Total Quality Management

Also known as: TQM

framework · management · organizing-schema

Organization-wide focus on continuous quality improvement with customer at the center.

Total Quality Management is the organization-wide management philosophy that emerged from the post-WWII quality movement, integrating contributions from Walter A. Shewhart (statistical process control and the PDCA cycle at Bell Labs in the 1920s-30s), W. Edwards Deming (the System of Profound Knowledge, 14 Points for Management, and the Seven Deadly Diseases, including transformative work in postwar Japan from 1950 onward), Joseph M. Juran (the Quality Trilogy of planning, control, and improvement; the Pareto principle in quality), Philip B. Crosby (Quality is Free, zero defects, four absolutes), Kaoru Ishikawa (company-wide quality control, fishbone diagram, quality circles), and Armand Feigenbaum (who coined 'total quality control' in his 1951 book). TQM treats quality as the responsibility of everyone, customer satisfaction as the central objective, continuous improvement (kaizen) as the operating discipline, and statistical methods as the empirical foundation. The framework is the direct progenitor of ISO 9000, the Malcolm Baldrige Award (1987), the Deming Prize, and substantial later developments including Toyota Production System, Six Sigma, and Lean — though Deming himself was deeply critical of the management-by-objectives mindset that some TQM implementations carried forward.

Originators

Walter A. Shewhart; W. Edwards Deming; Joseph M. Juran; Armand V. Feigenbaum (coined 'Total Quality Control'); Kaoru Ishikawa; Philip B. Crosby; Genichi Taguchi (robust design) high

Year / Decade

1920s-30s (Shewhart SPC and PDCA precursor); 1950s (Deming Japan lectures); 1951 (Feigenbaum book, Juran Quality Control Handbook); 1980s (Western TQM movement); 1987 (Malcolm Baldrige Award) high

Primary sources

Shewhart, W.A. (1939). Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, Deming, W.E. (1986). Out of the Crisis, Deming, W.E. (1993). The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, Juran, J.M. (1951, multiple editions). Quality Control Handbook, Crosby, P.B. (1979). Quality Is Free, Feigenbaum, A.V. (1951, expanded 1961). Total Quality Control high

Core components

PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act, Shewhart-Deming)
Deming's 14 Points for Management
Deming's System of Profound Knowledge
Juran Quality Trilogy (planning, control, improvement)
Crosby's Four Absolutes and Zero Defects
Ishikawa's seven basic tools
Customer-centricity
Continuous improvement
Statistical process control
Quality circles
Cross-functional teams
Supplier partnerships

Primary use case

Foundation of the modern quality movement; basis for TPS, Six Sigma, Lean, ISO 9000, Malcolm Baldrige Award, Deming Prize; transformation of postwar Japanese manufacturing; corporate-wide quality programs; ongoing reference framework in operations management.

Common criticisms

TQM as labeled corporate program saw uneven Western implementation in the 1980s-90s, often missing the deeper philosophy while adopting tools
Deming was sharply critical of MBO and many of the practices that some TQM programs incorporated
quality-program initiatives often produced documentation overhead without lasting culture change
cultural transferability from Japanese context to Western firms remains contested
substantial overlap and rivalry with Six Sigma created which-program-when confusion
programs tied to consultants and certification rather than internal capability
criticized as having atrophied as a label even as its substantive practices live on in Lean and Six Sigma.

Lineage

Parent of: Six Sigma, Toyota Production System, Kaizen, Hoshin Kanri
Siblings: Six Sigma, Toyota Production System, Kaizen, Hoshin Kanri, Theory of Constraints