Total quality management

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Total quality management (TQM) is an organization-wide effort to "install and make a permanent climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on-demand products and services that customers will find of particular value." Total emphasizes that departments in addition to production (for example sales and marketing, accounting and finance, engineering and design) are obligated to improve their operations; management emphasizes that executives are obligated to actively manage quality through funding, training, staffing, and goal setting. While there is no widely agreed-upon approach, TQM efforts typically draw heavily on the previously developed tools and techniques of quality control. TQM received widespread attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s before being overshadowed by ISO 9000, Lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the developed countries of North America and Western Europe suffered economically in the face of stiff competition from Japan's ability to produce high-quality goods at competitive cost. For the first time since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the United Kingdom became a net importer of finished goods. The United States undertook its own soul-searching, expressed most pointedly in the television broadcast of If Japan Can... Why Can't We?. Firms began reexamining the techniques of quality control invented over the past 50 years and how those techniques had been so successfully employed by the Japanese. It was in the midst of this economic turmoil that TQM took root.

The exact origin of the term "total quality management" is uncertain. It is almost certainly inspired by Armand V. Feigenbaum's multi-edition book Total Quality Control (

OCLC 299383303) and Kaoru Ishikawa's What Is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way (OCLC 11467749). It may have been first coined in the United Kingdom by the Department of Trade and Industry during its 1983 "National Quality Campaign". Or it may have been first coined in the United States by the Naval Air Systems Command to describe its quality-improvement efforts in 1985.

In the spring of 1984, an arm of the United States Navy asked some of its civilian researchers to assess statistical process control and the work of several prominent quality consultants and to make recommendations as to how to apply their approaches to improve the Navy's operational effectiveness. The recommendation was to adopt the teachings of W. Edwards Deming. The Navy branded the effort "Total Quality Management" in 1985.

From the Navy, TQM spread throughout the US Federal Government, resulting in the following:

• The creation of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in August 1987
• The creation of the Federal Quality Institute in June 1988
• The adoption of TQM by many elements of government and the armed forces, including the United States Department of Defense, United States Army, and United States Coast Guard

The US Environmental Protection Agency's Underground Storage Tanks program, which was established in 1985, also employed Total Quality Management to develop its management style. The private sector followed suit, flocking to TQM principles not only as a means to recapture market share from the Japanese, but also to remain competitive when bidding for contracts from the Federal Government since "total quality" requires involving suppliers, not just employees, in process improvement efforts.

There is no widespread agreement as to what TQM is and what actions it requires of organizations, however a review of the original United States Navy effort gives a rough understanding of what is involved in TQM.

The key concepts in the TQM effort undertaken by the Navy in the 1980s include:

• "Quality is defined by customers' requirements."
• "Top management has direct responsibility for quality improvement."
• "Increased quality comes from systematic analysis and improvement of work processes."
• "Quality improvement is a continuous effort and conducted throughout the organization."

The Navy used the following tools and techniques:

• The PDCA cycle to drive issues to resolution
• Ad hoc cross-functional teams (similar to quality circles) responsible for addressing immediate process issues
• Standing cross-functional teams responsible for the improvement of processes over the long term
• Active management participation through steering committees
• Use of the Seven Basic Tools of Quality to analyze quality-related issues

While there is no generally accepted definition of TQM, several notable organizations have attempted to define it. These include:

In the United States, the Baldrige Award, created by Public Law 100–107, annually recognizes American businesses, education institutions, health care organizations, and government or nonprofit organizations that are role models for organizational performance excellence. Organizations are judged on criteria from seven categories:

1. Leadership
2. Strategy
3. Customers
4. Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management
5. Workforce
6. Operations
7. Results

Example criteria are:

• How do you obtain information on your customers’ satisfaction relative to their satisfaction with your competitors?
• How do you select, collect, align, and integrate data and information for tracking daily operations?
• How do you manage your workforce, its needs, and your needs to ensure continuity, prevent workforce reductions, and minimize the impact of workforce reductions, if they do become necessary?

Joseph M. Juran believed the Baldrige Award judging criteria to be the most widely accepted description of what TQM entails.

During the 1990s, standards bodies in Belgium, France, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom attempted to standardize TQM. While many of these standards have since been explicitly withdrawn, they all are effectively superseded by ISO 9000:

• Total Quality Management: Guide to Management Principles, London, England: British Standards Institution, 1992, ISBN 9780580211560, OCLC 655881602, BS 7850
• Electronic Components Committee (1994), Guide to Total Quality Management (TQM) for CECC-Approved Organizations, Brussels, Belgium: European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization, CECC 00 806 Issue 1
• System zur Zukunftssicherung: Total Quality Management (TQM), Düsseldorf, Germany: Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, 1996, OCLC 632959402, VDI 5500
• Total Quality and Marketing/Management Tools, Paris, France: AFNOR, 1998, FD X50-680
• Total Quality Management: Guide to Management Principles, Turkish Standards Institution (TSE), 2006, TS 13133

Interest in TQM as an academic subject peaked around 1993.

The Federal Quality Institute was shuttered in September 1995 as part of the Clinton administration's efforts to streamline government. The European Centre for Total Quality Management closed in August 2009.

TQM, as a vaguely defined quality management approach, was largely supplanted by the ISO 9000 collection of standards and their formal certification processes in the 1990s. Business interest in quality improvement under the TQM name also faded as Jack Welch's success attracted attention to Six Sigma and Toyota's success attracted attention to lean manufacturing, though the three share many of the same tools, techniques, and significant portions of the same philosophy.

TQM lives on in various national quality awards around the globe.

• Capability Maturity Model Integration CMMI
• Lean manufacturing
• List of national quality awards
• Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
• Outline of management
• People Capability Maturity Model
• Zero Defects

• Deming, W. Edwards (1986), Out of the Crisis, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bibcode:1986oucr.book.....D, ISBN 9780911379013, OCLC 13126265, retrieved 2013-12-07 (Originally published in 1982 as Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position,OCLC 9234321)
• Department of Defense (1990-02-15), Total Quality Management Guide: A Two Volume Guide for Defense Organizations, vol. 1—Key Features of the DoD Implementation, Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Defense, OCLC 26866911, ADA225196, archived from the original on December 11, 2013, retrieved 2013-12-07
• Feigenbaum, Armand V. (1983), Total Quality Control (3 ed.), New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., ISBN 9780070203532, OCLC 8552734
• Ishikawa, Kaoru (1985), What Is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way (1 ed.), Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, ISBN 9780139524332, OCLC 11467749
• Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Total Quality Management (1990-02-15), Total Quality Management Guide: A Two Volume Guide for Defense Organizations, vol. 2—A Guide to Implementation, Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Defense, OCLC 834271878, ADA230439, archived from the original on December 11, 2013, retrieved 2013-12-07
• Rehder, Robert; Ralston, Faith (Summer 1984). "Total Quality Management: A Revolutionary Management Philosophy". S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal. 49 (3): 24–33. ISSN 0749-7075. OCLC 11220842.

• The American Society for Quality resource page on TQM
• The Chartered Quality Institute resource page on TQM Archived 2014-07-03 at the Wayback Machine
• The Economist resource page on TQM