Key takeaways

  • Total quality management developed from quality management practices in the mid-20th century.
  • TQM is focused on increasing customer satisfaction.
  • This approach involves all employees in a collective effort.
  • Constant improvement is the philosophy guiding TQM.

Are you looking to improve your business processes? Here we explain why Total Quality Management (TQM) is an important business methodology, especially for businesses that manufacture value-added products or supply services. 

What is Total Quality Management (TQM)?

Total quality management (TQM) is a management approach that focuses on continuous improvement not only in production but in all stages and processes of business. The goal of this approach is to achieve long-term success by continuously satisfying customers.

Total quality management has never become a unified or codified methodology. Some of the pillars of TQM, however, are shared across organizations. These include:

  • Customer requirements define quality.
  • Quality improvement is managed from the top down and involves all people and departments of an organization.
  • Analysis of work processes leads to quality improvement.

TQM grew out of earlier ideas about quality control. Several innovators and thinkers significantly influenced the development of TQM, starting with Walter A. Shewhart, who began the modern concept of quality control in the 1930s. Dr. Joseph Moses Juran focused his attention on planning, control, and improvement after working with Japanese engineers in the 1950s. Engineer W. Edwards Deming continued this work in his improving quality through enhanced management. Deming taught that “meeting customer needs without variation takes leadership, systems thinking, constancy of purpose, and joy in daily work life”.

The beginnings of the TQM approach caught on in Japan in the 1950s and by the 1970s, Japan was leading the world in quality. To compete, the 1980s and 90s saw the US and countries around the world also adopting total quality management principles and processes. These have largely been overtaken by codified ISO 9000 quality management systems and lean manufacturing approaches in the 2000s.

What Are the Core Elements of TQM?

The principles of TQM are many – even Deming used a 14-point management system to explain his concept. However, the core elements of TQM can be summarized as:

  • Continuous improvement: A business should work to improve steadily, making small but constant enhancements to its products and services over time. It should not only try to make enhancements but also try to detect inefficiencies that create bottlenecks in its processes. It should try to identify and address flaws with creative solutions that provide increased value for the consumer.  
  • Employee involvement: For total quality management to succeed, everyone in the organization should be inspired and driven to improve quality. While management directs the process, employees need to be involved at all levels because their hands-on experiences can lead to some of the most important insights into how to change. Workers should be encouraged and rewarded for participating in TQM.
  • Customer focus: In TQM, it’s the customer that dictates quality. If a business’s products and services create value and satisfaction for customers, they’re successful, and vice versa. The business needs to collect both direct input from customers and data about their behavior and expectations so it can align with what they truly need.
  • Process-orientation: TQM involves data and input from customers, employees, and managers and applies them to its processes to streamline and improve them. Processes should be monitored for opportunities to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Standard operating procedures should also be developed and improved continuously.

What Are the Benefits of TQM?

Using the approach of total quality management, organizations can attain several important benefits that make them stand out from the competition and give them strategic advantages:

  • Enhanced product quality: Being able to produce a product of greater quality than its competitors can give an enterprise a significant advantage. 
  • Overall cost reductions: By constantly evaluating and streamlining processes as well as looking for creative solutions to reduce waste, a business may be able to produce overall cost reductions. These can then be passed on to the customer with a lower price.
  • Increased customer satisfaction: With its customer focus, TQM is aimed at producing greater customer satisfaction for a company’s products and services. When this happens, loyalty increases and positive word of mouth helps attract increased business.
  • Adaptability: Companies that adopt TQM become more adaptable as this approach is based on constant change and improvement. 

How to Implement TQM Within your Organization

Implementing total quality management can be a difficult endeavor.  Employees may be entrenched in their current ways of doing things and unwilling to change. It may also be difficult to inspire them to become fully involved in the goals of the approach. Learning how to make effective changes can take time and cost money. At the same time, however, gaining feedback from employees can make them feel much more engaged and valued in the organization.

To implement TQM, most organizations gather input from customers on how they can improve. They set these improvements as their goals and then put these ideas to both employees and management to find the best ways to meet customer expectations.

For example, when a trading company in China implements Total Quality Management, it can track every stage of production from raw materials to final packaging, ensuring that each batch consistently meets client specifications. This systematic oversight not only reduces defects but also builds trust with international buyers. Likewise, a foreign company sourcing from China benefits when its suppliers follow TQM principles: factories conduct regular process checks, address issues before they become costly, and continuously refine production methods against known challenges. As a result, both the trading company and the buyer experience fewer delays, more reliable product quality, and smoother long-term cooperation, showing how TQM directly improves outcomes for everyone involved.

Implement TQM Overseas, with MSA

TQM uses a customer focus to identify problems and then uses a collective effort to solve them and produce greater value. If you are looking to implement TQM in China, or elsewhere in Asia, talk to our international business improvement experts at MSA. 

FAQ

TQM aims to improve customer satisfaction by making quantitative changes in individual departments through initiative and creativity. Six Sigma uses a statistical approach across an organization to look for and improve defects in processes. ISO9000, too, focuses on processes and emphasizes process control. Lean manufacturing is more focused on eliminating waste to provide quick value for customers while TQM looks more to long-term enhancement of customer satisfaction.

Managers who want to implement TQM in an enterprise may face resistance from their employees. They may not fully buy into the approach or may recognize that it requires dedication and effort, which they’re not willing to invest.