*total quality management - *tqm Total quality management is a popular "quality management" concept. However, it is about much more than just assuring product or service quality. TQM is a business philosophy - a way of doing business. It describes ways to managing people and business processes to ensure complete customer satisfaction at every stage. TQM is often associated with the phrase - "doing the right things right, first time". This revision note summarises the main features of TQM. {draw:rect} Like most quality management concepts, TQM views "quality" entirely from the point of view of "the customer". All businesses have many types of customer. A customer can be someone "internal" to the business (e.g. a production employee working at the end of the production line is the "customer" of the employees involved earlier in the production process). A customer can also be "external to the business. This is the kind of customer you will be familiar with. When you fly with an airline you are their customer. When Tesco's buys products from food manufacturers, it is a customer. TQM recognises that all businesses require "processes" that enable customer requirements to be met. TQM focuses on the ways in which these processes can be managed - with two key objectives: TQM focuses strongly on the importance of the relationship between customers (internal and external) and supplier. These are known as the "quality chains” and they can be broken at any point by one person or one piece of equipment not meeting the requirements of the customer. Failure to meet the requirements in any part of a quality chain has a way of multiplying, and failure in one part of the system creates problems elsewhere, leading to yet more failure and problems, ...