Talk:Total quality management

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Scope of TQM

TQM article refers to its use in government, but where & when has it been used and where can these reports/articles be found?

TQM is not limited in its application

What does this mean? And who makes this claim?

And while we're at it, is "total quality management" a generic term like "software development", or is it "Total Quality Management" (proper noun)? If it's the latter, then who developed it? Who espouses / promotes it? How much does it cost?

How is TQM different from "quality control"?

Most of all, what evidence is there that this is not just another industry buzzword? We're trying to run an encyclopedia here, and people who want to know what TQM is, apart from the hype, will come here to find out. Uncle Ed 13:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

TQM is management philosophy, much like scientific management, administrative management, and human relations management. It describes the principles that managers use to run an organization or unit. Quality control generally refers to a function of an organization. TQ

M is a generic term, but it is usually capitalized. I'm not sure why, other than just tradition. Note that Management by objectives is usually capitalized in spite of also being a generic term. TQM is usually credited with being started by W. Edwards Deming, although h e based the principles of TQM off of what he learned from others.

I don't think that he came up with the name "Total Quality Management", but he did use it in the later part of his career (after he came to the U.S.). I think that it has enough credibility to be more than just a buzzword. It's been around in Japan since the 1950s, and it's been in use in the U.S. since the 1980s. It's hard to say what companies have used it since it is a philosophy of operations rather than a specific product. From my understanding, it is quite common in Japan. I know that some well-known U.S. companies that have been credited as using TQM principles have been Xerox and Saturn. --Cswrye 01:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC).

liam (talk) 12:12, 12 June 2008 (UTC) what is TQM exactly?

Dr. Deming reacted very strongly in a negative manner when anyone attempted to link him with TQM.

"Dr. Deming meets the interpreted Deming... I recall one particular seminar held in California about five years ago. The audience had participated in group discussions and some members of the audience were asked to report on their groups' work in a discussion session. Dr. Deming was sitting on the platform listening to the discussion.

One man began to talk about his organization's total quality management (TQM) program. At one point, he referred to Dr. Deming as the "father of TQM." In reaction to the man's description of TQM, Dr. Deming said, "Where did you hear that? You didn't hear it here!" After repeated comments from Dr. Deming, the man finally realized that he should leave the talking to someone else."

Please see the following sources:

Getting back to Deming

Deming Takes Issue With TQM

This article includes some very sweeping statements. I would say that is because it has been used in different senses over time. In one, there is a view of quality of a product or service, and how to manage that effectively. As with many other things, some causes of quality issues can be traced to other parts of the organization, and perhaps all of them. This may persuade management that the company needs cross-functional improvement of processes and managing in that way may increase the company's success. Some have used that to proclaim that "TQM" is a panacea. It may be a good way to focus a company's efforts, but so can many other things. I suggest reducing the scope of the article to actual product and service quality issues, perhaps having a section about how it was used as an overarching management philosophy by some companies.Wilhkar (talk) 21:07, 20 February 2010 (UTC)wilhkar

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)

Spam or necessary?

Does anyone else see the attributions and two links to John Stark as useful or link spam? After all, why is an unknown consultant used as the definition reference? Ehusman 01:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC

Suggestion to combine articles

Do it! Lou Sander 15:10, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The article on Quality Management is actually mainly about Quality Management Systems (QMSs) such as the ISO9000 family. These are related to "quality" in the TQM sense of the word in the same way that meat is related to a healthy balanced diet - i.e. a QMS can form a useful component of achieving quality, but will not do it on its own and can certainly be omitted altogether. The cleverest idea behind QMS was the name, as it promises much more than these systems actually deliver - if ISO9000 had been called "Implementing management systems for encouraging consistent production and rigorous audit" it might not have propagated industry at quite the same rate. (Always remember that ISO operates by inventing standards and then marketing them - that is its raison d'être.) TQM, on the other hand, is indeed very much about promoting quality in the sense that the average Joe understands it. For these articles to be combined in the world's leading encyclopedia IMHO would merely demonstrate the power of marketing over reason.Michael412 21:21, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

You've convinced me. Maybe rename Quality Management as Quality Management Systems, and include some of your insights. Lou Sander 02:22, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

TQM is a engineiring term which is completely different from quality management; it's ridiculous that someone would suggest merging them.

