PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS OF TQM

1. Qualityis to continuously satisfy customers expectations.

2. Total qualityis to achieve quality at low cost.
3. Total Quality Managementis to achieve total quality through everybodys participation.



1. MANAGEMENTS COMMITMENT (LEADERSHIP)
A vital task for any management is to outline quality goals, quality policies and quality plans in
accordance with the four sides of the TQM pyramid. This is extremely importantso important in fact that,
in many firms, top management (the board of directors) ought to review the firms quality goals and
policies and if necessary reformulate them so that they conform to the four sides of the TQM pyramid.
Just as important, these goals and policies should be clear and meaningful to all employees in the firm. It
is extremely important, for example, that the firms quality goals signal to employees that the firms
principal task is to satisfy its external customers and that this can only be achieved if the firm is able to
exceed customers expectations.
Quality goals and quality policies must be followed by meaningful action plans which are revised
annually in connection with an annual quality audit.

They should include the following four questions:
1. How have customers been identified (both internal and external customers)?
2. How have customers requirements and expectations been identified?
3. How have managers and employees tried to satisfy customers?
4. What do customers think of our products and services and how has this information been collected?

In the run-up to the action plan, management must answer the following questions:
1. Where are we now? (the present situation).
2. Where do we want to be? (vision).
3. How do we get there? (action plans).
The question where are we now is answered increasingly by means of self-assessment, based on the
criteria of internationally-recognized quality awards. At present, there are four such awards:
1. The Deming Prize, founded in Japan in 1951.
2. The Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award, founded in the USA in 1988.
3. The European Quality Award, founded in 1992.
4. The Australian Quality Award, founded in 1988.

2. FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER AND THE EMPLOYEE
The new message in TQM is:
1. In addition to focusing on external customers and their expectations and demands, it is necessary to
focus on so-called internal customer and supplier relations.
2. To create customer satisfaction, it is not enough just to live up to the customers expectations.
Before you can satisfy external customers, however, you must first eliminate some of the obstacles to the
internal customers (i.e. the employees) and create the conditions necessary for them to produce and
deliver quality.

3. FOCUS ON FACTS
Knowledge of customers experiences of products and services is essential before the processes
necessary for creating customer satisfaction can be improved. More and more firms are therefore coming
to the conclusion that, to realize the TQM vision, they must first set up a system for the continuous
measurement, collection and reporting of quality facts.

Measurement of customer satisfaction


Fig. Total experienced quality.

Quality control points and quality checkpoints
Quality costs

Traditionally, so-called quality costs have been divided into the following four main groups:
1. Preventive costs;
2. inspection/appraisal costs;
3. Internal failure costs;
4. External failure costs.
4. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTS
The importance of continuous improvements has by now been amply illustrated. Masaaki
Imais world-famous book Kaizen, written in 1986, focused precisely on this aspect of
TQM. In this book, Imai presented an interesting, but also singular, definition of quality.
He simply defined quality as everything which can be improved.
5. EVERYBODYS PARTICIPATION
As previously mentioned, TQM is process-oriented. Customers, including internal customers (i.e. the
firms employees), are part of the firms processes. These customers, together with their requirements
and expectations, must be identified in all the processes.
The next step is to plan how these requirements and expectations can be fulfilled. This requires feedback
from the customers, so that their experiences and problems become known in all processes. This
feedback is a condition for the continuous improvement of both products and processes. For this to be
effective, it seems only common sense that everybody should participate.