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Total quality: getting TQM to work.

Article Excerpt
This checklist provides guidance for those who have mapped a total quality management strategy and are now seeking to implement it.

Definition

TQM is a way of managing which gives everyone in the organisation responsibility for delivering quality to the final customer; quality being described as "fitness for purpose" or as "delighting the customer". TQM views each task in the organisation as fundamentally a process which is in a customer/supplier relationship with the next process. The aim at each stage is to define and meet the customer's requirements maximising the satisfaction of the final consumer at the lowest possible cost.

Action checklist

1. Decide whether to run pilots

While you need to map a TQM strategy for the whole organisation, you will usually introduce it in stages. For the pilots select areas or functions which are significant and where you feel TQM will yield results within a year at most: those will be critical in selling TQM to the sceptics.

2. Monitor and evaluate the results of the pilots

Draw up a framework and appoint a management team to assess and evaluate the results of the pilots. What lessons can be learned, and how can these be applied in introducing TQM elsewhere in the organisation?

3. Decide which tools and techniques to use at each of...

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