Total Quality Management (TQM) is an integrated organizational effort that strives to achieve quality at all levels of management. Total Quality Management aims to maintain quality at different levels of decision making like processes, products, services, and work culture. Since the origin of the concept in 1950, business world consider this as an effective approach for ensuring long term success through customer satisfaction.
The prime component in Total Quality Management is Customers. Quality aspects that satisfy customer’s needs and expectations must be highlighted while developing a product. Firms usually conduct activities like market research and collect customer feedbacks to identify the changing market trends in quality.
Aiming continuous improvement is also important for implementing Total Quality Management. A TQM organization will always accept any change that enables them to develop and to explore quality. Other important components in TQM are zero defects and proper training and development efforts. The firms must try to prevent defects rather than rectifying, as the same will lower the customer’s confidence level in the product. To achieve this, firms usually provide adequate training and development for employees, so that they may know how TQM must be achieved or maintained.
