do it as ITAC. Issue, theory , application , conclusion . the chapter is here refers to the total ability of a product or service to meet customer expectations. Quality is about understanding customer requirements and ensuring that performance specifications are delivered. The surge of interest in managing quality has developed into two broad camps: those taking a total quality control (TQC) approach and those taking a total quality management (TQM) approach.48 These approaches share many of the same methods, but TQC tends to view quality management as needing a specialist team of quality engineers whereas TQM sees quality management as more of a movement and philosophical commitment led by the chief executive and involving everyone in the organisation. Total quality control Quality control is defined as the strategy for minimising errors by managing each stage of production. Quality control techniques were developed in the 1930s at Bell Telephone Labs by Walter Shewart, who used statistical sampling to locate errors by testing just some (rather than all) of the items in a particular production run. This saves inspection costs but still means that production goes on until errors are detected. Total quality control includes the following elements: Statistical quality control—the use of control charts and other statistical techniques to monitor work processes and identify any deviation from expected quality standards. Quality assurance—the key difference between control and assurance is that quality assurance focuses on ensuring that errors and faults do not occur in the first place. This involves a formal management system for managing quality, such as that recommended by the ISO9000 series of quality standards (see Chapter 14). Quality circles—a team-based approach to finding ways to resolve quality problems. Total quality management: creating an organisation dedicated to continuous improvement Total quality management can make use of many of the same tools as total quality control but remains closer to the larger philosophies of the two American quality gurus W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran. W. Edwards Deming Desperate to rebuild its war-devastated economy, Japan eagerly received mathematician W. Edwards Deming’s lectures on ‘good management’. Deming believed that quality stemmed from ‘constancy of purpose’—steady focus on an organisation’s mission—along with statistical measurement and reduction of variations in production processes. He also thought that managers should stress teamwork, be helpful rather than simply give orders and make employees feel comfortable about asking questions. In addition, Deming proposed his so-called 85:15 rule—namely, when things go wrong, there is an 85 per cent chance that the system is at fault, only a 15 per cent chance that the individual worker is at fault. (The ‘system’ would include not only machinery and equipment but also management and rules.) Most of the time, he thought, managers erroneously blamed individuals rather than the system. Page 65Joseph M. Juran Another pioneer with Deming in Japan’s quality revolution was Joseph M. Juran, who defined quality as ‘fitness for use’. By this, he meant that a product or service should satisfy a customer’s real needs. Thus, the best way to focus a company’s efforts, Juran suggested, was to concentrate on the real needs of customers. TQM: What it is From the work of Deming and Juran has come the strategic commitment to quality known as total quality management. Total quality management (TQM) is a comprehensive approach—led by top management and supported throughout the organisation—dedicated to continuous quality improvement, training and customer satisfaction. This gives TQM a much bigger emphasis on cultural change than does a TQC approach, which relies to a greater degree on quality experts than engaging the entire organisation in a mission to improve quality. The four components of TQM are as follows: Make continuous improvement a priority. TQM companies are never satisfied. They make small, incremental improvements an everyday priority in all areas of the organisation. By improving everything a little bit of the time all the time, the company can achieve long-term quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Get every employee involved. To build teamwork, trust and mutual respect, TQM companies see that every employee is involved in the continuous improvement process. This requires that workers must be trained and empowered to find and solve problems. Listen to and learn from customers and employees. TQM companies pay attention to their customers, the people who use their products or services. In addition, employees within the companies listen to and learn from other employees, those outside their own work areas. Use accurate standards to identify and eliminate problems. TQM organisations are always alert to how competitors do things better, then try to improve on them—a process known as benchmarking. Using these standards, they apply statistical measurements to their own processes to identify problems. Quality management today Quality management is included among our modern management ideas as it is another idea that was promoted as having universal applicability. TQM was at its peak of popularity in the early 1990s.49 One indicator of this is the decline of interest in business excellence. Business excellence started in 1987 with the Malcolm Baldrige Award in the US, which was adapted by the Australian Quality Council as the Australian Business Excellence Framework. These business excellence models and a similar one developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management were initially seen as ways of getting managers to ‘demonstrate excellence in the management of quality as their fundamental process for continuous improvement’. An award survives in Australia, but it now attracts comparatively little attention. Why quality management is important The quality management viewpoint has helped many organisations get closer to the just-in-time ideal. Few organisations can expect to survive without managing their quality, but today companies are more likely to adopt a more piecemeal approach to quality management than embrace TQM and its implications of building a culture solely around quality management.50 TQC has been given impetus through the development of Six Sigma, although this rigorous application of quality control is for a few organisations only