as such makes it more vibrant at all times. Human resource management ensures proper performance appraisal programs are developed and implemented to sustain the momentum with which employees are to deliver their mandate.

Other than the organizational culture, the organizational structure also plays a great role in its performance excellence. The structure devised by Walmart is ideal for its kind of business as the structure determines the business activities to be undertaken. As of now, the business operations are majorly in the retail industry including operations in the online marketing platform. The cultural aspects help the company adapt to any challenges that they have to contend with within the international market. The fact that Walmart has continued to expand into international markets shows that it embraces research and development initiatives that are the backbone of any expansion strategy of a company. Furthermore, the company has been ready to embrace the changes in technology which has made it have a competitive edge in the market.

The organizational structure employed by the company is a hierarchical functional organizational structure that is based mainly on grading and function-based. The organization prides in using the vertical form of communication, command, and authority. For instance, from the CEO, every employee report directly to a superior. The directives that come from the leadership are received by the middle management team down the rank until the intended audience. As for the function-based feature of the company, groups of employees are mandated to accomplish certain functions (Porter & Ramirez-Vallejo, 2017). As such, they are expected to work as a team until they deliver the mandate of the company. As such, there are different departments through which the top management seeks to implement the goals of the company. Some of the departments are human resources, information technology, department of sales and marketing among others. These departments are expected to have their own goals, targets, and timelines all of which are geared towards the main goal of the organization.

Another quality management methodology that makes Walmart succeed in an industry that is experiencing challenges is its initiative of embracing diversity across its supply chain. The company employs 1% of Americans and 2.2 million people in the whole world. This makes it the main retailer in the world in terms of employee numbers. In 2005, the company was named as the diversity Inc. It provides diversity training to all levels of management as well as hourly associates. As a diverse employer, the company has both Hispanic-Americans with more than 150,000 Hispanic associates (Nguyen, 2017). It is also a leading employer of Americans of African descent. Furthermore, the company embraces the employment of women as well as people with physical challenges. Such initiatives have made Walmart be a respected company with easy acceptability across different cultures around the world. To show how committed the company is in embracing diversity, it established an office of diversity in 2003 with a chief diversity officer as its head. Other than the Diversity Inc. recognition that was awarded to the company for its diversity, it has also received other accolades specifically for how it embraces diversity.

Knowledge of Total Quality Management marketing that focuses on meeting customers’ needs There are many marketing initiatives that Walmart has always sought to use to satisfy the needs of its customers. Researchers have explained that the success of Walmart lies in its marketing mix. First and foremost, the price of a product determines how much of the product will be off the market within a specific time. The price, however, must take into consideration proper market segmentation strategies. In terms of pricing, Walmart has products that are friendly priced as compared to other players in the market. Furthermore, they maximize big volume sales so as not to overprice of its products. The company…