Don't agree with combining them. Quality management is the broad, generic term. TQM is a specific technique for quality management. There are plenty of other techniques, and to suggest they are synonymous is incorrect. They aren't. JB

This article should link to Quality Management Systems, Quality Control, Quality Assurance, but should retain its own identity. Matt Whyndham 17:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

TQM Tools

So now that we know what TQM is, shouldn't we include some of the TQM tools used to empower employees and implement this concept? Some techniques particularly helpful in the TQM effort are:

a) Tools for Generating Ideas: Check Sheet, Scatter Diagram, Cause and Effect Diagram, b) Tools to Organize the Data: Pareto Charts, Flow Charts (Process Diagram), and c) Tools for Identifying Problems: Histogram, Statistical Process Control Chart

Freddy07 21:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)freddy07

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to support move. JPG-GR (talk) 00:24, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:MOS, replace two capitals with lowercase characters. -- Iterator12n 20:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC) Below, the disagreement with the proposal boils down to the definition of proper noun. A proper noun has the quality to distinguish one individual (material or immaterial) among a species. The proponents of Total Quality Management would like the reader to believe that TQM is a sharply defined doctrine – it’s not, according to the skeptics. (Skeptics are not necessarily opponents.) With the article’s title undoubtedly remaining as it is, Misplaced Pages violates WP:NPOV. Never mind. -- Iterator12n 17:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. Although at first glance this proposal would seem to be in accord with WP:NC#Lowercase, there is an exception where "the title is almost always capitalized in English" and I believe that applies in this case. TQM is the name of a specific business management philosophy popular especially in the 1980s and 90s (in the U.S.) and is more a akin to a proper noun than a descriptive phrase. It seems to be almost always capitalized in the relevant professional literature. Ex: "The term “Total Quality Management” has lost favor in the United States in recent years: “Quality management” is commonly substituted." "In the 1980s to the 1990s, a new phase of quality control and management began. This became known as Total Quality Management (TQM)." Also here Station1 (talk) 03:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. TQM is always capitalized. Binksternet (talk) 19:34, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. Agree that it should be capitalised, in terms of the MOS. Andrewa (talk) 01:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. The term refers to the title of a particular doctrine. It is not to be read by taking the ordinary meaning of each of the words. It's like a proper noun; it's the name of something. - Richard Cavell (talk) 05:39, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

From the extended nomination above...

the disagreement with the proposal boils down to the definition of proper noun... Well, sort of, but not entirely. But we're here to build an encyclopedia, and splitting hairs on definitions is (sometimes but) rarely productive. My question is, what best describes the article subject, in terms of WP:NC? If our definition of a proper noun doesn't support this, then it's the policy etc that should change. But personally, I still think the definitions etc we're using support the use of caps here.

With the article’s title undoubtedly remaining as it is, Misplaced Pages violates WP:NPOV. Disagree. I share your skepticism of TQM, having been trained in it and many other similar methodologies over the years. The motivation was great, the facilitators were great (and expensive), the exercises were great, but frankly the team could have used many different methodologies to get the same returns. TQM didn't get too badly in the way and provided a short-term focus to get us working together, and whether the theory had any validity at all didn't affect its success one way or another. It did have some, but it wasn't my place to criticise it, or even to evaluate it. I was being paid (also quite well) just to implement it, and I made it work in my areas of responsibility, as did most of the organisation, and so the bottom line grew for as long as we did.

But that's my POV. I shouldn't now express this POV by trying to bend the naming conventions to reduce the value of this Misplaced Pages coverage to TQM promoters. Andrewa (talk) 20:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

PS Personally I'd call the article TQM, which was its name until 2003, it was the term used in the earliest texts and their titles, and the only one I've heard used except in affected and dramatised contexts. We don't spell out IBM, do we? Andrewa (talk) 21:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I can find myself in much of what you write. Funny as it may look at first sight, I'm perfectly happy using the symbol TQM for "total quality management," and it would seem perfectly alright to use the symbol for the name of the article. Cheers. -- Iterator12n 21:54, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Another example of a term in lower case characters that produces an uppercase symbol used for an article name is deoxyribonucleic acid > DNA. -- Iterator12n 05:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Copyedit

