Total Quality Management (TQM)

The Eight Principles of TQM

Let’s go over the eight major total qual­i­ty man­age­ment prin­ci­ples and their purpose:

1. Customer Focus

The cus­tomer is always right, right? In TQM, the ulti­mate focus is the customer’s sat­is­fac­tion. Cus­tomers deter­mine whether your efforts in process improve­ment prove wise — regard­less of what you think of your prac­tices, the cus­tomer deter­mines the lev­el of qual­i­ty in the prod­uct.

This means the only way to know if your TQM efforts are suc­cess­ful is to receive feed­back direct­ly from cus­tomers. This can be direct, such as in the form of a sur­vey or review, or indi­rect, using stats like return rates and oth­er data.

2. Total Employee Involvement

Employ­ees must be engaged and empow­ered to make their own deci­sions, so good man­age­ment is essen­tial. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the top of the orga­ni­za­tion to the bot­tom must empha­size com­mon goals and total com­mit­ment.

Pro­vid­ing teams with a sense of auton­o­my and a clear, trans­par­ent set of achiev­able goals is the best way to devel­op an orga­ni­za­tion-wide cul­ture of engagement.

3. Process Approach

Process think­ing is a major key of TQM. A sys­tem will fail unless there is a clear focus on devel­op­ing an opti­mal process. Most prob­lems can be attrib­uted to fail­ures in the process.

Process­es must be clear­ly defined, mea­sured, and mon­i­tored in order to iden­ti­fy and cor­rect vari­ances and achieve total buy-in at every lev­el of the organization.

4. Integrated System

Ver­ti­cal­ly struc­tured orga­ni­za­tions must have a com­plete­ly inte­grat­ed — and hor­i­zon­tal­ly inter­con­nect­ed — sys­tem in order to achieve effec­tive total qual­i­ty man­age­ment.

All process­es, at every lev­el of the orga­ni­za­tion, must be defined, mea­sured, and mon­i­tored as part of a cohe­sive qual­i­ty man­age­ment oper­a­tion. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between depart­ments must be con­stant and all employ­ees should share the ulti­mate com­mon goal of cus­tomer satisfaction.

5. Strategic and Systematic Approach

A clear strat­e­gy that is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly rolled out at every lev­el of the orga­ni­za­tion is a crit­i­cal part of qual­i­ty man­age­ment.

The for­mu­la­tion of a strate­gic approach to process and sys­tem improve­ment with a core focus on the qual­i­ty of the fin­ished prod­uct is essen­tial, and this strate­gic plan­ning must be clear­ly defined and com­mu­ni­cat­ed to every­one involved.

6. Continual Improvement

The con­tin­u­al improve­ment of process­es is a key aspect of qual­i­ty man­age­ment — and it dri­ves the growth of the process. Orga­ni­za­tions must con­stant­ly mea­sure and ana­lyze process­es, iden­ti­fy­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment.

The prin­ci­ples of Six Sig­ma and Lean work hand-in-hand with qual­i­ty man­age­ment, imple­ment­ing an orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment that push­es every­one in the orga­ni­za­tion to iden­ti­fy and reduce waste and lim­it vari­ances in the process. This leads not only to a more effi­cient oper­a­tion but also increased cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion with the product.

7. Fact-Based Decision-Making

Reliance on empir­i­cal, sta­tis­ti­cal data and mea­sur­able, fact-based report­ing is cru­cial to imple­ment­ing opti­mal qual­i­ty man­age­ment. Opin­ions are of no val­ue in qual­i­ty man­age­ment — even those of cus­tomers — unless they are backed up by rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion such as sales data, rev­enue growth, return rates, and cus­tomer reten­tion.

Qual­i­ty per­for­mance must be con­sis­tent­ly mea­sured with defined met­rics. Data must be con­tin­u­al­ly col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed in order to con­tin­u­al­ly improve process­es and pre­dict — and con­quer — future obsta­cles and blockers.

8. Communications

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion must be clear, con­stant, and orga­ni­za­tion-wide in order for qual­i­ty man­age­ment mea­sures to suc­ceed. Every mem­ber of the orga­ni­za­tion must know the strat­e­gy, time­lines, and goals — not only what they are being asked to do, but also why they are doing it.

Effec­tive wide-scale com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in an orga­ni­za­tion allows it to adapt to changes, improve process­es more effi­cient­ly, and main­tain a high lev­el of morale, since every employ­ee is aware of their part in the over­all strategy.