Total Quality Management

A management approach in which all departments, employees, and managers are responsible for continuously improving quality so that products and services meet or exceed customer expectations.

The Total Quality Control (TQC) methodology relies on the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle to manage processes and, when problems arise, statistical tools to solve them. The methodology and tools are used often by employees during kaizen activities and together form an important subsystem of lean.

The term “total quality control” was coined in 1957 by U.S. quality expert Armand Feigenbaum, who saw quality control professionals as central to promoting TQC. By the 1980s, other experts such as Philip Crosby, Joseph Juran, W. Edwards Deming, and Kaoru Ishikawa expanded the concept, now known as Total Quality Management (TQM), to include new tools and, most importantly, the idea that quality was the responsibility of all employees, managers, and senior managers.

Toyota implemented TQC in the early 1960s and began transferring the system to suppliers in the late 1960s.