I copyedited this article for style and grammar. I am not an expert in business terminology, but I believe that I have understood the original intentions of the article. Please contact me if you would like to question any of my changes. Lovek323 (talk) 04:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

possible lifecycle section

It seems like this section adds nothing to the reader's knowledge of the subject, and is out of date since the term is no longer in widespread use. Wilhkar (talk) 20:59, 20 February 2010 (UTC)wilhkar

Irony

I seriously can't be the only person that finds this hilariously ironic. :3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.112.167.216 (talk) 06:55, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is soo "hilariously ironic" about a business concept. Do tell. Dmalsobrook27 (talk) 10:41, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

TQM and Six Sigma

I have added a small section about the difference between Six Sigma and TQM. Feel free to expand on it. I didn't want to add any personal opinion about either (Six Sigma and TQM each excel in different industries). Thanks for your time! Qualityhoney (talk) 05:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Major additions

Hi, I apologize for not warning you all before I started making so many changes. I have increased the size of the introduction, added a Historical Overview section, and started a Methods section...plus added a bunch of citations as I went along. Please feel free to add to anything. The methods sections in particular is unfinished. I want it to have the different views of all the main contributors. Let me know if the methods section sounds too much like the individual persons' articles. I felt the information I pulled from each of them was necessary to understanding the TQM. Also, I want to expand the TQM and Six Sigma section. I think it needs more introduction as well. Dmalsobrook27 (talk) 10:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Article is a total mess and fails to even explain what TQM is; candidate for deletion?

Update: Okay, I've figured out how to nominate the article for deletion and done so. Below is what I originally wrote. In summary, the reason I think this should be deleted is that none of the sentences have any discernible meaning but instead are just jumbles of undefined jargon words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.92.145 (talk) 19:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't even know where to start listing everything that is wrong with this article. It just doesn't actually tell you anything, and the writing style is appalling. Every single sentence has a problem with it.

  Since the late 1980s, firms around the world have launched Total Quality Management (TQM) programs

Wouldn't it make sense to tell the reader what TQM is before telling them about when and where it is used?

  in an attempt to retain or regain competitiveness in order to achieve customer satisfaction

I thought businesses attempted to satisfy customers in order to stay competitive, not the other way round.

 in the face of increasing competition from around the world in this era of globalization

This sounds like something out of an advert and doesn't add any information to the sentence.

 TQM is an integrative philosophy of management

What does that mean? I can't even find a definition of 'integrative' in the business sense anywhere on Google.

 for continuously improving the quality of products and processes

Okay, so we finally find out the purpose of TQM at the end of a fairly difficult and tiring first paragraph. Shouldn't this be the first thing about TQM we are told?

 TQM functions on the premise that the quality of the products and processes is the responsibility of everyone who is involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by the organization

How so? What does this actually mean?

 In other words, TQM capitalizes on the involvement of management, workforce, suppliers, and even customers

Involvement in what? What kind of involvement? How does TQM capitalize on that involvement? I thought TQM was a philosophy of management; how does a philosophy capitalize on something? This is gibberish.

 in order to meet or exceed customer expectations

Besides the fact that this again sounds like an advert, it once again is sufficiently vague to not really mean anything. For starters, is meeting or exceeding customer expectations merely the objective or is it something that has been observed to happen when firms use TQM? If so, how often - always, usually, sometimes? What kind of expectations are we talking about here?

 Considering the practices of TQM

What does that mean?

 as discussed in six empirical studies

Studies of what? Discussed in what way?

 Cua, McKone, and Schroeder

Who are they and are they accepted as an authority on the subject?

 identified the nine common TQM practices

Again, what does this mean?

 cross-functional product design, process management, supplier quality management, customer involvement, information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-functional training, and employee involvement

What do any of those terms mean in this context?

By the end of the first section of the article, I still have no idea what TQM is, mainly because most of the sentences are devoid of actual meaning.

Then the article gets worse as we enter the six sigma section.

 The Six Sigma process improvement

Wait, Six Sigma is a 'process improvement'? What does that mean here, exactly? According to the Six Sigma page, it's a 'business management strategy'. That doesn't sound like a 'process improvement' to me.

 originated in 1986 from Motorola’s drive towards reducing defects by minimizing variation in processes through metrics measurement

Defects in what? Minimizing what kind of variation in which processes? Measuring what metrics? How does that relate to minimizing variation?

