Total Quality Management

What Is Total Quality Management?

Dr. W. Edwards Deming (a quality management expert credited with orienting Japanese products toward quality) conceptualized the ideas of total quality management.

 

Total Quality Management (TQM) can be defined in two ways.

1. A product that conforms to a set of standards.

2. A product that meets consumer wants and needs.

 

Quality assurance is a system that works to prevent product defects from happening rather than a system which detects final product defects by:

1. Identifying the set of standards required to produce a product that will meet or exceed customer expectations.

2. Evaluating the entire production scheme of a product from start to finish.

3. Developing a production system that prevents the production of a product that does not onform to prescribed standards.