Total Quality Management (TQM) consists of organization-wide efforts to install and create a permanent climate in which an organization continually improves its ability to deliver high-quality products and services to customers. While there is no widely agreed approach, TQM's efforts generally rely heavily on previously developed quality control tools and techniques. TQM enjoyed extensive 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 from the stiff competition of Japan's ability to produce high-quality goods at a competitive cost. For the first time since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the United Kingdom became a net importer of finished goods. The United States undertook its own examination of conscience, expressed more directly in the television broadcast of If Japan Can ... Why No We Can? Companies began to reexamine the quality control techniques invented over the past 50 years and how these techniques had been so successfully used by the Japanese. It was in the midst of this economic turmoil that TQM took root.
Total Quality Management (TQM) describes a management approach to long-term success through customer satisfaction. In an effort by TQM, all members of an organization participate in improving processes, products, services and the culture in which they work. Principles of total quality management: the 8 main elements of TQM
Total quality management can be summarized as a management system for a customer-centric organization that involves all employees in continuous improvement. It uses effective strategies, data and communications to integrate quality discipline into the culture and activities of the organization. Many of these concepts are present in modern quality management systems, the successor to TQM.