Resources: The GOAL/QPC TQM Wheel and the Ten-Element Model

What is TQM?

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a structured system for meeting and exceeding customer needs and expectations by creating organization-wide participation in the planning and implementation of improvement (continuous and breakthrough) processes.

Why TQM?

In a global marketplace a major characteristic that will distinguish those organizations that are successful will be the quality of leadership, management, employees, work processes, product, and service. This means that products must not only meet customer and community needs for value, they must be provided in a continuously improving, timely, cost-effective, innovative, and productive manner.

GOAL/QPC's Synthesis

There are a variety of strategies being used to implement quality management. These include a "guru" approach, a "quality award" approach, and an ala carte (pick a few pieces of different things and try them) approach. From observation and direct experience with companies implementing TQM, as well as an analysis and critique of different TQM implementation strategies, GOAL/QPC constructed a TQM Wheel to provide a holistic view, and a Ten-Element Model to outline an implementation strategy that allows organizations to get started fairly quickly and begin to improve effectiveness, even though it will take several years to become fully operational. A suggested method for operationalizing TQM is explained in GOAL/QPC's 63-page Research Report (PDF, 59MB), Total Quality Management Master Plan: An Implementation Strategy.

TQM Evolves

What is called TQM has never stood still. As with any dynamic management system, TQM has continuously evolved over the last half of the Twentieth Century. GOAL/QPC has been an active partner in this evolution since 1980.
While numerous improvements have been made throughout the world, the elements that make up the TQM Wheel and Ten Element Model are foundational to good quality management.
In today's world, two of the most effective and popular "new" management models are Lean and Six Sigma. Both of these models utilize the basic TQM elements and add on some extra refinements to achieve a more robust and powerful system for customer-focused product and service excellence that also focuses on optimizing costs and profits.
GOAL/QPC's newest product offerings are in this Lean Enterprise and Six Sigma domain.