Total Quality Management (TQM)
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a comprehensive and structured approach to organizational management that seeks to improve the quality of products and services through ongoing refinements in response to continuous feedback. It is based on the idea that making small, continuous improvements to a company’s processes and systems will lead to greater customer satisfaction and, ultimately, improved financial performance.
TQM originates from earlier quality management techniques such as statistical process control (SPC) and advanced process control (APC). It was popularized by W. Edwards Deming, who is widely considered to be the father of the modern method and is a strong advocate of incorporating customer feedback into the quality management and design processes.
The main principles of TQM are:
- Commitment: Everyone in the organization must be committed to quality. Quality should be a cornerstone of your corporate culture.
- Customer Focus: Customers are the most important part of the process. They should be involved in the design process, and feedback should be used to improve products and services.
- Continuous Improvement: There should be a focus on making incremental improvements over time to increase customer satisfaction.
- Processes: All processes should be well-defined, standardized and documented to ensure consistent performance.
- Training: Employees should be trained on the processes to ensure that they understand the importance of quality and know how to make the necessary improvements.
- Measurement: There should be quantitative measures in place to track the performance of the processes and identify areas for improvement.
- Transparency: All processes and performance should be shared with the entire organization so that everyone understands how the processes are performing and how quality can be improved.
These principles are integrated into a TQM system, which is a set of interrelated processes that work together to improve quality. The TQM system consists of four main components: Quality Planning, Quality Control, Quality Assurance, and Quality Improvement (Kaizen).
The first step in a TQM system is Quality Planning, which involves defining the customer requirements, understanding the processes and technologies needed to meet those requirements, and setting objectives for quality. Quality Control is the process of ensuring that products and services meet the customer requirements and are of the desired quality. Quality Assurance is the process of measuring and verifying that products and services meet the defined customer requirements and that processes are being followed. The final step is Quality Improvement (Kaizen), which involves making small changes over time to continuously improve processes and the performance of the organization.
TQM has been successfully applied in a wide variety of industries ranging from healthcare and manufacturing to services and education. The key to success has been to create a culture of quality in which everyone in the organization is committed to continuous improvement. By utilizing customer feedback, utilizing quantitative measurements, and leveraging technology, companies have been able to drive quality improvements that have resulted in better customer satisfaction and improved financial performance.
