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Total Quality Management

Definition of TQM
The origin of Total Quality Management (TQM) start when Walter Shewhart developed Statistical Quality Control in the 1930s to improve quality controls of products of wartime equipment in World War I. Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming worked together on lectures, which products a book in 1939, Statistical Methods from the Viewpoint of Quality Control. Using these methods centered on scientific inferences in the 1950s, Deming and Joseph Juran worked together to empower companies and governments to monitor overall processes instead of product inspections. Deming then spent time in Japan, at the request of the US government, to assist war recovery after World War II. The Japanese Union of Scientist and Engineers (JUSE) adopted Deming’s methods, which lead to significant increase in productivity and lowed costs.
TQM has many forms and definitions. TQM can loosely be defined as a strategy to control quality throughout an organization by minimizing defects. Many countries and organizations have embraced TQM in some form, either the International Organization of Standards (ISO) or Six Sigma. Both methodologies work toward documenting processes, reporting and auditing of measurable results and reducing variations of results by making processes more efficient. The TQM process has three fundamental concepts. Customer Focus, Continuous Improvement and The Value of Every Associate are the basis for TQM and should be considered when focusing on quality.
“A major challenge facing organizations is their understanding of customers’ needs and their measurements of how well they meet these needs.” (Wadsworth, Stephens, Godfrey, 2002) Sometimes companies lose sight of taking care of the customers when trying to impress Wall Street and shareholders of the organization. TQM attempts to teach customers as a focal point to build customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty.
“In medieval Europe the various trade guilds established rigid guidelines for the making of...