 Applications of the Six Sigma project execution methodology

What's that?

 have since expanded to include practices

What does it mean for an application of a methodology to expand to include a practice?

 common in Total Quality Management and Supply Chain Management

What is Supply Chain Management and how is it relevant?

 such as increasing customer satisfaction

How is that a practice? It sounds more like an outcome.

 The main difference between TQM and Six Sigma (a newer concept)

Wait, TQM started in 'the late 1980s', and Six Sigma started in 1986, but is newer?

 TQM tries to improve quality by ensuring conformance to internal requirements, while Six Sigma focuses on improving quality by reducing the number of defects and impurities

What do each of those mean, and how are they different from each other?

The whole article is just shit. Nowhere is it explained what TQM is or how it works. We don't know who uses it or how. How Six Sigma is even relevant to TQM is not clear, yet the section on Six Sigma is almost half the article. Can somebody please nominate this for deletion?

TQM is a very important concept, deleting the article is not the solution, and it is accurate enough, please try to fix stuff that you see broken in this article, rather than suggesting deletion.Pm master 19:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing to 'fix'. This article has no meaningful content, it's completely incomprehensible, so there's no way anyone can 'fix' the broken stuff. To quote Misplaced Pages:Patent_nonsense, "If the meaning cannot be identified, it is impossible to accurately copy-edit the text". I find the claim that the article is 'accurate' laughable when it's impossible to discern the meaning of it. At best, someone who knows something about the topic and can find some good sources (I don't and can't) could possibly write a new article on TQM to replace this one if the concept is indeed important as you claim, but the article is useless as it stands and doesn't provide a basis for a fresh article. Unless you can explain what at least some of the sentences in the article mean, I'm going to reinstate the deletion tag.

Unless you can explain what at least some of the sentences in the article mean, I'm going to reinstate the deletion tag. First please drop the attitude, this is not the place. Since "you don't and you can't" then my guess is that you know absolutely nothing about the topic. I have read all your points and, with the exception of one, none made sense. The article needs to be expanded, not deleted. Feel free to expand it if you feel you know something about the topic. PS: The concept is important, check the top of the page "This article has been rated as High-priority on the project's priority scale." Pm master 23:15, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with you though that the first paragraph should be either rewritten or completely removed. Pm master 23:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, fair enough on the attitude, I was being a bit snarky and there was no need. I apologise for that. You're also correct that I know nothing about TQM besides what I can find on Google. I'm not really sure why you say that only one of my points made sense (which one, btw?) since they seem pretty clear to me; essentially, I don't fully understand what a single sentence in this article means despite making an effort, and I'm fairly sure that's because it's gibberish. I maintain that unless somebody can explain the intended meaning of some of the sentences in the article so they can be rewritten in a comprehensible way, it needs to be deleted or substantially trimmed and rewritten as a stub. Here's what little meaning I've been able to get out of the article so far (with questions from me in brackets):

Total Quality Management is a management strategy for improving the quality of products or processes (how?). It involves management, the workforce, suppliers and customers (how does it involve them?).

A related management strategy is Six Sigma, which is also a strategy for improving quality (of what?). Six Sigma does so by reducing the number of defects and impurities (in what? How?).

Can you answer the questions in brackets above, and can you translate any of the other sentences in the article into intelligible English? If not, I'm still inclined to reinstate a deletion tag (but I'll let you have your say first). 86.145.92.145 (talk) 00:13, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I understand. For the first question, the answer is to elaborate on the points, if the "how" is not discussed then it doesn't mean we have to delete the article. So what we need is to expand the article. As for the second question, Six sigma also improves the quality of the product/process. It reduces the defects and impurities in the product/process. Detailing how Six Sigma reduces the defects and impurities is outside the scope of this article, refer to the Six Sigma article for more. I hope I answered your questions.Pm master 00:34, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Article cleanup and removal of things that don't make sense

I've made significant changes to the article in order to improve the English and writing style, and to remove parts which simply don't make sense.

