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Total quality management (TQM) is a management approach in which people across an organization continually improve processes, products, services, and the culture they work in, with customer satisfaction as the goal. It is a philosophy, not a certification, a software package, or a fixed set of tools. The American Society for Quality (ASQ) notes that the term is used less often in the United States than it once was, but its ideas now appear in quality management systems (QMS), ISO standards, quality awards, Lean, and Six Sigma.
What TQM means in practice
ASQ describes TQM as a management system for a customer-focused organization that engages all employees in continual improvement. It uses strategy, data, and effective communication to carry quality through processes, products, services, and organizational culture. The word “total” describes scope. Responsibility is spread across functions and roles, while leadership sets direction and creates the conditions for people to take part.
Customer satisfaction is the organizing aim, not a promise. A company using TQM links customer expectations to how work is designed, checks whether that work meets those expectations, and feeds the results back into the next round of changes. No approach guarantees that every customer will be satisfied or that every process can be made perfect.
ASQ’s organizational resource page puts the core idea this way: “TQM is a term first used to describe a management approach to quality improvement.” That page does not state a publication date.
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The eight TQM principles
ASQ presents eight principles. They are the most useful checklist for understanding what a TQM effort is supposed to contain.
| Principle | What it asks of an organization |
|---|---|
| Customer focus | Understand customer needs and deliver value that meets or exceeds expectations. |
| Employee involvement | Invite participation across roles, backed by training, empowerment, and accountability. |
| Process approach | Understand and improve the processes that produce results. |
| Integrated system | Align organizational processes around common quality objectives. |
| Strategic and systematic approach | Connect quality work to long-term organizational goals. |
| Continual improvement | Improve processes, products, and services on an ongoing basis. |
| Fact-based decision making | Use accurate data and objective analysis rather than assumptions. |
| Communication | Build shared understanding, transparency, engagement, and collaboration. |
Do not confuse this list with ISO’s. The seven quality management principles behind ISO 9001:2015 are customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision making, and relationship management. The two lists overlap but are not identical. They are separate frameworks, not competing versions of one authoritative list.
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Where the idea came from
ASQ traces TQM to postwar quality work. W. Edwards Deming taught statistical analysis and control methods in Japan, and ASQ also credits Joseph Juran, Armand Feigenbaum, Philip Crosby, and Kaoru Ishikawa as major contributors. According to ASQ’s history account, the U.S. response that combined statistical methods with approaches involving the entire organization became known as TQM. The same account places the publication of the ISO 9000 series and the establishment of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1987.
The term has since faded from common U.S. usage. Its principles now show up under other labels, which is why a reader may meet the same ideas inside a QMS, a quality award application, or a Lean or Six Sigma program.
How TQM compares with related approaches
People often mix these terms up, so the table below separates what each one is and the question it answers.
| Approach | What it is | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| TQM | An organization-wide management philosophy centered on customer satisfaction and participation in continual improvement. | How does quality become everyone’s ongoing work? |
| QMS / ISO 9001 | A structured system of quality policies, processes, responsibilities, and objectives. ISO 9001 sets requirements for a QMS. | Is there a documented, auditable system behind our quality work? |
| Lean | An improvement approach that seeks to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. | Where is value lost as work flows through the organization? |
| Six Sigma | A data-driven approach to improving products and services by reducing defects. | Where do defects come from, and how can they be measured and reduced? |
ISO notes that organizations can choose one approach or integrate several to fit their needs. A reasonable way to read the table is that TQM is the broadest of the four, while the others are narrower methods or formal requirements that can operate inside a TQM effort.
How an organization starts
ASQ’s QMS guidance describes a seven-step sequence: design, build, deploy, control, measure, review, and improve. Before moving through those steps, ASQ advises the following:
- Start with the approaches the organization already uses to manage quality and meet customer expectations.
- Map those existing approaches against a suitable framework.
- Decide which gaps are worth closing, weighing each against its potential benefit.
- Design the system to reflect the organization’s objectives, needs, products, and services.
ISO highlights six practical building blocks: leadership commitment, documented processes, defined metrics, initial and ongoing staff training, regular self-audits, and review of system performance. ISO also cautions that establishing and sustaining a QMS takes planning, execution, and commitment across several areas at once.
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- Adding forms or software before the organization understands its customer needs and processes.
- Choosing measures that track activity rather than the outcomes the organization is trying to manage.
- Treating audits as inspection of finished output, rather than as a way to examine processes and the system behind them.
Benefits and what the evidence shows
ASQ and ISO list possible benefits of effective quality management: better customer satisfaction, more consistent processes, fewer errors and less waste, improved efficiency, staff engagement, and continual evaluation. These are possible outcomes, not guaranteed effects of adopting the TQM label.
The most concrete survey data comes from ASQ’s 2024 Insights on Excellence benchmarking highlights, based on respondents from 2022 and 2023. These are reported survey findings. They are not an experiment, they do not measure how widely TQM has been adopted, and they do not show that TQM caused any business result.
- 42% of Operations respondents selected subpar internal or operational processes as a challenging ongoing quality issue, from a list of 21 options.
- 47% said their quality strategy promoted or enabled continual process improvement.
- 37% said their quality strategy improved corporate systems.
- 26% said their quality strategy aligned all organizational levels.
- 29% cited lack of shared learning, information, and knowledge as a challenge for their quality programs.
The limits follow from the framework itself. A TQM effort depends on leadership commitment, staff participation, and sustained measurement. A poorly run program can add paperwork without improving anything customers notice.
What this means for personal finance readers
Most readers of a personal-finance site will meet TQM in company profiles, annual reports, or discussions of employers and suppliers. A company that mentions a quality management system, an ISO 9001 audit, or a quality award is describing how it manages its processes. That is useful context, but it does not show that the company is financially sound, that its prices are fair, or that its customers are happy. Read those claims alongside the financial statements, not in place of them.
The logic also transfers to a household. TQM’s core steps are to write down a routine, decide which outcome matters, measure it, and review it on a schedule. A monthly bill review or a savings check-in can follow the same pattern, provided you apply it to your own budget rather than treating the framework as a rule set.
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