Concepts and attributes of total quality management

Abstract

For the last decade, American companies have been playing catch-up in the area of quality and productivity. Japanese companies and other foreign competitors have moved into markets that were once dominated by American companies, by producing higher quality products. The problem to date in the US has obviously not been the lack of resources or documentation on quality and improvement programmes, but the misdirection of these programmes and the lack of total management commitment. Total Quality Management (TQM) is seen as an effective method that will accomplish the task of higher quality levels, and increased productivity. The purpose of Total Quality Management is to implement a process that is long term and continuous improvement initiatives throughout the organization, beginning with their own function in the organization. TQM integrates the fundamental techniques and principles of Quality Function Deployment, Taguchi Methods, Statistical Process control, Just-In-Time, and existing management tools into...