Firstly, I've removed both the claim that TQM originated in the late 1980s and the claim that Six Sigma, which originated in 1986, is 'newer', since these contradict each other so at least one must be false. I don't know which, so I'll leave someone to reintroduce one of the claims if they can source it.

Secondly, I've removed fluff from the first paragraph that didn't add any meaning, and stripped it down to the actual point that TQM is a management strategy which aims to improve the quality of products and processes. In particular:

I've removed the point about it being used 'around the world', since this is extremely vague
I've removed the point about it being used to 'retain or regain competitiveness in order to acheive customer satisfaction', since businesses (with the rare exceptions of altruistic ones whose primary objective is non-commercial) want to satisfy customers in order to get repeat business in order to be competitive, not the other way around
I've removed the irrelevant mentions of increasing competition and the 'era of globalisation'
I've removed the description of TQM as an 'integrative philosophy', since that term isn't defined in the article and I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

Thirdly, I've condensed the first two sentences of the second paragraph into one sentence which contains all the information that the old two did.

Fourthly, I've deleted this sentence entirely: "Considering the practices of TQM as discussed in six empirical studies, Cua, McKone, and Schroeder (2001) identified the nine common TQM practices as cross-functional product design, process management, supplier quality management, customer involvement, information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-functional training, and employee involvement."

I did so because I believe it is too unclear to add anything to the article. It is unclear because:

It's not clear what is meant by a 'TQM practice' or a 'practice of TQM'
It's not indicated what the 'empirical studies' were of, or how they were used by Cua, McKone, and Schroeder
It's not clear how the nine 'practices' listed are related to TQM
All of the nine practices listed are incredibly vague, and indeed some are things that are a necessary part of any kind of business anyway, such as 'employee involvement' or 'information and feedback'

Fifthly, I made several changes to the Six Sigma section:

I changed the section about Six Sigma to refer Six Sigma as a 'management strategy', as per the Six Sigma article, rather than as a 'process improvement', which doesn't make sense.
I removed 'by metrics measurement' for two reasons. Firstly, 'metrics measurement' is a tautology; a metric is a system of measurement, or a way of measuring something, so 'metrics measurement' literally means 'measuring things that you measure', or indeed simply 'measurement'. Secondly, you can't acheive anything simply by measurement; you need to act on the results of those measurements. So it doesn't make any sense to say that Six Sigma reduces variation by measuring things.
I deleted the entire second sentence of the section, because it's an incomprehensible mess. What on earth is 'Applications of the Six Sigma project execution methodology have since expanded to include practices common in Total Quality Management' supposed to mean?
I've deleted the final sentence, 'TQM tries to improve quality by ensuring conformance to internal requirements, while Six Sigma focuses on improving quality by reducing the number of defects and impurities', for two reasons. Firstly, 'reducing variation' and 'ensuring conformance' are synonyms, and we've already been told that Six Sigma aims to 'reduce variation', so saying that TQM DIFFERS from Six Sigma because it 'ensures confrmance' appears to be a logical contradiction. Secondly, according to the Six Sigma article, Six Sigma DEFINES quality in terms of the number/rate of defects, so saying that Six Sigma aims to improve quality by reducing the number of defects is again another tautology; you're simply saying that Six Sigma aims to reduce the number of defects by reducing the number of defects.

You've reduced the article to a stub, the article needs to be elaborated, and not the other way around. This is your first edit, and the article was written by many other contributors, your opinion still counts, but that doesn't mean you reduce the article to a stub just because you think it's better this way. Thanks.Pm master 12:13, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

You say I've reduced the article to a stub but I have barely removed any information. The only substantial removal was the bit about Cua, McKone and Schroeder. I wish you had responded to my actual points and said whether you consider them valid, and if not, why not.

