Major Contributors to TQM

Total quality management is a much broader concept than just controlling the quality of the product itself. Total quality management is the coordination of efforts directed at improving customer satisfaction, increasing employee participation, strengthening supplier partnerships, and facilitating an organizational atmosphere of continuous quality improvement. TQM is a way of thinking about organizations and how people should relate and work in them. TQM is not merely a technique, but a philosophy anchored in the belief that long‐term success depends on a uniform commitment to quality in all sectors of an organization.

W. Edwards Deming

The concept of quality started in Japan when the country began to rebuild after World War II. Amidst the bomb rubble, Japan embraced the ideas of W. Edwards Deming, an American whose methods and theories are credited for Japan's postwar recovery. Ironically enough, Deming's ideas were initially scoffed at in the U.S. As a result, TQM took root in Japan 30 years earlier than in the United States. American companies took interest in Deming's ideas only when they began having trouble competing with the Japanese in the 1980s.

Deming's management system was philosophical, based on continuous improvement toward the perfect ideal. He believed that a commitment to quality requires transforming the entire organization. His philosophy is based on a system known as the Fourteen Points. These points express the actions an organization must take in order to achieve TQM:

1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service. Dr. Deming suggests a radical new definition of a company's role: A better way to make money is to stay in business and provide jobs through innovation, research, constant improvement, and maintenance.
2. Adopt a new philosophy. For the new economic age, companies need to change into “learning organizations.” Furthermore, we need a new belief in which mistakes and negativism are unacceptable.
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. Eliminate the need for mass inspection by building quality into the product.
4. End awarding business on price. Instead, aim at minimum total cost, and move towards single suppliers.
5. Improve the system of production and service constantly. Improvement is not a one‐time effort. Management is obligated to continually look for ways to reduce waste and improve quality.
6. Institute training. Too often, workers learn their jobs from other workers who have never been trained properly.
7. Institute leadership. Leading consists of helping people to do a better job and to learn by objective methods.
8. Drive out fear. Many employees are afraid to ask questions or to take a position—even when they do not understand what their job is or what is right or wrong. The economic losses from fear are appalling. To assure better quality and productivity, it is necessary that people feel secure.
9. Break down barriers between departments. Often, company departments or units compete with each other or have goals that conflict. They do not work as a team; therefore they cannot solve or foresee problems. Even worse, one department's goal may cause trouble for another.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and numerical targets for the workforce. These never help anybody do a good job. Let workers formulate their own slogans; then they will be committed to the contents.
11. Eliminate numerical quotas or work standards. Quotas take into account only numbers, not quality or methods. They are usually a guarantee of inefficiency and high cost.
12. Remove barriers that prevent workers from taking pride in their workmanship. Too often, misguided supervisors, faulty equipment, and defective materials stand in the way of good performance. These barriers must be removed.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education. Both management and the work force will have to be informed of new knowledge and techniques.
14. Take action to accomplish the transformation. It will require a special top management team with a plan of action to carry out the quality mission. Workers cannot do it on their own, nor can managers. A critical mass of people in the company must understand the Fourteen Points.

Deming emphasized surveying customers, consulting production‐line workers to help solve quality problems, and teamwork. His system was readily accepted in Japan, where workers and management were used to uniformity and allegiance to institutions. Japanese companies learned to collect data for the statistical monitoring and measuring of customer satisfaction. The goals of these companies were to produce many of the same consumer goods—better and cheaper—that were produced in the U.S. These Japanese companies succeeded, much to the chagrin of companies in the U.S.

Deming saw businesses as bedrock institutions in a society—much like churches and schools. Companies attain long‐term success only if business leaders make their employees' contributions matter. If organizations use their employees' ideas, they will improve efficiency and productivity.

Most of the applications of Deming's ideas occurred in the 1950s and 1960s in Japan. In the United States, the desperation needed for executives to finally try a “radical” plan such as Deming's came from economic rather than wartime defeats. Most notably, in the 1980s, Japanese car manufacturers pushed their market share toward 25 percent, sending fear throughout Detroit. The Ford Motor Co. called on Deming after NBC featured his successes in a documentary, “If Japan Can, Why Can't We?” Deming took Ford's invitation as notice that his home country was finally ready for his program. He continued teaching seminars until his death, at age 93, in 1993.

Deming's system made such an impression that he is known at the Father of TQM.