Total Quality Management

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What Does Total Quality Management Mean?

Total quality management (TQM) is a business management strategy used to improve products and services by focusing on organizational process measurements and controls.

TQM’s key concept is that the quality of a product or service is the responsibility of everyone involved in its creation or consumption, including management, employees, suppliers and customers. TQM’s ultimate goal is to improve customer satisfaction.

Techopedia Explains Total Quality Management

TQM originated in Japan in the 1950s. Since the 1980s, TQM has become well-known on an international level. The term total quality management has lost favor in the United States in recent years, and is commonly substituted with simply quality management.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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