Talk:Total quality management/Archives/2013

The BI++ Methodology
Does this section look highly suspect? It's uncited and looks suspiciously like self promotion. Only a few salient hits on Google and the text is the same. Lurkazoid (talk) 05:46, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

TQM and Performance for SMEs
What does "SME" stand for? Small and medium enterprises, Social market economy or something else? Must be clarified in the following paragraph. SV1XV (talk) 09:14, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Origin of TQM name
Retired United States Air Force (Tactical Air Command) General Bill Creech claim in his book that he coined the term "Total Quality Management," in early 1980's. (page 6 of The Five Pillars of TQM, Bill Creech, Trumen Talley Books, New York 1995, ISBN 0-452-27102-9 ). At the time Japanese automobile manufactures were grabbing a greater share of the American market with cars of higher quality then American cars. Creech claim he created TQM without knowing of Deming's or Juran's works. He devised the term from a total approach to put quality in every aspect of management. The name then spread throughout the United States Department of Defense.

TQM was popular from about 1985 to 1995. It has since been replaced by other methods (such as Six Sigma). TQM was a group of techniques used to improve an organization. It typically included:


 * Company wide quality control ("TQM is not limited in its application"


 * Continuous quality improvement
 * Total customer satisfaction or service
 * Total employee involvement
 * Integrated process management

(See The Quality Book, by Greg Hutchins, published by QPE, Portland OR. 199

Although based on sound principles TQM ultimately faded away. It began to be thought of as a fad or hype that did not produce results. The reason for TQM's failure are discussed in Hutchins' book and in Juan's book, Juran on Quality by Design, J.M. Juran, The Free Press, 1992, ISBN 0-02-916683 7. Reason include the long time needed to see result (it can take up to six years, not a quick fx), poor definition the goals, lack of top management buy-in, vague plans, fear (will I engineer myself out of a job?), confusion (TQM uses a mixture of techniques and principle that managers may not understand), and poor definition of responsibilities. RustySpear 00:44, 11 January 2006


 * If that is true, General Creech is self-promoting. The phrase Total Quality Control was used by A. V. Feigenbaum as early as the 1951 publication of his book, Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration..  In any case, Deming was teaching Shewhart's principles, and even he attributed much to Shewhart.  Deming was a popularizer and probably better known than other pioneers because the Japanese quality revolution forced Americans to rediscover what had been developed here - something that was attributed to Deming, but also included Training Within Industry and the incredible Japanese advancements.  Ehusman 01:04, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


 * For posterity, Creech simply claims that he invented his own TQM around the same time that the TQM came into existence. Here are the quotes:
 * p.6 "I have long used the "Five Pillars" as a way of describing the need for a broad foundation for TQM. In fact, the depiction opposite is of the slide I used in my first speech to a business seeking my advice when I joined the business world (from the Air Force) in early 1985."
 * p.6 "I concocted the TQM logo on the book's jacket, and on my speech slides such as this one, back in January 1985, when I gave the first of many speeches to business audiences on the subject. "TQM" wasn't a term in use back then.  The literature on the quality approach, such as it was, centered on such overarching descriptors as "Concurrent Engineering," "Design-build Teams," and "Lean Production."
 * p.7 "Accordingly, I dubbed what I had done to transform organizations "TQM," and used the Five Pillars as one means of emphasizing the "Total" part of the title."
 * p.7 "I'm not staking a claim here as father of the term "TQM." Who cares?  I am, however, staking my claim to describing it as I have seen it in action in its most successful form."
 * p.476 "Incidentally, my use of the term "Total Quality Management" owes nothing in its lineage whatsoever to the Total Quality Control of either Feigenbaum or Ishikawa. I had heard of neither one, nor of their concepts, when I was practicing the Five Pillar variety of TQM successfully—or when I chose the terms Total Quality Management—and TQM—to describe what my quality-focused and decentralization-oriented management style was all about."
 * -- DanielPenfield (talk) 01:28, 3 December 2013 (UTC)