Total Quality Management

25 Pages 6283 Words

efficiency and economies of scale which are the new values. Focusing on the aspect of the customer and a “no compromise” view of quality are important parts of the new values. Instead of self-sufficient individuals working in a hierarchical structure to produce what is affordable, business in the 21st century will consist of interdependent networks teams improving processes that exceed customer needs. The new way of thinking involves focusing all activities of the firm on continuous improvement of all processes necessary for satisfaction and delighting the customer (Dawson, 1993 pg.1).

In the United States and Europe, quality control of one sort or another has been part of manufacturing for more than a hundred years, and the use of various quality concepts has come and gone and come again. By contrast, in Japan quality control was not significant until after World War II. In Japan as in the United States, however, the spectrum of quality practices ranges from none at all to the leading edge, where progress has been rapid and uniform (Shiba, Grahm and Walden, 1993 pg. 3).

At the beginning of this evolutionary process, quality of any kind is not notices or measured. Goods are produced and shipped. If customers want to send something back, they do so. This situation characterized Japanese companies in the early 1950s, when “made in Japan” meant shoddy, unreliable goods. The story of Japan’s transformation of that term into one signifying products of excellent quality is the story of their adoption of TQM (Shiba, Grahm and Walden, 1993pg 3).
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History of Quality Movement: Much of the foundation of the quality movement can be traced to the work of Walter Shewhart, a mathematician who developed statistical process control. This is the most fundamental of the quality tools because it describes the amount of variation in processes and can predict the outcomes of processes. Edward Deming who was also trained as a...