History of TQM

Total Quality Management was developed in the mid 1940s by Dr. W. Edward Deming who at the time was an advisor in sampling at the Bureau of Census and later became a professor of statistics at the New York University Graduate School of Business Administration. He had little success convincing American businesses to adopt TQM but his management methods did gain success in Japan.

After World War II, General MacArthur took 200 scientists and specialists, including Dr. Deming, to Japan to help rebuild the country. While working on the Japanese census, Dr. Deming was invited by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers to give lectures on his statistical quality techniques. One of the attendees was a past professor to many of Japan’s CEOs. After attending the lectures, the professor told his CEO students that, if they wanted to turn Japan’s economy around in five years, they should attend Dr. Deming’s lectures on using statistics to achieve quality at a reduced cost. Many of the CEOs took the professor’s advice and attended the lectures. Eventually, many Japanese manufacturing companies adopted Dr. Deming’s theories and were able to produce quality products at reduced costs.

While the Japanese business world was concentrating on producing quality products, businesses in the United States were more concerned with producing large quantities of products. Their emphasis on quantity at the expense of quality let the Japanese, with their inexpensive, high quality products, gain a substantial foothold in American markets.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many American companies, including Ford, IBM, and Xerox, began adopting Dr Deming’s principles of Total Quality Management. This gradually led to their regaining some of the markets previously lost to the Japanese. Although Total Quality Management gained its prominence in the private sector, in recent years it has been adopted by some public organizations.

So far, this chapter has defined Total Quality Management, explored its origin, and explained how it emphasizes quality during production. Since quality is so important to any discussion of TQM, the next section explores this key element in detail.

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