Total quality management (TQM) consists of organization-wide efforts to "install and make permanent climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on demand products and services that customers will find of particular value." "Total" emphasizes that departments in addition to production are obligated to improve their operations; "management" emphasizes that executives are obligated to actively manage quality through funding, training, staffing, and goal setting. While there is no widely agreed-upon approach, TQM efforts typically draw heavily on the previously developed tools and techniques of quality control. TQM enjoyed widespread attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s before being overshadowed by ISO 9000, Lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma.
The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of QMS, including the seven quality management principles that underlie the family of standards. ISO 9001 deals with the requirements that organizations wishing to meet the standard must fulfill. ISO 9002 is a model for quality assurance in production and installation. ISO 9003 for quality assurance in final inspection and test. ISO 9004 gives guidance on achieving sustained organizational success.
ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.
Six Sigma (6σ) is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986.
Kaoru Ishikawa was a Japanese organizational theorist and a professor in the engineering faculty at the University of Tokyo noted for his quality management innovations. He is considered a key figure in the development of quality initiatives in Japan, particularly the quality circle. He is best known outside Japan for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram, often used in the analysis of industrial processes.
Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service consistently functions well. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality, but also on the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. Quality control is also part of quality management. What a customer wants and is willing to pay for it, determines quality. It is a written or unwritten commitment to a known or unknown consumer in the market. Quality can be defined as how well the product performs its intended function.
Lean government refers to the application of Lean Manufacturing principles and methods to both identify and then implement the most efficient, value added way to provide government services. Government agencies have found that when Lean is implemented, they see an improved understanding of how their own processes work, that it facilitates the quick identification and implementation of improvements and that it builds a culture of continuous improvement.
Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks.
ISO/IEC 20000 is the international standard for IT service management. It was developed in 2005 by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 and revised in 2011 and 2018. It was originally based on the earlier BS 15000 that was developed by BSI Group.
Donald W. Marquardt was an American statistician, the rediscoverer of the Levenberg–Marquardt nonlinear least squares fitting algorithm.
AS9100 is a widely adopted and standardized quality management system for the aerospace industry. It was released in October, 1999, by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the European Association of Aerospace Industries.
IATF 16949:2016 is a technical specification aimed at the development of a quality management system which provides for continual improvement, emphasizing defect prevention and the reduction of variation and waste in the automotive industry supply chain and assembly process. It is based on the ISO 9001 standard and the first edition was published in June 1999 as ISO/TS 16949:1999. IATF 16949:2016 replaced ISO/TS 16949 in October 2016.
The British Standards Institution (BSI) is the national standards body of the United Kingdom. BSI produces technical standards on a wide range of products and services and also supplies certification and standards-related services to businesses.
In business, engineering, and manufacturing, quality – or high quality – has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or superiority of something ; it is also defined as being suitable for the intended purpose while satisfying customer expectations. Quality is a perceptual, conditional, and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people. Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly. Support personnel may measure quality in the degree that a product is reliable, maintainable, or sustainable. In such ways, the subjectivity of quality is rendered objective via operational definitions and measured with metrics such as proxy measures.
ISO/IEC 29110: Systems and Software Life Cycle Profiles and Guidelines for Very Small Entities (VSEs) International Standards (IS) and Technical Reports (TR) are targeted at Very Small Entities (VSEs). A Very Small Entity (VSE) is an enterprise, an organization, a department or a project having up to 25 people. The ISO/IEC 29110 is a series of international standards and guides entitled "Systems and Software Engineering — Lifecycle Profiles for Very Small Entities (VSEs)". The standards and technical reports were developed by working group 24 (WG24) of sub-committee 7 (SC7) of Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission.
Japanese Standards Association is the Japanese industrial standard development organization. JSA promotes standardization and management system in Japan through the following activities:
ISO 37001Anti-bribery management systems - Requirements with guidance for use, is a management system standard published by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2016. As the title suggests, this standard sets out the requirements for the establishment, implementation, operation, maintenance, and continual improvement of an anti-bribery management system (ABMS). It also provides guidance on the actions and approaches organizations can take to adhere to the requirements of this standard.
Debashis Sarkar is an Indian author, columnist and management consultant. He is the author of 11 books, including Building a Lean Service Enterprise – Reflections of a Lean Management Practitioner (2016), How Can I Help You – 5 Mistakes to Avoid in Customer Service (2013), Lessons in Lean Management (2012), Lean for Service Organizations and Offices–Holistic Approach for Achieving Operational Excellence (2008), 5S for Service Organizations and Offices–A Lean Look at Improvement (2006) and Lessons in Six Sigma (2004). He is noted for his work in Lean management and Operational excellence. Sarkar is an American Society for Quality (ASQ) Fellow. In recognition of his book, Lessons in Lean Management (2012), he was awarded the ASQ Crosby Medal in 2014. For his contribution to the field of quality, he also received the first D.L. Shah Quality Champion Platinum Award from Quality Council of India for the year 2017–2018. He has been credited for conceptualizing the DEB-LOREX Model.
Thomas Pyzdek is an American author and management consultant. He is best known for being an advocate of operational excellence and is an author of several books, hundreds of articles and papers on those topics.
Georgios (George) Anastasopoulos is a Greek-American Engineer, PhD, resident of Los Angeles, California, USA.
