Total Quality Management

Jean-Baptite Colbert, the great minister of King Louis XIW, wrote in 1664, "If our factories could, through care, impose the superior quality of our products, foreigners would see the advantage of purchasing French goods and money would flow to our kingdom" (Burrill & Ledolter, 1999, p.26). This statement still holds true to many of the organizations today. Quality management has become one of the most important factors considered by the top management today. Managers place a great deal of emphasis on quality today because of the demands of consumers who have become more knowledgeable about the products what they need and the value that consumers place on quality. In this essay I will define Total Quality Management, describe its impact on globalization quality, comparing and contrasting traditional management styles with quality focused management styles.

A definition of Total Quality Management (TQM) is a comprehensive and structured approach to organizational management that seeks to improve the quality of products and services through ongoing refinements in response to continuous feedback.

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TQM requirements may be defined separately for a particular organization or may be in adherence to established standards, such as the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9000 series. TQM can be applied to any type of organization; it originated in the manufacturing sector and has since been adapted for use in almost every type of organization imaginable, including schools, highway maintenance, hotel management, and churches. As a current focus of e-business, TQM is based on quality management from the customer's point of view (searchcio.techtarget, 2002).

The recent rapid globalization of trade is creating beyond compared oversupplies of many goods and even services. Together with information technologies that provide customers with more data about prices, quality levels and product availability than ever before, globalization is having a major impact on quality worldwide.