Total Quality Management

History

TQM was born in the 1930s, with the application of statistical methods to the measurement of work tasks. The rigorous study of work calls to mind the inventor and engineer Frederick Taylor's notions of scientific management in the first decades of the twentieth century, but in the 1930s statisticians like Walter Shewhart developed more sophisticated ways of measuring work, using statistical control to measure the variation in any task or output (for instance, the number of errors in fabricating a thousand telephone receivers). Shewhart devised techniques to calculate acceptable numerical limits for any given task, allowing researchers and managers to pinpoint problem areas and explore possible causes in poor work design, materials, training, or other factors. During the 1940s, Deming began to apply Shewhart's methods (for instance, in the design of the 1940 federal census), but the United States' unrivalled postwar dominance meant that few U.S. business leaders felt any impetus to adopt or even learn such seemingly arcane statistical techniques.

Deming's ideas, however (and those of likeminded thinkers such as Joseph Juran) found fertile ground in Japan, which had been devastated by the war. In 1950, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers established the Deming Prize, and the phrase “made in Japan” began its remarkable thirtyyear transformation from signifying shoddiness to quality. By the early 1980s, Japanese firms and their products posed a serious competitive threat to U.S. businesses. An increasingly nervous United States seized on Deming and his ideas as the secret behind the Japanese miracle, and the potential salvation of U.S. business. In the 1980s and 1990s, many U.S. organizations embraced TQM. In Europe, TQM efforts were driven less by the need for postwar rebuilding, as in Japan, or by a sense of crisis, as in the United States, as by ongoing efforts to modernize European business culture. The European Foundation for Quality Management, founded in 1988, has played a leading role in encouraging businesses across Europe to embrace TQM ideas, in part by awarding the prestigious European Quality Awards.

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