Total quality management is a management system for a customer focused organization that involves all employee in continual improvement

of all aspects of the organization. TQM uses strategy, data, and effective communication to integrate the quality principles into the culture and activities of the organization. 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. TQM can be defined as the management of initiatives and procedures that are aimed at achieving the delivery of quality products and services. In the 1980s to the 1990s, a new phase of quality control and management began. This became known as Total Quality Management (TQM). Having observed Japans success of employing quality issues, western companies started to introduce their own quality initiatives. TQM, developed as a catchall phrase for the broad spectrum of quality-focused strategies, programmes and techniques during this period, became the centre of focus for the western quality movement.

Principles Of TQM

1- Be Customer focused: Whatever you do for quality improvement, remember that ONLY customers determine the level of quality. Whatever you do to foster quality improvement, training employees, integrating quality into processes management, ONLY customers determine whether your efforts were worthwhile.

2-Insure Total Employee Involvement: You must remove fear from work place, then empower employee... you provide the proper environment.

3- Process Centered: Fundamental part of TQM is to focus on process thinking.

4- Integrated system: All employee must know the business mission and vision. An integrated business system may be modeled by MBNQA or ISO 9000

5- Strategic and systematic approach: Strategic plan must integrate quality as core component.

6- Continual Improvement: Using analytical, quality tools, and creative thinking to become more efficient and effective.

7- Fact Based Decision Making: Decision making must be ONLY on data, not personal or situational thinking.

8- Communication: Communication strategy, method and timeliness must be well defined.

TQM Implementation Approaches You can't implement just one effective solution for planning and implementing TQM concepts in all situations. Below we list generic models for implementing total quality management theory:

1- Train top management on TQM principles.

2- Assess the current: Culture, customer satisfaction, and quality management system.

3- Top management determines the core values and principles and communicates them.

4- Develop a TQM master plan based on steps 1,2,3.

5- Identify and prioritize customer needs and determine products or service to meet those needs.

6- Determine the critical processes that produce those products or services.

7- Create process improvement teams.

8- Managers support the efforts by planning, training, and providing resources to the team.

9- Management integrates changes for improvement in daily process management. After improvements standardization takes place.

10- Evaluate progress against plan and adjust as needed.

11- Provide constant employee awareness and feedback. Establish an employee reward/ recognition process.

Strategies to develop TQM 1-TQM elements approach: Take key business process and use TQM Tools to foster improvement. Use quality circles, statistical process control, taguchi method, and quality function deployment.

2 - The guru approach: Use the guides of one of the leading quality thinker.

3- Organization model approach: The organization use benchmarking or MBNQA as model for excellence.

4- Japanese total quality approach: Companies pursue the deming prize use deming principles

The Cost Of TQM

Many companies believe that the costs of the introduction of TQM are far greater than the benefits it will produce. However research across a number of industries has costs involved in doing nothing, i.e. the direct and indirect costs of quality problems, are far greater than the costs of implementing TQM. The American quality expert, Phil Crosby, wrote that many companies chose to pay for the poor quality in what he referred to as the Price of Nonconformance. The costs are identified in the Prevention, Appraisal, Failure (PAF) Model. Prevention costs are associated with the design, implementation and maintenance of the TQM system. They are planned and incurred before actual operation, and can include:
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Product Requirements The setting specifications for incoming materials, processes, finished products/services.

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Quality Planning Creation of plans for quality, reliability, operational, production and inspections. Quality Assurance The creation and maintenance of the quality system. Training The development, preparation and maintenance of processes.

Appraisal costs are associated with the vendors and customers evaluation of purchased materials and services to ensure they are within specification. They can include:
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Verification Inspection of incoming material against agreed upon specifications. Quality Audits Check that the quality system is functioning correctly. Vendor Evaluation Assessment and approval of vendors.

Failure costs can be split into those resulting from internal and external failure. Internal failure costs occur when results fail to reach quality standards and are detected before they are shipped to the customer. These can include:
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Waste Unnecessary work or holding stocks as a result of errors, poor organization or communication. Scrap Defective product or material that cannot be repaired, used or sold. Rework Correction of defective material or errors. Failure Analysis This is required to establish the causes of internal product failure.

External failure costs occur when the products or services fail to reach quality standards, but are not detected until after the customer receives the item. These can include:
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Repairs Servicing of returned products or at the customer site. Warranty Claims Items are replaced or services re-performed under warranty. Complaints All work and costs associated with dealing with customers complaints. Returns Transportation, investigation and handling of returned items.