Introduction To Total Quality Management (TQM)
Introduction To Total Quality Management (TQM)
Introduction To Total Quality Management (TQM)
TQM is defined as both a philosophy and a set of guiding principles that represent the
foundation of a continuously improving organization. It is the application of quantitative
methods and human resources to improve all the processes within an organizatio n and
exceed customer needs now and in the future. It integrate fundamental management
technique existing improvement efforts and technique tools under a disciplined approach.
TQM refers to a quest for quality that involves everybody in the organization. The key
aspect of TQM are given below
1. A never-ending push to improve continuous improvement (Kaizen)
2. Customer satisfaction: meeting or exceeding the customer’s expectations.
Basic Approach:
2. Focus on customer: - Today’s business starts and ends with the customer and
customers are treated as God of the business. The whole idea of TQM dwells
around the customer and their satisfaction. An excellent place to start is by
satisfying internal customers. The famous quote ‘The next process is your
customer’ has made a tremendous impact on the manufactured products. The
external customer can be satisfied only if the requirements are clearly understood
and the right products/services is delivered.
Deming was most widely noted for widely noted for teaching the importance of
management responsibility for the quality system and for having company wide
participation. He emphasized the need for a total quality system to build quality into the
products rather than inspecting the products for quality.
Juran argued that poor quality is due to poor management, and the instead that good
product quality requires a company wide approach and management involvement in
building quality into the products. Juarn’s quality program is characterized as Quality
Trilogy made up of quality planning, quality monitoring, and control.
In 1946, the American Society of Quality Control was formed. At present, the society is
called as American Society for Quality (ASQ). In 1950, W. Edwards Deming, a student
of Shewart educated the Japanese engineers. In 1054, Joseph M. Juarn educated the
Japanese companies about the management’s responsibility to achieve quality.
In 1960, Quality Circle concept was evolved and Japanese workers started practicing it.
by the late 1970s, US companies started thinking about TQM. As a part of implementing
TQM many US managers were sent to Japan to learn hot implement TQM. In early
1990s, Statistical Process Control was evolved and major automotive industries
emphasized the use of these techniques as a compulsory requirement for their suppliers.
Approximately, at the same time Genichi Taguchi popularized the design of experiments
for optimizing the process parameters and for designing robust products.
In the middle of 1990s, ISO 9000 standards were popularized and accepted worldwide as
a means to achieve quality.