I'm certainly not content to leave the article as it stands because, as explained above, there are parts that are tautological, contradictory, or simply don't make sense. If you think I've gone too far with the previous rewrite, I guess we can compromise and I'll leave in the stuff about Cua, McKone and Schroeder and some of the vaguer details, and leave the writing style alone except to fix grammar. I do think, however, that the following things really NEED to be changed:

1) The phrase 'in an attempt to retain or regain competitiveness in order to acheive customer satisfaction' should be removed because customer satisfaction isn't the objective of being competitive, nor does it result from it. '...in the face of increasing competition from around the world in this era of globalization' should be removed since it is irrelevant, and furthermore having that phrase in there suggests that the primary driving force for firms adopting TQM is international competition, which probably isn't true and at any rate needs to be sourced. In addition to the previous points, the references to competitiveness need to be removed because TQM is used not only by competitive commercial enterprises but also by non-commercial organisations such as government departments who are not involved in any kind of competition. Finally, we should remove the reference to 'firms' because TQM is, again, not limited to firms. Combined with point 2 below, this means the entire first sentence needs to be removed, although to ensure no actual content is lost, we can add in a sentence saying 'TQM is used around the world.' since this is the only other piece of info in the first sentence.

2) The claim that TQM began in the late 1980s should be removed since later in the article this is contradicted by the claim that it began before 1986 (since it predates Six Sigma). What's more, people have referred in the talk page to sources using the term Total Quality Management decades earlier than this, so clearly it is false.

3) 'The Six Sigma process improvement' needs to be changed to 'The Six Sigma management strategy', since Six Sigma is a management strategy, not a 'process improvement'.

4) 'through metrics measurement' needs to be removed since you can't improve things through measurement, and 'metrics measurement' is a tautology anyway.

5) 'Applications of the Six Sigma project execution methodology have since expanded to include practices common in Total Quality Management and Supply Chain Management, such as increasing customer satisfaction, and developing closer supplier relationships' needs to be removed because it simply doesn't make sense. I mean seriously, lets break that sentence down logically. An application is a use of something. A methodology is a system of methods, so a project execution methodology is a system of methods for carrying out projects. So the sentence literally means 'Ways of using Six Sigma's system of methods for carrying out projects have since expanded to include practices common in TQM, such as increasing customer satisfaction and developing closer supplier relationships'. This is patent nonsense. What can it possibly mean to say that increasing customer satisfaction has become an application of a project execution methodology?

6) The final sentence, 'TQM tries to improve quality by ensuring conformance to internal requirements, while Six Sigma focuses on improving quality by reducing the number of defects and impurities', needs to be removed because it contains both a contradiction and a tautology, as I already noted. The contradiction is the claim that Six Sigma differs from TQM because TQM works by 'ensuring conformance' but Six Sigma works by 'minimising variation', when these mean the same thing. The tautology is the claim that 'Six Sigma focuses on improving quality by reducing the number of defects and impurities', since in Six Sigma 'quality' is defined in terms of the number of defects and impurities, so really the sentence says 'Six Sigma focuses on improving quality by improving quality', or 'Six Sigma focuses on reducing the number of defects and impurities by reducing the number of defects and impurities'.

With this in mind I propose a more restrained rewrite, which only removes things that are demonstrably false, tautological, or nonsense, and makes no changes to the writing style otherwise. It is below. Since the changes here are entirely CORRECTIONS to the article, and not additions, removals, or style changes, I ask that you give clear reasons not to make each individual change if you object to the change. Otherwise, I will implement the new version in a couple of days.

TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes. It is used around the world.

TQM functions on the premise that the quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone who is involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by an organization. In other words, TQM capitalizes on the involvement of management, workforce, suppliers, and even customers, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. Considering the practices of TQM as discussed in six empirical studies, Cua, McKone, and Schroeder (2001) identified the nine common TQM practices as cross-functional product design, process management, supplier quality management, customer involvement, information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-functional training, and employee involvement.

== TQM and Six Sigma ==

The Six Sigma management strategy originated in 1986 from Motorola’s drive towards reducing defects by minimizing variation in processes.

The main difference between TQM and Six Sigma (a newer concept) is the approach.

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)

Ahire, S. L. 1997. Management Science- Total Quality Management interfaces: An integrative framework. Interfaces 27 (6) 91-105.
Cua, K. O., K. E. McKone, and R. G. Schroeder. 2001. Relationships between implementation of TQM, JIT, and TPM and manufacturing performance. Journal of Operations Management 19 (6) 675-694.
Anand, G., P. T. Ward, and M. V. Tatikonda. 2010. Role of explicit and tacit knowledge in six sigma projects: An empirical examination of differential project success. Journal of Operations Management 28 (4) 303-315.
"Six Sigma vs. Total Quality Management". Retrieved April 19, 2010.

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