Management Theories
Total Quality Management
Also Known As TQM
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An organization-wide management approach, prominent from the mid-1980s, holding that every department, not only production, is responsible for continuously improving the quality of what the organization delivers to customers.
Facts
Disputed
Origin YearSources place the term's coinage and rise to prominence across the mid to late 1980s, with no single agreed founding year; recorded as an open question below rather than a fabricated precise year. Core ClaimQuality improves through systematic, organization-wide process improvement, management funding and training, and the disciplined use of established quality control tools, rather than inspection alone. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia, Total Quality Management
Wikipedialead sectionQuote, lead section
Total quality management (TQM) emphasizes that all departments, not just production, are responsible for improving their operations.
1. Wikipedia, Total Quality Management
WikipediaOpen Questions: What year, and by whom, is total quality management's coinage and rise to prominence best dated?, History sectionQuote, Open Questions: What year, and by whom, is total quality management's coinage and rise to prominence best dated?, History section
The exact origin of the term 'total quality management' is uncertain.
Open Questions (1 open question)
What year, and by whom, is total quality management's coinage and rise to prominence best dated?
General and encyclopedic sources place the term's coinage and popularization across the mid to late 1980s, crediting a broad mix of contributors (Deming's and Juran's earlier quality-control work, the U.S. Navy's early use of the phrase, and its uptake by American manufacturers responding to Japanese quality methods) with no single agreed founding year or individual, unlike scientific management (Taylor, 1911) or management by objectives (Drucker, 1954).
What would resolve this A management-history source that traces the term's first documented use and its spread through American industry with named dates, rather than a general encyclopedia entry.
Management HistoryWikipedia, Total Quality Management
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