Total quality management: 8 principles for business success
Are your employees producing higher quality products and services than last year, or are they stagnant?
Your organization could benefit from total quality management (TQM) if you aren’t seeing positive growth.
What’s that?
Total quality management (TQM) is an organization-wide system where staff members commit to continually improving processes and boosting customer satisfaction.
Originally a Japanese business philosophy, TQM found its way into American companies in the 1970s and 1980s, and it’s still in practice today.
This is because American businesses were impressed with the success of Japanese companies like Toyota and sought to learn their secrets. Toyota had found such lasting success due to its company-wide approach to quality control.
While it’s most common for manufacturing companies, a TQM approach can also prove fruitful for other businesses.
In this article, I’ll explore the history of the total quality management approach and its benefits and potential disadvantages. That way, you’ll determine whether your organization’s philosophy is worth implementing.
Along the way, you’ll learn the eight core principles of total quality management. These will help you master the quality improvement processes at your organization, even if you don’t fully implement TQM, so stick around to learn more.
What is total quality management?
Total quality management is a concept that believes every member of an organization, from bottom-level employees to C-suite executives, should work to improve business processes and customer satisfaction continuously.
In other words, it’s an all-hands-on-deck effort to improve the quality of an organization’s products, services, and customer service.
As a methodology, total quality management has three primary goals:
- To simplify supply chain management by increasing employee involvement
- Identify, resolve, and reduce errors in the production process
- Achieve long-term success and perpetually satisfied customers
It’s a system that emphasizes teamwork, effective communication, and exceeding customer expectations.
In TQM, every department contributing to producing a product or service works together to achieve total quality control. This dramatically reduces errors while maximizing productivity and efficiency.
There’s also an elevated focus on gathering customer and employee feedback. Since customers determine the quality level of products, their feedback is especially valued and acted upon.
TQM empowers employees to work towards the common goal of improving customer satisfaction.
It’s built upon the belief that average workers should participate in the quality control process, which is why there’s such a strong emphasis on everyone joining hands to improve processes.
The origins of total quality management
Total quality management became increasingly popular in Japan after World War II, and it helped companies like Toyota reach impressive levels of product and service quality.
However, its origins stretch back to the 1920s, when engineer Walter A. Shewhart developed a statistical control chart. He later published Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product in 1931, greatly influencing Dr. W. Edwards Deming, commonly credited as the father of modern quality control.
Deming would expand on Shewhart’s statistical control chart by creating the PDCA model for continuous improvement, also called the Deming cycle.
It stands for:
- Plan. First, you must decide which actions to take to solve a problem or improve a process.
- Do. Next, you must act on your hypothesis by putting it into practice.
- Check. You will only know if your efforts were successful if you have a way of analyzing your progress, so it’s crucial to develop relevant metrics.
- Act. This stage closes the cycle, where you implement everything you’ve learned thus far. You could use this information to adjust your goal, change methods, or form a new theory.
Deming continued to develop total quality management when the US government tasked him with aiding Japan in rebuilding its economy in the 1940s and 1950s.
He worked directly with the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers there. He taught them the fundamentals of statistical process control, which companies like Toyota would soon adopt.
They combined quality management methods like Kaizen (a continuous improvement cycle), Poka-Yoke (error-proofing), and just-in-time production (only producing products as needed) to form what we now know as the modern version of TQM.
The eight core principles of total quality management
Now that you know TQM and its origins, it’s time to learn its core values.
There are 8 TQM principles that practitioners live by, so let’s examine each one in depth.
Principle #1: A strong customer focus
First, you must know what your customers want to provide exceptional products and services.
This means spending lots of time getting to know your target audience, especially their expectations, wants, and needs.
After all, your customer needs always determine the materials, workflows, and processes you use to produce high-quality goods and services.
How can you better understand your customers so that you can implement TQM effectively?
There are a few ways, including the following:
- Regularly gather customer feedback through surveys. In the world of TQM, customer feedback is a precious resource. Therefore, gather as much of it as possible through satisfaction surveys and polls on social media.
- Create a buyer persona. A great way to become intimately familiar with your target audience is to create a buyer persona, a marketing tactic. You gather your audience’s demographic data to create a fictional persona that embodies their wants, needs, and buying habits. Your persona should have a name, hobbies, interests, and pain points. This will help you determine the main customer requirements for your products.
- Social media listening. What are your customers saying about your products and services on social media? Tools like Hootsuite will let you view what the public is saying about your brand, letting you know if your TQM efforts are paying off (or if you still have some work to do).
Whichever method you choose, this principle is all about understanding what your customers genuinely want so that you can deliver adequate outputs.
Principle #2: Total employee commitment
This is one of the most synonymous TQM practices and one of the most important.
It’s imperative to achieve total employee involvement in the quality assurance process, from top management to rank-and-file employees.
