Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management approach in which every function and every employee in an organization is responsible for quality; the customer defines quality, and improvement never stops. The "total" is the point: quality is not the job of an inspection department at the end of the line but of design, purchasing, production, sales, and management together. TQM has no single defined method. It is a set of principles that organizations implement through tools borrowed from statistical quality control, Lean, and project management.
Where TQM came from
The ideas behind TQM were developed in the United States and matured in Japan. Walter Shewhart created statistical process control at Bell Labs in the 1920s. After World War II, W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran taught statistical quality methods and management responsibility for quality to Japanese industry, which adopted them wholesale. Armand Feigenbaum's Total Quality Control (1951) argued that quality had to be built in across every department, not inspected in at the end; Kaoru Ishikawa extended this into company-wide quality control, with quality circles and the seven basic tools. Japan's Deming Prize, established in 1951, became the model for later national quality awards.
By the late 1970s, Japanese automotive and electronics quality was visibly ahead of American, and American industry went looking for the methods it had exported. The term "Total Quality Management" was coined by the U.S. Navy in 1985 for its implementation of Deming's approach, and it spread through the Department of Defense and other agencies via the Federal Quality Institute (1988 to 1995). The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (1987) and the ISO 9000 standards (1987) gave the movement a scoring framework and a certifiable standard, and TQM became the dominant management program of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Interest in TQM as a branded program faded by the late 1990s. Many implementations were slogans and training with no process change behind them, results were hard to attribute, and Six Sigma arrived with a project structure and a dollar figure attached to every project. The principles did not go away. They became the ISO 9001 quality management system that most manufacturers are certified to, the Baldrige criteria, and the foundation of Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma.
The eight principles of TQM
There is no official definition, but ASQ's eight principles are the ones most sources use.
- Customer focus. The customer defines quality. Every effort, training, process, and tool is judged by whether the customer gets a better product or service.
- Total employee involvement. Everyone participates in improvement, which requires management to remove fear, give people the authority to act, and treat improvement as part of the job rather than extra work.
- Process-centered. Quality comes from processes, not heroics. Define the process, measure its performance, and improve it; do not rely on individual effort to compensate for a bad process.
- Integrated system. Departments are connected by horizontal processes that cross them. Quality is managed across those processes, not within silos.
- Strategic and systematic approach. Quality is part of the strategic plan with goals, measures, and resources, not a separate initiative.
- Continual improvement. Every process can be improved, and the organization keeps improving it. This is the overlap with kaizen.
- Fact-based decision making. Decisions rest on data about process performance, collected and analyzed with the tools below.
- Communication. Goals, methods, and results are communicated across the organization so that improvement is coordinated rather than local.
How TQM is practiced
The PDCA cycle
TQM improvement runs on Plan-Do-Check-Act, the cycle Deming taught in Japan (he credited Shewhart). Plan the change based on data, do it on a small scale, check the results against the prediction, act by standardizing what worked or revising what did not, then start again. PDCA is the engine inside kaizen events, quality circles, and most TQM projects.
Quality circles and cross-functional teams
A quality circle is a small group of workers from the same area who meet regularly to identify and solve problems in their own work, using the seven tools and PDCA. Cross-functional teams do the same for problems that span departments. Both are how "total employee involvement" becomes something people actually do on Tuesday afternoon.
Prevention over inspection
TQM shares with Zero Defects the view that defects should be prevented in the process rather than caught by inspection. Where Crosby's approach measures the cost of nonconformance, TQM's approach is to define and control the process so that it cannot produce the defect. Lean's poka-yoke mistake-proofing is the shop-floor expression of the same idea.
The seven basic quality tools
Ishikawa's seven basic tools are simple enough for any team to use without statistical training, and they cover most quality problems.
- Cause-and-effect (fishbone, Ishikawa) diagram. Maps the possible causes of a problem by category. The starting point for root cause analysis.
- Check sheet. A structured form for tallying defects, events, or measurements as they happen, so the data exists to analyze.
- Control chart. Plots process output over time against statistically calculated limits, to separate normal variation from a real change that needs a response.
- Histogram. Shows the distribution of a measured variable: its center, spread, and shape, and whether it fits inside the specification.
- Pareto chart. Ranks causes or defect types by frequency or cost, so the team works on the few that matter most.
- Scatter diagram. Plots two variables against each other to see whether one is related to the other, such as oven temperature against defect rate.
- Stratification. Splits data into subgroups (by shift, machine, operator, supplier, lot) before analyzing it, so that patterns hidden in the aggregate become visible. Some lists substitute a flowchart or run chart for this one.
TQM vs. Six Sigma vs. Lean
| TQM | Six Sigma | Lean | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary goal | Customer satisfaction through organization-wide quality | Reduce variation and defects | Eliminate waste, improve flow |
| Origin | Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa; named by the U.S. Navy, 1985 | Motorola, 1986 | Toyota Production System |
| Structure | Principles and culture; no fixed method | Defined projects (DMAIC), trained belts, statistical targets | Daily improvement on the floor with visual tools |
| Measurement | Customer satisfaction, process metrics | Sigma level, DPMO, project savings | Lead time, inventory, waste |
| Status today | Lives on as ISO 9001 and Baldrige; rarely run under the TQM name | Active, usually as Lean Six Sigma | Active |
In practice, the three are layered, not chosen between. Lean organizes the floor and removes waste; Six Sigma attacks the chronic variation that remains; TQM, or its ISO 9001 descendant, is the management system that keeps both running and connects them to the customer.
Where TQM meets 5S and Lean
Most companies practicing TQM principles also run Lean tools, because the two are complementary. 5S gives a process-centered organization a stable, visual workplace to measure. Kaizen is continual improvement with a name. Kanban is process control made visible. Quality circles and kaizen events are nearly the same meeting. The difference is mostly vocabulary and which decade the company adopted it in.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main principles of TQM?
Customer focus, total employee involvement, a process-centered approach, an integrated system, a strategic and systematic approach, continual improvement, fact-based decision making, and communication.
Is TQM still used?
The principles are, everywhere. The name is not common anymore. ISO 9001 certification, the Baldrige criteria, and Lean Six Sigma programs all implement TQM principles under different labels.
What is the difference between TQM and Six Sigma?
TQM is a management philosophy covering the whole organization with no fixed method. Six Sigma is a specific statistical method with defined projects, roles, and targets. Six Sigma grew out of TQM and is often described as TQM with a structure.
Who developed TQM?
No single person. Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum, Crosby, and Ishikawa each contributed; the term itself was coined by the U.S. Navy in 1985.
What does "total" mean in Total Quality Management?
That quality is the responsibility of every department and every employee, across the whole product lifecycle, rather than of a quality control function at the end of production.
Is TQM the same as ISO 9001?
No, but they are close. ISO 9001 is a certifiable quality management system standard built on the same principles. A company can practice TQM without ISO certification, and ISO 9001's seven quality management principles are a direct descendant of TQM's.
Related resources
The quality methods covered here: Six Sigma, Zero Defects, quality control, quality assurance, root cause analysis, and compliance audits. For the Baldrige framework, see NIST's Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. For the Lean side, 5S Today stocks Lean manufacturing tools and Lean training videos.