A TQM perspective

The global business environment becomes more and more turbulent, as future seems to be more unpredictable, as choice increases and as people become more aware, quality management becomes more and more indispensable.
While human endeavour enters ever-widening spheres of existence, it is easy to become obsessed with one’s own activity, and believe it to be fundamentally different to that of everyone else. Once taken back to first-principles, though, it will be seen that it is not so. The basic rules, concepts and relationships exist in all working situations. This means that everyone can learn from the experience of any other organisation, indeed that they must learn to extract the better aspects of other types of enterprises. Disgruntled doctors or teachers may mutter that they are not working in a factory, and thus industrial methods are not their concern, but this demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of the basic economic facts of life and of the interdependence of all forms of life so vital for survival of all species.
TQM promotes the ability of any organisation to generate wealth in the long-term for the betterment of everyone concerned, seeking to provide the means of achieving increased productivity. A basic tenet of TQM is that wealth can only be derived, in the long term, from satisfied customers. Thus the main function of any business engaged in TQM is the generation of wealth via, customer satisfaction.