As a result, all your employees will become stakeholders in your success, as everyone will work toward the same initiatives.
How do you obtain buy-in from every staff member to commit to TQM?
For one, your communication needs to be flawless. Next, let your employees know all the ways that TQM will benefit them, such as:
- Perfecting their skills for future promotions
- Improving profitability for raises and new benefits
- Forging a positive company culture that thrives on teamwork and self-improvement
Also, remember to celebrate your team’s successes whenever they exhibit the principles of TQM in their work (e.g., finding a way to streamline a process).
Principle #3: Analyze your business processes
Next, every business process must be analyzed and scrutinized. Your goal is to improve your workflows until they’re near picture-perfect continuously.
Every member of your team (not just management) should look for ways to improve their tasks and processes.
This ‘all hands on deck’ mentality will lead to flawless processes that produce high-quality products and services.
Principle #4: Implement a truly integrated system
Decision-making silos and TQM don’t mix, which is why integrated systems are preferred.
This means every department member should have access to every policy, standard, and process at your organization.
This will ensure that your team remains on the same page, enabling your organization to work together cohesively toward the same goal (quality improvement).
Principle #5: Take a strategic and systematic approach
This is another flagship practice of TQM, which involves using management tools and strategic planning to improve quality.
Of course, this involves analyzing relevant metrics from all departments to strategize the best ways to make improvements.
In this regard, opening an employee suggestion box would be helpful. This box empowers all employees to provide management with suggestions for improving processes and ensuring customer satisfaction.
Toyota’s Creative Idea Suggestion System has been in place since 1951, and the company has used it to generate millions of ideas for quality improvements.
Principle #6: Continual improvement for processes and employees
I’ve spoken a lot about continual improvement so far, but only regarding business processes.
However, TQM also involves continual improvement for all staff.
You should encourage workers to upskill themselves through continued education and training programs.
Principle #7: Fact-based decision-making
This principle involves gathering and analyzing metrics related to your business processes, products, services, and customer satisfaction levels.
That way, your company’s decisions will be based on cold, hard facts instead of educated guesses.
Principle #8: Effective communications
Last but not least, TQM requires immaculate communication across all departments. An integrated system helps with this, but staff must also make concerted efforts to inform everyone involved with a decision or new development.
As such, you should train your staff to communicate everything that happens with their direct managers and co-workers.
What are the main benefits of total quality management?
Total quality management is not for every organization, but it can have incredible benefits when appropriately implemented.
Look no further than Toyota’s success as proof. The company swears by TQM and credits it with playing a direct role in its prominence.
Here’s a look at the top advantages of TQM:
- Fewer errors and product defects. Since TQM involves meticulously error-proofing every single process, companies that utilize it boast fewer product defects and service errors, which is undoubtedly a plus.
- Highly satisfied customers. Once again, since TQM is all about improving quality and customer service, it often leads to delighted customers who turn into loyal brand ambassadors. This means they’ll promote your brand to their friends and colleagues, broadening your reach and generating more revenue.
- Cost savings. Another perk of rigorously improving workflows is the money you stand to save. With fewer defects and happy customers, you’ll save on expenses like replacements, repairs, field service, and customer support.
- A team that fires on all cylinders. Organizations that embody TQM often have incredibly talented staff who are A) very productive and B) consistently upskill themselves. Not only is this great for your bottom line, but it also makes your company an attractive draw for top talent.
What are the potential downsides of total quality management?
As stated previously, TQM is only for some businesses out there.
If you aren’t careful, TQM can lead to some drawbacks, such as:
- It’s all or nothing. TQM isn’t something you can partially implement, as it’s an all-or-nothing system. If you aren’t prepared to obtain 100% buy-in from staff, TQM may not be the right quality management system for you.
- It can be expensive. To do TQM correctly, you must invest in integrated software systems, training and development programs, and other expenses. If your organization has a small budget, TQM may be too costly.
- It’s a costly time commitment, too. TQM doesn’t start yielding results in a few months or even a year. A TQM strategy can take several years to bear fruit, which may be longer than some organizations are willing to wait.
These downsides may deter some types of businesses from pursuing TQM. However, it’s possible to dodge all these drawbacks with the right approach.
Concluding thoughts: Total quality management
I’ve covered a lot thus far, so it’s time to recap the main points:
- Total quality management is a quality control system where every employee takes part in continuously improving processes.
- Japan popularized the TQM model after working directly with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the father of modern quality control.
- The eight core principles of TQM strongly emphasize teamwork, system integration, and customer satisfaction.
- When done right, TQM can lead to delighted customers, cost savings, boosted productivity, and reduced errors.
- When done wrong, TQM can cause organizations to go over budget, and achieving the desired results can take a long time.
In summary, TQM is best used for larger manufacturing companies and service providers.
More resources:
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