What is: Total Quality Management

Quality Leap - An Introduction to TQM


Total Quality Management Training Videos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Quality_Management

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. TQM has been widely used in manufacturing, education, government, and service industries, as well as NASA space and science programs.

Total Quality provides an umbrella under which everyone in the organization can strive and create customer satisfaction at continually lower real costs.

Definition
TQM is composed of three paradigms:

Total: Involving the entire organization, supply chain, and/or product lifecyle
Quality: With its usual Definitions, with all its complexities (External Definition)
Management: The system of managing with steps like Plan, Organize, Control, Lead, Staff, provisioning and suchlike.

As defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO):
"TQM is a management approach for an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organization and to society."[1]

One major aim is to reduce variation from every process so that greater consistency of effort is obtained. (Royse, D., Thyer, B., Padgett D., & Logan T., 2006)

In Japan, TQM comprises four process steps, namely:
Kaizen – Focuses on "Continuous Process Improvement", to make processes visible, repeatable and measurable.
Atarimae Hinshitsu – The idea that "things will work as they are supposed to" (for example, a pen will write).
Kansei – Examining the way the user applies the product leads to improvement in the product itself.
Miryokuteki Hinshitsu – The idea that "things should have an aesthetic quality" (for example, a pen will write in a way that is pleasing to the writer).

TQM requires that the company maintain this quality standard in all aspects of its business. This requires ensuring that things are done right the first time and that defects and waste are eliminated from operations.

A Comprehensive Definition
TQM Total Quality Management is the management of total quality. We know that management consists of planning, organizing, directing, control, and assurance. Then, one has to define "total quality". Total quality is called total because it consists of 3 qualities : Quality of return to satisfy the needs of the shareholders, Quality of products and services to satisfy some specific needs of the consumer (end user) and Quality of life - at work and outside work - to satisfy the needs of the people in the organization. This is achieved with the help of upstream and downstream partners of the enterprise. To this, we have to add the corporate citizenship, i.e. the social, technological, economical, political, and ecological (STEPE) responsibility of the enterprise concerning its internal (its people) and external (upstream and downstream) partners, and community. Therefore, Total quality management goes well beyond satisfying the customer, or merely offering quality products (goods and/or services). Note that we use the term consumer or end customer. The reason is that in a Supply Chain Management approach, we don't have to satisfy our customers' needs but the needs of our customers' customers' all the way to the end customer, the consumer of a product and/or service. By applying this definition an enterprise achieves Business Excellence, as suggested by the Malcolm Baldrige (American) and the EFQM (European) Performance Excellence Models. To do that, one has to go well beyond ISO 9000 Standards series as suggested by these standards (ISO 9001, then ISO 9004, then Total Quality).

Origins
"Total Quality Control" was the key concept of Armand Feigenbaum's 1951 book, Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration, a book that was subsequently released in 1961 under the title, Total Quality Control (ISBN 0-07-020353-9).W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Philip B. Crosby, and Kaoru Ishikawa also contributed to the body of knowledge now known as TQM.

The American Society for Quality says that the term Total Quality Management was used by the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command "to describe its Japanese-style management approach to quality improvement."[1] This is consistent with the story that the United States Navy Personnel Research and Development Center began researching the use of statistical process control (SPC); the work of Juran, Crosby, and Ishikawa; and the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming to make performance improvements in 1984. This approach was first tested at the North Island Naval Aviation Depot.

In his paper, "The Making of TQM: History and Margins of the Hi(gh)-Story" from 1994, Xu claims that "Total Quality Control" is translated incorrectly from Japanese since there is no difference between the words "control" and "management" in Japanese. William Golimski refers to Koji Kobayashi, former CEO of NEC, being the first to use TQM, which he did during a speech when he got the Deming Prize in 1974.

TQM has nothing to do with Feigenbaum's Total Quality Control or TQC. Total Quality Control means the total control of quality and not the control of total quality. At one point, the Japanese reluctantly used the acronym TQC only because their CWQC (Company-wide Quality Control i.e. Management) was too long and sounded somewhat awkward... CWQC is the ancestor of TQM..

Personal Notes:

TQM is doing the right things right the first time and everytime.
Effectiveness is doing the right things
Efficiency is doing things right.

It is more important to be effective than efficient. Doing the wrong things right is disastrous.