Total quality management

• Quality management
• Environmental management
• Health and safety
• Integrated management
• Process improvement
• Contact the MCR
• Customer feedback
• Become a registered consultant

Total quality management (TQM) is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organisational processes. TQM has been widely used in manufacturing, education, government, and service industries, as well as NASA space and science programmes.

Total Quality provides an umbrella under which everyone in the organisation can strive and create customer satisfaction. Total quality is a people focused management system that aims at continual increase in customer satisfaction at continually lower real costs.

TQM is composed of three paradigms:

• Total: Organisation wide
• Quality: With its usual Definitions, with all its complexities (External Definition)
• Management: The system of managing with steps like plan, organise, control, lead, staff, etc.

As defined by ISO:

"TQM is a management approach for an organisation, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organisation and to society."

In Japanese, TQM comprises four process steps, namely:

1. Kaizen - focuses on continuous process improvement, to make processes visible, repeatable and measurable.
2. Atarimae Hinshitsu - the idea that things will work as they are supposed to (e.g. a pen will write.).
3. Kansei - examining the way the user applies the product leads to improvement in the product itself.
4. Miryokuteki Hinshitsu - the idea that things should have an aesthetic quality which is different from "atarimae hinshitsu" (eg a pen will write in a way that is pleasing to the writer.)

TQM requires that the company maintain this quality standard in all aspects of its business. This requires ensuring that things are done right the first time and that defects and waste are eliminated from operations.